Just because I want to be grateful

Early in 2017 sometime around midnight, I was stroking the back of my puppy while she lay on her side with her eyes closed and half a smile on her face as she does nearly every night before bedtime. This is one of our many rituals.  I sit on the floor with her, put her to sleep, and say repetitions of Hail Mary and Our Father for guidance and protection because the task of taking care of another life form is scary for me. And it occurred to me, “This is the happiest I have ever been.”  I had scars on my face, I couldn’t look at myself in a big mirror, I was always short on cash, everyone at work thinks I’m a weird loser, I was far away from the friends who don’t think so, but still, I felt so much gratitude for the kind of life I have been given. And I asked for one more thing, “Please don’t take away what I have. Let me keep them for as long as you can let me keep them.” Knowing that you have so much to lose makes life feel so large and wonderful and great and happy.

It’s not just the dog although I’m pretty sure she has tiny white wings beneath that chocolate fur. It’s the realization that I have it in me to wake up at 4 am to potty train a puppy, make enough money for basics like power and running water, and soldier through an office environment that reminds me of my social awkwardness and “otherness.”

And yet sometimes I forget. That’s humanity’s greatest folly: to sit in the midst of gold and still chase after what’s not there. Tsk. I would not be doing the Little Prince proud.  Just in case I forget again, here are the roses of my life:

Thank you for my mother who knows what I need before I even realize it.  What am I going to do without you?

Thank you for my funny baby dog who is currently humping every male dog in the street.  Babe, I don’t know how to tell you that that’s not how it works but I love the disregard for gender roles.  I raised you well.

Thank you for great friends who never stop listening. They say the world is an ugly but you make me feel otherwise. And I don’t want to be the only fabulous person around.

Thank you for fast fingers and good sentences.  You put food on the table and create a space for my head.

Thank you for the scars that help me mentally tag the bad, the good and the one-of-a-kind. You help me see more clearly, and spend my love more wisely.

And finally thank you for everyone else who can’t help but dislike me. I have considered changing for you, but at the end of the day, no. That energy is best invested in loving baby dogs who smile in their sleep.

2015

In 2014, I’ve uncovered a deeper truth about how the universe works. It’s as if I’ve unlocked the secret formula for all types of natural phenomena, and I can now use this information to manage my life more effeciently. Greater value, less stress. How promising, huh?

This uncovering happened a few days ago when I stumbled upon a documentary promoting “the Secret,” which basically says that if we think about something, it will happen to us because we will attract it through some metaphysical giving off of mental energy. It’s just so bogus.  First of all, it violates the actual laws of attraction, which clearly states that positive attracts negative. Second of all, Jason Statham isn’t mine to have and hold. Transporter, the Ocean’s Eleven cast, and a long list of boyfriends. Some dreams just don’t come true. Really.

We put such a premium on living a charmed life that we tend to beat ourselves up for things not going according to plan. Our plan.  And we invent all these strategies—visualization, charms, mantra – to get exactly what we want only to be disappointed because we failed or because we succeeded but having arrived doesn’t feel the way we thought it would.  It’s not only exhausting it seems to run contrary to how things fall into place.

The truth is we don’t have as much control over our lives as we would like to believe. This is of course not to say that it's okay to slack off. Best effort should be as standard as pooping. However messy (even painful) it gets, it's simply good for you. Force it. We work with the universe as best as we can.  We make the most of what it makes available, and we say thanks. Sometimes that’s the best that we can do.

Because the laws of natural science and economics have been clear about one thing: if it is physically possible, things move from places of abundance to places of absence. Matter will settle in gaps and cracks. Salt will get away from saturation. Invention and innovation arise from need.  Things somehow find themselves where they are needed with no consideration whatsoever for the stomping of human feet.

Because I work in this industry, I’d like to sneak this in. The Philippines has put in place a spot market for electricity trading, and people are complaining constantly that electricity is more expensive in certain nodes.  That’s supposedly the free market’s fault. Actually, the electricity spot market is by design prescriptive. It shows us all where the gaps are and it drives investment in that direction.  When we know where supply is deficient (the rates are higher), it is easier to spread the money invested in power facilities more evenly. Let’s endure the spikes for a little while; it won’t stay that way for long. This system is better than subsidy. 

