The Philippines is a major player in the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry.  Places like Eastwood Cyber Park, Ortigas Center, Makati CBD, Bonifacio Global City, and cities like Baguio, Cebu, and Davao all have economic ties with contact centers, staff offshoring, and outsourcing in general.  While much has been said about the positive economic impact of the BPO industry, many negative points have also been raised especially to working conditions.

If there’s another point I can raise about what I call the “Call Center Generation,” it’s a public health concern.  You would hear of an endless number of illnesses caused by work-related stress and fatigue from graveyard shifts: hypertension, insomnia, narcolepsy, and chronic fatigue, just to name a few.  The unhealthy lifestyle of a BPO worker also contributes to the public health concern, and it’s not just about fast-food restaurants and unhealthful foodstuffs served at office pantries.  The unhealthy lifestyle is compounded by – for the lack of a better word – different sorts and varying degrees of addictions and substance abuse.

If we take the word “drugs” in its broadest sense, then a lot can be said about latent drug abuse in the call center industry.  Caffeine is consumed in massive doses, whether it’s from a Nescafé vending machine or from Starbucks chain stores.  Alcohol is consumed liberally in bars, restaurants, gasoline stations, and watering holes frequented by call center agents.  There are stories – real ones, not tall tales or urban legends – of amphetamines, cannabis, and Ecstasy sold at back-alleys or even office restrooms.

Yet if there’s any one “drug” that is definitive of the BPO industry and its hundreds of thousands of employees, it definitely has to be nicotine.  If there’s any one vice that deserves special attention, it’s the cigarette.

The focus on health in this discussion is important, because much about the BPO industry revolves around healthy employees who are able to put in regular hours, not necessarily happy employees.  If alienation is a non-factor and a non-issue for BPOs, then social capital (in the form of health) must be a factor and an issue.  The happiness of BPO workers, in truth, comes secondary to their ability and the necessity to come to work on time and take the fewest number of sick days and vacation leaves.  For a BPO company to thrive (despite the flawed economics that make it very possible – if not inevitable – for the model to fail), it has to invest in the health and well-being of its employees; most of whom are ignored in favor of market and capital expansion.  As an industry that depends solely on human resources and human capital, the BPO industry must take steps to protect the investments and assets that is the workforce.

Just to make things clear, this is not a tirade against vice or the outsourcing industry; instead, I’d like this article to be read as an illustration of the many personal, social and public health problems that confronts and imperils the “first truly globally-oriented generation of Filipinos.”  In effect: this globally-oriented generation is an ill – and an addicted – generation.

Putting yosi into perspective

As a worker and an employee for a BPO in Ortigas Center, there’s a lot to be said (to a certain extent even doubted) about the utility or the sensibility of cigarettes for work.  There is much less to be said about the benefits of cigarettes; while there is no one-to-one correspondence between an illness (like lung cancer or emphysema) and smoking, many reports particularly by the World Health Organization (WHO) (access PDF here) have drawn up a very strong set of cases against tobacco, the tobacco industry, and smoking.

For a chain smoker (like myself), packs of cigarettes can take a big chunk out of one’s already small salary.  Many BPOs discourage frequent smoke breaks, especially if the job involves 24-hour customer sales and support.  The five minutes it takes to consume an average king-size cigarette can mean millions of dollars in losses and plummeting values on productivity charts, yet it can mean a morale boost for stressed and overworked employees who put up with the working conditions in an average BPO.

Most smokers (including myself) who work in BPOs do not necessarily see yosi as an “addiction,” but as a habit carried over from college.  There are definitely occasions where a person develops a nicotine habit because of the stressing work at BPOs, but smoking is mostly a case of old habits that don’t die hard.  The absence of iterant vendors or “takatak” boys at the affluent business districts are compensated by the seemingly overbearing presence of convenience stores like Mini Stop and 7-Eleven at every corner, where cigarettes never run out of stock.

