The Quiet Ones

by Glenn Diaz

  29

  W e couldn’t pinpoint exactly when Karen and Brock officially became a thing at work. Some said as early as last year, when Brock’s supervisory rounds supposedly became more frequent, during which he always lingered by Team Eric’s spine and offered Karen impromptu customer service tips. Some said it was during the UTelCo Christmas party at Red Box a few months ago, when Brock hogged the mic and sang, to no one’s delight, a Carpenters medley, allegedly a wink-wink to the vocalist’s Filipino namesake. Still others said the two had always been secretly together; they had met at a bar on Jupiter the night before Karen’s first day and all this time Brock was only waiting for the results of his divorce before he could finally “stake his claim” on her. A few of us noted that this was the plot of the first season of Grey’s Anatomy .

  It all became clear about a month after the ill-fated Save Jasmine Trias campaign (the operatives’ two-week suspensions freshly served). We heard that Brock was in Cebu for an international call center expo, and, for some reason, Karen was also MIA. Coincidence? On the second day of the event—Karen’s station still empty—Sharon said it could be sore eyes, it was really going around. She fixed her sunglasses and added that if only she didn’t need the money, she would have stayed home as well. On the third day, we found ourselves praying to Saint Jude for Karen’s famous hurricane dash to her station to log in at the last minute, a spectacle almost as funny as the pictures of sleeping, drooling agents posted punitively on the pantry bulletin board. When one, two, then eventually three o’clock struck and her station remained unmanned, we knew that she was done for.

  Three days earlier at the airport, we’d later learn, Karen refused to tell Brock that it was her first time to ride a plane. Brock—who shuttled between Manila and Naperville at least once every quarter, seventeen hours each time and three, four stops. When they saw each other at Departures and Brock asked, “You good?” she nodded and joined him en route to the boarding gates. Alone in the female line, she showed her printed reservation form to the lady guard, who removed her earphones and, like a professional, asked her what the fuck that was.

  Karen closed her eyes.

  Years of manning the phones for UTelCo had taught us the structure of ostentatious anger at subpar customer service.

  “I wonder what gives you the right to speak to me like that,” she began.

  Threateningly polite expression of offense.

  “Am I not a paying customer here who deserves quality service?”

  Entitled demand in rhetorical question form.

  “Is there a manager or a supervisor on duty?”

  Warning of escalation to signal the severity of the matter.

  Panic instantly blinked in the guard’s eyes. “Sorry, Ma’am,” she said. “Sorry. Please don’t tell my supervisor.” She pointed back to Departures. “You have forgotten to check in maybe. Sorry again.” She called a janitor mopping a perfectly clean patch of floor to assist Karen, who waved to Brock and gestured for him to go right ahead, she’d be right behind him.

  Walking to the check-in counter, she touched a phantom headset in her ear out of habit. She recalled a former teammate who had a pint-size birthmark beside her lip that resembled a headset mic. “Take off your headset,” we’d tell her, “shift’s over,” then laugh. She quit three weeks into taking calls.

  The janitor brought her to the Cebu counter, where she felt reassured by the Caucasians and Indians corralled inside. She looked around, straightened up her cardigan, and picked non-existent lint from her blouse. The man next to her turned around briefly, nose steep in the air. “Hi there, how are you?” he said.

  “I’m good, thanks,” Karen said. “Yourself?”

  The man’s nostrils flared.

  “Oh-not-so-bad” cooed a svelte blonde who had freshly joined the queue. With Karen and at least six other people between them, the man and the blonde talked about the latter’s “very interesting” trip to Dublin last week, in particular the French and Italians who were “so desperate to dump their Euros there, ha-ha-ha.”

  “But not if the Chinese hear about it first!” the man said.

  Karen arrived at her gate minutes before boarding time. It looked like an air-conditioned, less chaotic bus terminal: children hollering, basketball commentary blaring from the concourse TV, families chatting sprawled on chairs. She found Brock sitting on the row nearest the glass windows that overlooked the runway. Every now and then, one of the boys playing a vicious game of tag would collide into his crossed knee, nearly toppling his balanced Mac each time. Brock would chuckle at the near-accident and give the retreating culprit a weak smile. After a while, the boy’s father noticed and apologized to Brock in broken, inexplicably loud English.