What can alms really do for us anyway?  I have really decided not to ask for anything. Not in the larger scheme of things, not during the daily rat race where my hopes and dreams begin. If my job gets taken away from me, I’ll just find something else to do. There are too many talents fighting over limited opportunities just to win for winning's sake. The fight  for the top spot itself renders so many efforts pointless. There is always an unglamorous seemingly minor task out there waiting to be done.  Somebody has got to do that.

Let’s not race to love either. It just isn’t something we win.  Its easier to find something that fits right once we better understand the gaps in ourselves. (Not that kind of gap.  Don’t be gross.) Healthy relationships start from understanding where we are...errr...slightly deficient.

And maybe this is the year I get to find opportunities in neglected markets.  Who knows?  I have a strong feeling that there's money scattered over roads less travelled and largely ignored.

It seems everything is pushed and pulled not by wants but by needs.  At the close of 2014, it made the most sense to just withdraw from the rat race and find places where people need something that I can adequately provide. 

So I dont want anything specific at the start of this brand new year. Just tell me this 2015, “What can I do for you?”

Forgiveness

I was going over Ayn Rand quotes because friends of mine on two separate occasions (and they don’t even know each other) said I needed a good dose of her writing and general life philosophy.  Something like this one:

“Man's unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself. “ -Ayn Rand

That’s a loving way of saying “toughen up.” When I was done with that, I moved on to quotes by topics.  Strangely enough, it was forgiveness that caught my eye.

“Forgiveness is not a feeling - it's a decision we make because we want to do what's right before God. “- Joyce Meyer

“Holding on to anger, resentment and hurt only gives you tense muscles, a headache and a sore jaw from clenching your teeth. Forgiveness gives you back the laughter and the lightness in your life.” - Joan Lunden

I never really understood why we should make an effort to forgive people.  I find equally perplexing the claim that it will make me feel any better.  I will stand by that even if that means all those that I have wronged will never ever forgive me.  That’s the price I pay for having wronged them in the first place. It’s a painful price but it’s part of taking responsibility.

And it’s not true that forgiveness is hard. It has always been easy for everybody.  For those I love and trust, an apology or an elaborate "making up" gesture isn't even necessary. Just a little bit of time going by is enough for everything to be forgotten. The most valuable people in my life treat me the same way.

People are wired to build relationships rather than break them down, and this need to belong to a community, a circle of friends, or a pair is the breeding ground for our worst and best qualities like flakiness, pretensions, and dishonesty, but also friendship, loyalty, and forgiveness. Many forms of hate stem from rejection, and love is really nothing more than being embraced. Not being able to process and eventually understand these feelings lead to divisiveness, but in our hearts of hearts, we’ve always wanted be with each other and in harmony.

So all this talk about forgiveness being hard as though it requires effort to give to another person is inaccurate.  People forgive people in a heartbeat.  It’s trust that’s hard because when something has been done to us, we worry that it will happen again. And this is a valid fear. 

First, distrust is formed not by one incident but a SERIES of them.  Second, it is uncommon for people to work on what makes them do the bad things that they do. If, in the first place, they consider it bad. Many times, people just want the convenience of peace or at least the appearance of it because being disliked is unbearable or embarrassing. As beautiful as life is it comes with two hard truths: It is rare to come across a genuine apology, and some people need to hurt somebody else to resolve whatever it is that they're going through.

Contrary to what these quotes suggest, the truth is everyone knows that everyone else forgives and forgets easily so “mistakes” are easier to make. There are people in my life whom I decidedly don’t forgive even though I probably already have (if that makes any sense). They say such an attitude will add to your burden, but on the contrary, it is in being unforgiving that I've found peace.

Understandably, those who were counting on me being over it by now aren't feeling too hot. But that's not my problem.

The Anger We Don’t Know About

Web readers like lists, and they like “Top 10 famous people who are plain Janes in real life,” “10 actresses without makeup” or “Celebrity mugshots.” A bad photo of an actress showing cellulite on her thighs is more likely to become viral than an announcement that a cure for cancer has been discovered. That right there is the anger we don’t know about.