The apparent “benefits” of smoking

Ruling out the WHO reports and the many scientific studies that are against smoking, the “benefits” of smoking are quite evident and even true for many BPO workers.  The cigarette, for many smokers in the call center and staff offshoring industry, plays host to a number of different benefits and advantages.  The cigarette is:

• An affordable indulgence. Unlike gourmet coffee or movies, cigarettes are cheap and can be bought on a daily basis.  The most commonly smoked cigarettes can cost as low as P23 for Winston Lights and as high as P55 for Dunhill Frost.  My usual brand, Marlboro Lights, costs P35 at a 7-Eleven.  Compared to a frappe at Starbucks (P70) or a movie (P150), cigarettes are inexpensive indulgences.
• A stress-reliever. The addictive substances in cigarettes, especially nicotine, are “effective” ways of relieving stress, monotony, or boredom.  It serves other purposes outside of mental catharsis; no meal or snack is complete without one or two cigarettes to round out a one-hour lunch break.
• A panacea and placebo. Tobacco is somewhat a form of self-medication to warm the body during cold or windy days, or to prevent the onset of fever and flu.  Smoking can also get rid of nervousness, fatigue, or arrest depression and anxiety.  The cigarette is also a great way to relieve hunger pangs.

Cigarettes and Colonialism

West has McLaren-Mercedes, Marlboro has the Marlboro Man, and Winston is “The Spirit of the USA.”  It is difficult to legitimize, encourage, and institutionalize smoking without putting it into perspective… no matter how distorted it is.  From here, we can draw a parallelism between two quintessentially colonial (in this case American) products: cigarettes and outsourcing.

In a August 1995 New York Times article entitled “A Letter to Granddad, The Tobacco Farmer,” Allan Gurganus writes:

Tobacco is the quintessential American product.  It fulfills no appetite but the one it creates.  Predicting a throwaway culture, it is rendered useful only by being destroyed.  Along with autos, movies, jazz and striptease, it remains our abiding gift to world mass culture.

An interesting study by Babere Kerata Chacha of Egerton University, Kenya (available through PDF) draws some rather interesting parallelisms and conclusions as to the “tobacco boom” in the Kuria District of Kenya in 1969-1999, and long-term socio-ecological damage.  While tobacco is a major cash crop in Kenya, it did result in consequences like environmental degradation and an impaired ability to produce food.

Still drawing on that parallelism: could there be a relationship to outsourcing and the Philippines as well?  The boom of outsourcing, as with other economic booms - bubbles - like Nursing and medical transcription, results in what is generally accepted as underemployment.  While outsourcing does contribute to economic development, it does contribute to underemployment.  But I digress.

With an quintessentially American cigarette comes quintessentially American diseases like lung cancer and substance dependence.  The continuted dependence on cigarettes may account for the following non-productive consequences of the drug and its two-pack-a-day chokehold on overstressed, overworked, and underemployed call center employees:

• Cancer
• Emphysema
• Pneumonia
• Upper respiratory tract infection
• Withdrawal symptoms
• Chemical dependence

The Impasse

I was at a MiniStop at Ortigas a couple of days ago (yes, buying cigarettes) and I asked a call center agent if there’s anything that can be done about the two-pack-a-day habit “enjoyed” by call center agents.  For an industry where across-the-board health care is often optional and graveyard shifts are always necessary, the impasse is quite difficult to surmount.  Substance addiction is a means of coping for stresses, whether it’s a sleeping pill or a cigarette.  In the WHO report, 28.4% of Filipino male respondents and 5.9% of Filipino female respondents smoke cigarettes on a daily basis.  The incidence of smoking?  An alarming 38.1% of the Filipino population smokes.  No data is yet available to me with regard to the incidence of smoking among call center agents, although the Tata Memorial Hospital in India is studying tobacco control among Indian BPO employees; the study will be completed in February 2009.