  Karen walked to a vacant spot beside the American. She sat down and leaned on his shoulders, surprising him. “Everything OK?” he asked her.

  She nodded. “Are there many call centers in Ireland?” she asked.

  Before he could answer, a forlorn voice over the PA system called out the passengers of the Cebu-bound flight, unsettling the crowd around them. “This is not yet your boarding call,” the voice quickly added, “please remain seated as we explain your boarding procedures.”

  An anxious line nevertheless formed en route to the door.

  30

  T he renowned economist looked at ease behind the seashell-covered podium. Too at ease. Reading from a sheaf of papers, he would rattle off important-sounding figures apace with slides being flashed on the big screen. Every time he sensed boredom, however, he’d deviate from his prepared talk and crack a joke.

  “So GDP and Balance of Payments meet at a bar. GDP tells Balance of Payments, ‘Hey, you look familiar. You come here often?’ Balance of Payments sees GDP and, terrified, cries, ‘Don’t you dare come near me! You’re not supposed to exist!’ Ha-ha-ha.”

  “What?” Brock leaned closer to Karen.

  “Just laugh,” Karen said, clapping.

  It was the opening of the international call center expo, a day after they arrived in Cebu. The ongoing plenary session—“Philippine Economic Outlook: Prospects for the BPO Industry”—was last in a long morning program filled with speeches, awkward adlibs, and statues of infant Jesus undulating in the air for the obligatory cultural performance. Kicking things off had been the governor of Cebu, the mayor of Mactan, and the trade secretary, all of whom talked about the contribution of call center jobs to the economy, the peerless English proficiency of Filipinos, and a reference or two to Cebu lechon, Magellan’s Cross, or dried mangoes. After the speeches, the event host, a singer known for exactly one hit ballad, summarized them and asked in jest if the three officials had hired the same speechwriter. “We have many wonderful writers in Manila if you need some talent here in Cebu.” The cameras, which fed to the big screens onstage, panned to the unsmiling faces of the governor and the mayor, only two of the many other unamused Cebuanos at the Marquee Hall of Shangri-La’s Mactan Resorts and Spa.

  State rhetoric and jokes about imperial Manila were followed by a Sinulog-style intermission number. To rhythmic drum beats and primal cries of “Viva!” dozens of teenagers entered the stage hoisting identical Santo Niños in the air. The statues were replicas of the first Catholic idol that Magellan supposedly gave the local chieftain’s wife as baptismal gift, just before the Portuguese explorer was killed by a less hospitable chieftain, in a battle that took place on that very island, possibly on the same shore where European women now sunbathed topless. The emcee reappeared and commended the performers, adding that if only Lapu-Lapu, the chieftain who gave the city its name, were alive today, he would have been so, so proud. Sigh.

  Then commenced the plenary talks: the “State of the Industry Report” by the head of the national BPO alliance, “Global Industry Trends” by the Indian research vice president of an American consultancy firm, “Global Economic Outlook” by the American shared services head of an Indian auditing firm, and, finally, the report on the Philippine economy by the
economist, now on its fifteenth minute.

  “What did the Gini coefficient say to the Theil Index?” the economist asked.

  “What?” the crowd chorused.

  “‘Everything is relative.’ Ha-ha-ha.”

  When Karen heard “trade” moments later, she remembered the view from their hotel room: the endless rows of container vans stacked near the water’s edge. For a long time that morning, as she waited for Brock to make last-minute changes in his presentation, she looked out the window expecting a large cargo ship to sail impressively down Mactan Channel. But the only activity she saw was the almost imperceptible shifting of shadows as the sun crossed the sky.

  “At this rate, my session later will be the highlight of Day One,” Brock said.

  Karen smiled.

  “Which reminds me,” he said. “I’ve got a surprise for you.”

  “I hate surprises,” she said. Her mild alarm was interrupted by the applause that escorted the economist off the stage. When the emcee reappeared, someone from the crowd said, “Oh no!” a little too loudly, and many laughed. “You’re too kind,” the emcee said. He repeated the key points from the plenary sessions, foremost the giddy projection that the Philippines would overtake India in terms of revenue in as little as five years, which rehearsed the half-shy giggles from the many Indians in attendance. “What else?” the emcee thought. “I think that’s it, no?” he said, and the audience clapped, stood, and silenced him to lunch.