It’s hardly a new concept (Adam Sandler made a movie about it), but it’s not spoken about enough especially not within a community that considers niceness (i.e., being meek to a fault) to be a foremost virtue. Once I overheard a nasty comment, to which I may have said something like, “That’s too much.” The response was immediate, unblinking, and without a fraction of a moment’s hesitation, “We wouldn't say that if she were humble.”

So apparently, it’s justified. When we find ourselves overpowered or offended by the aggression of one person, it becomes okay to seek out friends and let all our anger out in a nasty joke even if that joke is far worse than what was actually said or done to us (which may have even been unintentional).  And because we remained nice, calm, and polite at the surface, we can congratulate ourselves for displaying patience. And you know what they say about patience, right? It’s a virtue.

If we multiply this incident with a million other moments in our lives when we felt offended by someone bossy or arrogant, or by someone who has a different opinion and we choose the route of the meek, what we get is an angry set of people who have no other outlet for a lifetime of accumulated resentment except nasty jokes, whining (I do that), and an obsession for bad news. I've always believed that bullies became bullies because they were once bullied and they’re not over that yet. If we keep the appearance of niceness at the surface, we escape the negative bully label. Good. But scratch the surface, honey, and it’s the same.

This is not to say that being bitchy for as long as we can get away with it is okay. After all, what is harmony but one person extending utmost understanding to another? I personally  can’t tolerate extended periods of bitchiness especially if I don’t understand where it’s coming from or if I happen to believe that I don’t deserve it, and I just really want to have a great day ahead of me.  But going behind someone’s back is just so unwise and harmful for everybody. It doesn't clear the air and perpetuates a cycle of resentment and aggression. The most dangerous thing about that response is continuing to reassure oneself of being a nice person.

I am lucky to have known people who know exactly how to stand up for themselves, and go after what they want. They are the kindest people I know. I’m not even a part of that list. I have to vent out my anger some way some how and I have chosen to handle my fights outside of the ring instead of saying my thoughts out loud to the person I really wanted to confront. Maybe because I am resigned to the fact that we cannot change a non-confrontational community overnight. Maybe I worry too that we can’t take back some of the words that we say.

But it is very dangerous for us to overestimate our capacity for crap. Taking it in without dignified protest takes it toll and converts us into crap givers too, the sneakier, less confrontational, flakier kind.

Once, I was in a vehicle where the passengers talked about a guy who wore sunglasses even at night. Obviously he had some disability. I don’t want to repeat the jokes because they’re not worth repeating. They’re not worth saying out loud. They’re not worth thinking. But six nice people found it hilarious.

The anger we harbor for all the ill treatment we choose to put up with will make us unhappy, nobody else. The moment the mug shots, plain Janes, cellulite, and disability of others make us feel good about ourselves, it’s probably time to take a hard look at the things that have made us so mad at our own lives and channel our repressed energies to destroying those shackled demons. 

Well, that is if, tough people of the world, we can muster the courage.

Scattered Thoughts on Change, Positive Attitudes, and Fonts

These days I feel angry and frustrated and confused and disappointed but also giddy and happy and fulfilled and content. All at the same time. It’s a little exciting.

One of my writing jobs has a new scoring system which is doing wonders at keeping me on my toes. I love scores. I know you’re not supposed to say that, or admit that an 80% score on Videoke night secretly bothers you because that's obnoxious, but there it is. So judge me. When my boss and her team of editors established the scoring system, all of a sudden my writing was powered with new energy. 

The scoring is part of training in an effort to improve overall work quality. There is one female editor in particular who provides really detailed feedback. Her criticism can be a little harsh, but she takes the time to explain how we can make the material better. Most people won’t bother so it’s really nice of her to do that.

My other job, as a customer relations person, is not as smooth sailing, but that’s okay. Rewards in this front don’t come easy but when they do, what is achieved means more to more people so the rewards are worth the pains. I love it even though the process and the politics drive me mad on a daily basis. That it sucks most of the time is a reminder of how much it really means to me to accomplish what I set out to accomplish. The goals may not seem like much to a lot of people, but to me they have the power to transform a bad year into a good one. And that is enough.