So far, my informal observed data indicates the following:

• Preferred cigarette brands: Marlboro Lights, Winston Lights
• Frequency: one pack a day
• Most common reasons: stress, fatigue

Are the BPO employees of the Philippines smoking because of the demands of the industry?  Is the industry taking a serious step to address the smoking situation, or is it even dependent on it?  That itself begs study: something I think that BPOs based in the Philippines should seriously undertake.

*     *     *

I am not against smoking; for crying out loud, I’m a smoker.  Yet smoking comes with the caveat that while it is a matter of personal choice, disease and addiction is never a choice made by a smoker.  There are two assumptions that should be held true at this point:

• As long as there are cigarettes, there will be smokers.
• If you work in a BPO, you smoke more.

For being the “globally oriented generation,” Filipino BPO workers are addicted.  When worse comes to worst, cigarettes will become so engrained into an already engrained subculture of “callboys” and “callgirls.”  I won’t speak for legislation or tobacco control, but I would speak for my need of a cigarette right now.

Like I said, this generation is colonialized and addicted.  I’m no different,

I blame it all on emo.  We glorify heartache and unrequited love so much that sometimes, we forget what real pain is all about.  Real, honest-to-goodness, physical pain: the kind you get from botched (and yet completely necessary) tooth extractions.

The saga of my miserable tooth has come to a rather climactic end this morning.  Rather than opt for oral surgery, the dentist decided to take out my tooth by hook or by crook.  Four ampules of anaesthesia and a nerve-block didn’t do anything to numb the godforsaken molar.

Anaesthesia will never work.  So the dentist decided to pull it out the hard way.

When confronted with physical pain, it’s perfectly OK to cry.  If you twist your ankle the wrong way and the hilot comes in to force the joint into place, there’s nothing wrong about wailing like a banshee.  Now if you have a numbed mouth and a dentist prying away at the offending tooth with a pair of dental pliers, crying is really not an option.  Nor is screaming with the primal, guttural tone of a caged animal.

I just squirmed in that dental chair.  Like I was chugging a bad lime tequila, or that leeches were making their way up my rectum.  Perhaps even rigor mortis.

The tooth extraction seemed to last forever.  The pliers made the death grip.  It was a good thing I took a piss early in the morning, or else I would have wet my pants with sheer, excruciating pain.  Twisted ankles, tweaked knees, and a broken heart are nothing compared to a heavy-handed dentist pulling out your impacted and decaying molar with sheer brute force.  If that’s not pain, I don’t know what is.

Snap!  I thought it was over.  Nope, the dentist managed to snap the tooth, leaving part of the crown and the roots of the tooth behind.  There was no other alternative for the dentist but to pull it out.  Sideways, upward, a bit of rotation, lateral movements… I didn’t know whether to cry, take a shit, or go blind.

Did I mention it took two dentists to do this?

After four dental appointments and eight ampules of novocaine, the tooth lost by knockout.  The soonest I got back my wit and normal blood circulation, I took a picture of the offending tooth:

I could have taken a clearer picture, but my hands were too unsteady to immortalize the offending tooth.  The red stuff on top is actually a cyst: hardened pus that was responsible for the anaesthesia not working.  Now that I managed to kick my tooth’s ass, I could probably go one on one with Manny Pacquiao right now.

So talk all you want about the pain of loving someone who doesn’t love you back, or the pain that comes with your self-inflicted emotional misery, or the pain of belonging to someone else when the right one comes along.

Some people will blog today about the pain of a broken heart.  I, Maro-Freakin-Charim, just blogged about a dental extraction without anaesthesia.  Who’s got the pain now, eh?

With all this madness over gluathione supplements, I think we men are being left out.  I’m not making intriga over male glutathione endorsers (there’s nothing here for anyone looking for info on Gabby Concepcion or Jake Cuenca), it’s more like there has got to be something for the men.  Like a natural supplement that can make men look more…

More…

Black!