  We were secretly proud of it, Karen’s conquest.

  Americans welcomed us to this industry. They were our managers, our department heads, our CEOs. They oversaw meetings and training sessions. In their idle time, they hovered annoyingly around our stations, chatting about sports and demonstrating a football pass (“Hold my mug?”). Some of them were too tall for the urinals. Many were sloppy dressers. Few could stomach Filipino food. They decided our pay, monitored our calls, and would readily coach us if we veered away from the script or mispronounced “federal” or “Connecticut.” One of us getting into a relationship with one of them: was there a more satisfying act of fighting back?

  But the last time we saw Karen and Brock together at McDonald’s a week before Cebu, we were reminded of the reliably potbellied Caucasian man on whose arm dangled a pint-size Filipina in leopard-print tights. The pairings had increasingly become a typical sight not just in notorious nightspots and “recreation centers” but in grocery stores, malls, the MRT in broad daylight. The more catty among us pursed their lips: look, another countryman of ours lifted from poverty’s doldrums.

  But Karen wasn’t poor, someone pointed out. She graduated from an exclusive Catholic school for girls. Her family owned land in Iloilo. Her bone structure and complexion could not have come from indigenous stock, could it? No one called Karen a gold-digging opportunist, the reply went, but talk to us when Brock had applied for a permanent resident visa here, renounced his US citizenship, and moved out of his two-bedroom in Salcedo and into Karen’s childhood apartment in Galas with her sick father.

  Those of us who enjoyed Meg Ryan movies in the early 1990s pointed out that Karen, lest we forget, had always been attracted to heftier men, whose bodies could easily swathe the entirety of her petite frame. And Brock was funny, considerate, a gentleman. It was a good match, all things considered. And didn’t you notice that her strides were longer, her movements daintier and more deliberate, in her eyes the cover of dreamy, lovelorn mist.

  “That’s the Valium kicking in,” Sharon said.

  Always a cynic, we thought. Must be residual negativity from the cancer.

  In Cebu, Karen tried to ignore the vaguely judgmental look from people who saw her with Brock. During lunch in the garden area after the morning plenaries, she made it a point to act as casually as she could around the American, as if being with him was as ordinary as day. In line at the buffet, they talked about mundane things, like the cool breeze that was odd for May, the mad dash to skin the lechon, and the necessary tediousness to these events.

  Carrying plates on which jostled pancit, lumpia, lechon, and rice, the two found a table with two empty chairs. They were welcomed by a smile from a wiry Indian man sitting next to a group of Filipinos, on his plate, Karen noticed, nothing except steamed vegetables.

  Brock and Karen smiled to ward off their carnivorous guilt. “Brock Allison,” Brock said, handing the Indian his business card.

  “Mintoo,” the man said, handing Brock his. He went down the line. “And these are my associates Geela, Monette, Carl, and that one,” he pointed at someone biting into a crisp triangle of lechon skin, “who is obviously very hungry, is Michael.” Everybody laughed, waved, and gave Brock their cards.

  Brock nodded at every name. He looked at one of the cards and lit up. “Hey, that’s why some of y’all look familiar. We’re ten floors above you. Magellan Solutions. Are they team leads of yours, supervisors—”

  “Yes,” Mintoo said. “The best of the best.” He looked at Karen.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Brock said. “This is my colleague Karen Valdez.”

  “Let me guess,” Mintoo said, eyes quizzically narrowed. “Head of training.”

  The Filipinos laughed.

  “Nah,” Brock said, smiling. “Well, Karen’s being groomed for a more senior position definitely, but we’re still determining the best fit for her. You know, we’ve always been so careful about career path and succession planning and all that. A talent like Karen is very tricky because she’s so versatile and flexible.”

  Mintoo and the rest smiled. Someone stood up to get more of the shrimp tempura.

  Karen looked around. At the VIP table, the emcee was scooping the last of the cold cuts on his plate.