A current of change passes through all areas of my life.  It turns out that the somewhat objective and neutral tone I use for commissioned work no longer works. One of the editors called it "sleep-inducing." So now, I write with a bit of sarcasm, and that works better apparently. A lot of the rules are changing. Lengthy introductions are off. Now you have to "get to it" in the first sentence. Obscure prose is unwelcome. Easy read is good read. 

Speaking of change, I’ve broken up with Calibri, and I’m trying to use new fonts now. I’ve been using Calibri since I discovered it, and I've never really tried anything else since then. Call it love and loyalty. But one night, I felt drained, unmotivated, and unhappy. I thought a new font might shake things up a bit. For a while, it was Cambria, but now I’m starting to like Tahoma better. Fonts are like boys. Nothing wise or witty follows. Just that: Fonts are like boys.

Back to customer service, where I suspect the pains never end. If a magic wand was waved over the world and suddenly complaints cease to exist, everyone is happy and satisfied, colorful butterflies are in the air, I would have no work. I’d be staring at the clock from 8 am to 6 pm (which I have in fact done on numerous occasions), and it’s never good to give me that much idle time. I'll start spamming on Facebook...more.

Upon the suggestion of one manager, we organized a leadership training for workers in the power industry, generation and distribution both. It was designed to give managers and supervisors a more positive attitude towards challenging work by changing unhealthy belief systems. These are hard times for us too.  We need to boost our confidence and strength to cope with the demands of an increasingly dissatisfied public. 

The seminar, which was retreat-like,  was educational and (based on feedback) transformational for many participants.  I was happy to see that people felt good and seemed ready for a good challenge after the two-day thing. We will do it again and hope for fantastic results.

I just have to get this out though: the notion of being constantly positive is dangerous and unhealthy. While I agree with many of the points raised (e.g., respect other people’s point of view, disagree in a nice way, affirm yourself and others, own your choices), I have to insist that negative feelings have value, and they have served us well all through out the history of mankind. Feeling anger, doubt, fear and disappointment is normal, healthy, and useful. It is inaccurate to say that only positive feelings bring forth positive change. The blacks were angry prior to the abolishment of slavery. Fear makes the most vulnerable among us cautious, and disappointment checks complacency. I'm quite certain that the inventors of the airplane, the light bulb, penicillin, and the first engine frowned more than smiled.

If we never have to struggle in our lives, feel bad about things not going well, and be angry at things that are wrong or oppressive,  we’d be living an awfully weird life. If a person smiles all the time, I usually think that he or she is high. Or fake. You decide which is worse. It’s one thing to allow yourself to feel bad, and quite another to consider your life useless and unimportant just because it’s not perfect. Cry, yes. Kill yourself, no.

The road to love or happiness is not without bumps. And there is no such thing as perfect. I have a pillow which I have kept for 32 years, and she smells the way I would smell if I gave up on personal hygiene for about 5 years, but I love her more that the world's cutest most huggable toy, which has been recently washed.

During the seminar, I was only supposed to be assisting, but there was this exercise which they forced me to participate in.  We were supposed to close our eyes and imagine a perfect version of ourselves. Then we were to sculpt the image with our hands. After that perfect image was sculpted, we were to imagine that everything we disliked about ourselves was a jacket, which we would symbolically take off. Throw it violently into the air, they said. After the instructions, soothing music played, and I started to sculpt new ankles because mine are thick and unladylike. With their sheer weight, my legs can suffocate and eventually end the life of an entrapped human being. But I stopped half way through the exercise. 

Julia Robert’s mouth is too big. Penelope Cruz’ eyes are too close together. Beyonce has big killer legs too! Jennifer Lopez is big boned, and her neck is too short to be feminine. Cameron Diaz is not pretty. Drew Barrymore is fat. Natalie Portman’s head is too big for her body. She’s short and flat chested too. And there is certainly a lot of things wrong with me, and I punish myself for them on a daily basis, but if I can’t appreciate myself in this state, I’ll never be able to appreciate myself in any state. 

It is very hard to accept your own flaws, and consider them as part of who you are. To ask people to imagine them gone as a prerequisite to making them feel good about themselves is a little delusional and a step in the opposite direction. I don’t get it. 