Allow me to be extremely stereotypical here: if women desire to have flawless, milky-white skin, men definitely desire to be as black as possible.  You have to think like a xenophobic chauvinistic misanthropic racist to understand this:

• If you’ve watched enough porn on the Internet, you may have noticed that many black porn actors have big penises.
• If you happen to not be emo and represent hip-hop homie subculture, you have already been insulted enough by real Crips and Bloods in Internet forums because you’re nothing more than a “poser brown monkey.”
• You admire former US President Bill Clinton so much, and you agree so much with Toni Morrison’s metaphor that Clinton was “the first black president.”

I’m not exactly familiar with how these “supplements” work, although I think the lot of tambay youths who like dressing up like they were just recently circumcised would really like the idea of having a dietary supplement that actually darkens - not whitens - skin tone.

Unlike tanning beds, my idea of “blackening” supplement attempts to darken your skin tone so much, not to mention give you a few extra inches of penis length (just to be xenophobic, chauvinistic, misanthropic, and racist about it).

And what better way to take this in than with a good old-fashioned suppository.

I don’t care what you do for a living, how much you make, or what salutatory title precedes or follows your name.  If you got to take a dump, you have to take a dump.

Almost everyone new to the workforce will be hesitant to do Number Twos at the office comfort room.  My first month was rife with having to hold my intestinal sausages in until such time that I can go home, lock the bathroom door, and take to the literal cleansing of the bowels.  Of course, you can’t hold on to such behavior for too long.  I don’t know if company health plans ensure for ruptured colons.

I guess taking nonchalant craps are something exclusive to menfolk.  Men more than women are more open about bodily catharsis.  After all, any tree, wall, or utility post is a potential urinal.  We don’t make much of a deal about taking a shat as women do.  Women beat men hands-down at farting inside elevators; they retain their poise.  Poise is not exactly something you retain when you have your underwear bunched down to your knees, and you’re popping out cholera-infected Smurfs from down there.

Yet professionalism and good conduct extends to every company property; yes, even in the comfort room, even at the most private moment of making jebs, you have to conduct yourself properly.  You have to act like you have a wedgie, and you feel like taking a long dump.  You have to stifle every urge to grunt and to groan.  Vocalization helps a lot in ridding yourself out of yesterday’s dinner of munggo, and you really can’t do this in the office bathroom unless you want rumors to spread over your grunting and groaning at the bathroom cubicles.

And then there’s toilet paper.  At the precise moment when you need to say goodbye to those playful little denizens of Oz that have walked down the Brownish-Yellow Brick Road, you realize that there’s no more toilet paper.  Offices may be quick on salaries, but I have yet to see an office that’s quick on restocking bathrooms with loo rolls.  For those who have forgotten to buy them pop-up packs at the MiniStop or 7-Eleven, there’s always the water pail.

Discretion, as a reminder, is the better part of valor.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you may remember that I wrote something about an abscessed tooth a few months back.  It’s only now that I realize how big a problem a single tooth could be, so much so that I may have to undergo oral surgery this weekend.

It’s a good thing I don’t Podcast, or else the little anti-Marocharim bloc somewhere in cyberspace (I never knew they actually existed: took me a long weekend to figure that out) would rejoice in the fact that it only takes a dentist to shut me up.  I still have my fingers, of course, which means that the anthropomorphic cybernetic weasels would have to wish upon a vodun that I either get leprosy or hand-herpes.

I don’t know much about dentistry myself, although the dentist explained that oral surgery ain’t that bad.  One of my molars have been so misaligned - braces weren’t able to save it - that it has to be removed by hook or by crook.  As it seems, though, even massive doses of dental anaesthesia no longer work on me.

Normally, two vials of novocaine would be enough to conk you out and leave you with that puffy feeling in your mouth.  Not for me, though: by the time the dentist tried to pry my tooth out after a controlled overdose of anaesthetic, my knuckles were turning white from pain.  I swear, had I not taken a leak at the office, I would have wet my pants from the excruciating pain.  So after a few more prods with that Freddy Krueger-like instrument, the dentist just gave up and slated me for oral surgery.

And… how much did my braces cost again?