Deaf and dumb

We were required to reach P&G earlier than yesterday today by 8.30am, but our supervisor Farah turned up 15 minutes later. After being brought to our Dahlia room as usual, and briefed for a moment, we commenced our rudimentary work of telephoning and telephoning.

What’s terribly exciting about the job is - compared to my previous job of telemarketing during my earlier stint last three years at Nanyang Online - you don’t meet complete asshats or other various derogatory forms of idiots and morons. Even if they sound like they were suspicious of you at first, their eyes (can be seen through the slightly higher pitch of their voice) light up on hearing that we’re phoning them vis-?-vis their job applications.

One of our telephone conversations sound like the following:

me: Hello, I’m Clement and I’m calling from P&G, Procter & Gamble? [slightly raised intonation]
Candidate who probably won’t pass the ‘simple mathematics and comprehension test’: Ya?
me: Yes, so this is regarding your job application at P&G.
Candidate who probably won’t pass the ‘simple mathematics and comprehension test’: Oh, HI!!!!!!

Damn sweat betul.

After phoning more than a hundred people a day (and probably succeeded in luring about 40 desperate jobless people per day on average), one gets tired of saying the following phrases: “I’m calling from P&G”, “problem-solving test”, “would you be able to make it?”, “what’s your e-mail address?”, etcetc.

I also noticed almost all of us in the room adopts a different voice when on the telephone. I’d like to think I sound professionally suave, extremely well-educated and polite when conversing with kakaks and abangs who can barely speak English and 50% of them asked if I could tell what I wanted to tell in BM. Like, I’m a representative of an international firm, yo? Nak I berbahasa Melayu? NAHHHHH.

I, of course, followed suit since talking in my now almost completely un-fluent BM can be a good change. I admire Serene (not Suet Li), our colleague, whose BM was damn bloody good.

Kai Tzin adopted some ang moh accent which made him sound really professional, while the rest.. well, nothing much to say haha.

Among the funnier things that happened to day was this convo from Serene:

Serene: Hello, may I speak to Jaya please?
Jaya: Yes, this is Jaya speaking.
Serene: Hi Jaya, can I speak to Jaya please?

The room exploded in guffaws when we heard that (I’ve done the same thing once today as well =___=); it’s understandable why she made the mistake because she wasn’t concentrating and was probably staring at the talksheet in front of her (so did I). Hahaha.

And Daniel said this, ”..position for beauty insultant?” instead of ‘consultant’. LOL. Again, a lapse of judgement and concentration when doing a highly-repetitive job that robs you of your saliva.

We had to eat at freaking McDonald’s again because there wasn’t any food court in Subang Parade. Tomorrow hopefully we’re heading to Carrefour’s foot court because eating at said fast food franchise is effectively taking away 1/5 of my daily pay.

We got off from work at about 5.45pm, and after Kai Tzin and Daniel dropped off at Summit, a tall Chinese guy in white (who resembled my online friend Greg from the previous DS meetup) who was sitting in a single chair right in front of me, gestured to the conductor about something. The conductor lazily and desperately shrugged him off and looked at me instead, as if hinting I should help him.

I asked the dude what was the matter, and he gestured at his mouth indicating that he can’t speak. He pointed to a small black notebook-cum-journal he was holding, and on it written in small letters were the words, “USJ 4”. I opened my mouth and began directing instructions how to get there until I shut it when he gestured again to his ears. He can’t hear at all.. poor thing.

Feeling a bit embarassed at my ignorance, when he pointed to his notebook and gave me his pen, I wrote “Turn right at the traffic lights” when he stopped me from writing further and told me through sign language that he was gonna walk, not going by bus.

<_<

So yeah, I gave him what I thought was probably a shoddy description and directions to where USJ4 is. When the bus stopped at Taipan few metres away before turning left at the traffic lights (instead of going straight past the MPSJ building), I told him that he should be dropping by there and walking straight all the way. He alighted, did some sign language with his mouth which I presumed was “thank you” or something along those lines. It’s this sort of incident that sometimes make me regret not learning sign language.

Imagine not being able to listen, not being able to express your thoughts. Not being able to hear the loud, noisy rumble of the engine of the bus, the hustle and bustle of the city, beautiful pieces of music, your friends’ nosy, noisy chatter and banter.. not being able to listen is terrible enough, but if you can’t speak as well, I think that’s really sucky.