Of course I’m not saying that you shouldn't jog, or change your hair color (if you want to), or eat right. But you don’t need to be perfect to love yourself and believe that you deserve good things too. So I stopped at the ankles even though I have a long way to go and a whole lot to “take off.” If the trainer was going to call my attention, I was determined to tell her, “This is enough.” And I am equally determined to work towards believing it even though I am far from succeeding as of now.

Anyway, that's work and life. Difficult, dynamic, and good all at the same time. Some big things are happening, but it is in the small things that I find tidbits of joy. Like growing to like something new. For a long time, I didn't think I still had it in me. To like new things. Even if that only happens to be a new font.  Which are like boys.

Stories and Other Things Untrue

Someone famous said something like this, and I heard it somewhere: the greatest flaw or failure of literature is that it puts a structure into an actually very mad world.

 In school, they taught us the formula for a good story. You start somewhere, some seemingly meaningless event, and then you add a bit of tension, until this tension explodes into a conflict. In the end, you either resolve this conflict or lead your reader to a certain truth. One of the teachers recently used the phrase, “a deeper awareness of the truth.” I really like that. Everything I have ever written, no matter how silly, attempts to arrive at a place of knowing more, of knowing better. All except this one. Tonight is a night of not knowing.

I’m not even sure if this is right, my grand summary of Fiction 101. I skipped classes a lot to, well, immerse myself in the mad world and collect my own set of truths. This is not bad in itself except that these truths all came in story format. They all started, rose to the heights of madness, withered, and died. And then it started again, exploded again, and died again. And again. All in the same formulaic manner that tragedies and comedies are written. And I told myself I had a deeper awareness of the truth having arrived at a place of knowing better.

Thirty-two is probably the best age to break that irresistible habit of writing stories that only you read. I take that back. Maybe the best age is somewhere in the neighborhood of 25. I take that back again. You should just never do that. Not even at 17.  Because once the logic of fiction becomes your manual for understanding what happened before, what’s happening now, and what happens next, you will find yourself sitting at a computer desk with a cup of coffee wondering why you are so confused and disappointed all the time.

In certain types of fiction, antagonists are supposed to suffer some form of punishment in the end. Protagonists either live happily ever after or die in the name of something immortal like love, honor, or justice. At the very least it will attempt to make sense of all that is out there.

So you sit around thinking yourself the protagonist (of course)  partly expecting that promised happy ending,  partly wondering whether you are in fact the antagonist (oh no!), and partly force feeding yourself this truth: life is madder than fiction. And your life doesn’t come in bite-sized stories that follow a formula. It may never make sense. Ever. And all those stories you wrote, none of them had any resemblance to what actually transpired. You should quit writing stories for the rest of your life because literature is always flawed. It always fails. A bad thing written beautifully doesn’t become good, chaos can hardly ever be explained, and this is all the truth you will ever need. This night of not knowing may have just become a night of knowing better.

Fine. But if I am going to be without my literature, I’m going to need at least one prayer

Study Finds Poverty Reduces Brain Power?

“Poverty and the all-consuming fretting that comes with it require so much mental energy that the poor have little brain power left to devote to other areas of life, according to the findings of an international study published on Thursday.  The mental strain could be costing poor people up to 13 IQ (intelligence quotient) points and means they are more likely to make mistakes and bad decisions that amplify and perpetuate their financial woes, researchers found.  "Our results suggest that when you are poor, money is not the only thing in short supply. Cognitive capacity is also stretched thin," said Harvard economist Sendhil Mullainathan, part of an international team that conducted the study.”- Reuters

People loooove studies. We are all about that. Studies show that women are more emotional than men. Studies show that poor people are likely to have substance abuse problems.  Studies show that people living below the poverty line are more likely to steal. Studies show. Studies show.

We are all too willing to believe what we can conclude from a set of statistical data. Never mind that so many women are tougher than so many men. Never mind that plenty of rich kids and celebrities do have substance abuse problems. Never mind that the greediest thieves of this century have never been poor. (Maybe except Napoles. You can totally tell she’s new money).

At some point, these findings fuel a battle of the sexes or of the classes. Why can’t we just say that some people are more emotional than others? Nothing wrong with that. Some people have substance abuse problems. Some people steal if they can. It is the 21^st century.  Instead of rejecting generalizations that lead to a simplistic understanding of the people around us, we crave for all kinds of statistical data as if these would explain — and help manage— the parts of ourselves that we don’t understand.