  “Versatile and flexible,” Mintoo said, nodding, eyes on Karen. “Anyone for chai?”

  The plenary sessions resumed after lunch. In “Compensation and Benefits Benchmarks,” Karen was shocked that agents would transfer companies for as little as a P300 difference in monthly take-home wages. In “Building and Sustaining the Talent Supply Pipeline,” she felt uneasy about the proffered image of agents on a conveyor belt. In “Formulating Retention Strategies,” she wondered how to categorize Andrea’s reason for quitting (“My supervisor is a bible-thumping cunt”). In “Succession Planning,” she remembered Brock’s fib about her career.

  In the middle of “Diversifying Your Portfolio Amidst U.S. Protectionist Moves,” a petite woman in a headset and head-to-toe gray came up to Brock and asked him to head backstage to prepare for his presentation, which was next.

  “I guess it’s show time,” Brock told Karen, giving her a parting kiss. “Wish me luck?”

  “Break a leg,” she said.

  “Thanks, baby,” he said. “I almost forgot.” He took a digital camera from his coat pocket. “You mind taking a few shots? My best angle is from about forty-five degrees above eye level, so if you can get a stepladder—”

  She smiled. “See you later.”

  “See you later, baby.”

  Karen waited for a few moments then went outside to the lunch area for a smoke. The plates had been cleared but there were still islands of people huddled around the tall tables, eating leftover hors d’oeuvre and taking languid sips of coffee. From her purse Karen took out a fresh pack of Menthols and lit up.

  “Not interested in foreign exchange risk mitigation strategies?” someone asked.

  When she turned around, the economist added, “Me neither.”

  “Hello,” Karen said, voice just above a squeak.

  “I can assure you,” he began, taking a drag from his cigarette, “he’s going to say either of two things: peg their contracts with a margin roughly equivalent to the average fluctuation of the peso or hedge the risk at the outset and buy spot contracts. It’s very simple really. Those are the only solutions. The only ones.”

  She struggled for things to say and ended up nodding.

  The economist laughed. “I know that look. I taught undergrads for thirty-five
years.”

  “It’s really not my forte,” she said.

  The economist shrugged and looked away. “Economics rarely is.”

  A white guy smoking by the row of potted bromeliads threw Karen a genial smile. She looked away, swallowed hard, then took a drag from her cigarette.

  The words were out before she could stop them. “I’m more into education,” she said. “I’m head of training in my account.”

  “Is that right?” the economist asked. He smiled. “A fellow educator then. Always a pleasure to meet another masochist.”

  “Karen,” she said, taking the offered hand. “I know of you, of course, professor.”

  “Don’t lie,” he said. “The only economists Filipinos know are the bumbay and the pawnshop lady.” He took a final drag at his cigarette and flung it to an empty flowerbed, where it joined the other butts, like lifeless seeds. “Tell me, what’s so different about teaching adults? I’m asking because this BPO organization of yours suggested that I do what they call a ‘master class’ with mid- to top-level executives.”

  “Let me get your email and I will certainly get in touch,” Karen said.

  Page 10 under “Assurance.”

  “Great,” the economist said. He fished a card from his shirt pocket. “Speaking of computers, did you hear about the blonde who couldn’t find the number ten on the keyboard?”

  Karen didn’t have to order herself to laugh this time. “I’m sorry, Dr. Villegas, but my boyfriend, he’s operations manager in my company, he’s probably presenting now and he asked me to, well, document the event.” She showed him the digital camera.

  “Yes, documents are important,” he said, then added, “I’ll go with you. It’s getting a little warm out here, too.”

  She waited for the economist to finish his cigarette so they could walk back to the venue together. Seeing them approach, two ushers opened the huge door with what Karen decided was the VIP smile. For the first time she noticed the elaborate decorations that adorned the enormous hall: the sleek royal blue fabric that uniformly creased and draped from the ceiling corners and terminated in low-hanging capiz-beaded chandeliers, the slender palm fronds on the walls arranged in distinct geometric patterns and dramatically lit by a faintly crimson spotlight, and the yellow headset-inspired centerpiece behind the vaguely triangular stage. The hall was a three-dimensional Philippine flag.