Today, a news article claiming that poverty reduces cognitive capacity was posted. To be fair, the study was not meant to discriminate on the poor as a class but simply to show the correlation of IQ and availability of financial resources. But there is something strange about the premise in the first place. 

It assumes two things that the poor tend to make bad decisions that worsen their condition and that the logic and cognitive tests used here are the appropriate measure of intelligence. The study concludes that brain power goes down. It does not conclude that mental focus shifts to other more pressing matters.  It does not say that the mental process changes in a way. It concludes that cognitive power is diminished based solely on the drops in test scores.

"We are arguing that the lack of financial resources itself can lead to impaired cognitive function," she said.

So the study explains why the financially constrained make bad choices, and we should all be relieved that this is not a permanent condition. They weren’t born that way, and they wouldn’t stay that way.

“In India, the researchers found that farmers had diminished cognitive performance before getting paid for their harvest compared to afterwards, when their coffers have been replenished.”

Well yes, but in the Philippines, there are so many who live under impoverished conditions all their lives and perhaps because of this financial strain, we cannot expect them to perform exceptionally well in a classroom or score high in an IQ test in the same way that hungry children cannot study well. However, this set of observations could be a result of not being able to concentrate at the test at hand or not being able to appreciate a task that yields no immediate reward.

To conclude automatically that the IQ actually dropped 13 points seems to display a bias against the kind of skills that the poor may acquire precisely because they are poor. For example, under financial stress, a poor person may not score well in a test but might instead develop essential life skills that will allow him to survive his current predicament.

We do not wish to say this out loud but we all secretly subscribe to the belief that being fluent in spoken English makes some people more intelligent than others who are good at something like carpentry. We think that a degree in agriculture automatically puts us in position to teach farmers, not learn from their years of experience in the field. And we think that an MBA makes us more business savvy than those who make a living selling fish and vegetables in wet markets just because we can perfectly define fancy words and phrases like "depreciation," "law of supply and demand," and so on.

The study explains in an objective, scientific, and almost reassuring manner why the poor are “less.” But are the non-poor necessily better in the first place?

A life characterized by daily struggle for survival can be like a hard stone that sharpens a knife. If you fish for a living, you are likely to acquire skills and knowledge that those who spend their time at desks cannot hope to match. Is that not intelligence too? If you drive a jeepney and maintain it yourself, is that not a little bit of engineering, which you had to learn because you can’t afford to pay someone to do it for you?

Many of those living in poverty are instinctively proficient at business, at innovation and human interaction precisely because these skills are essential for survival. But we tend to judge a person the way he articulates his thoughts rather than looking closely at the options before him and giving significant thought to the question: "Under the circumstances, is this the best he could do? Was he able to find unique solutions to alleviate his circumstance?"

Imagine the conditions that those with fewer opportunities live under. If they were so inept, they’d all be dead.

What’s scary about such a study is that it supports, without meaning to, the popular belief that the lower class are less able to understand the world, all the lofty and new concepts that emerge from it, and contribute to its growth in the same way that the non-poor can. It also uses non-poor standards to measure the intelligence of the poor. (Look, if we can’t cross the street without getting hit by a bus, the poor will snicker at us dumb pedestrians too. They just don’t do "studies.")

In this country, we attribute a whole lot of traits to the poor. For example, the rich, the middle-class, and the educated are pretty irresponsible voters too because of misinformation, social affiliation, and even personal or business interests. It is a sweeping generalization and a gross misdiagnosis to say that scum gets elected into office because the poor, who  fall for Erap-para-sa-mahirap-campaigns and make bad decisions, outnumber the middle-class and the rich, who make better decisions. In this country, this is said all the time. The poor may sell their votes, but it is the rich who offer financial support to political entities that support their business interest.

I’m going to start my own study to determine statistically whether the rich, the privileged, and the sheltered have little common sense and are less likely to be innovative. Isn’t that offensive, simplistic, and false? Well, it’s the same type of study.

The sari sari store, the jeepney, and the tricycle are brilliant innovations which emerged not in spite of but because of impoverished conditions so it is not just an issue of this study being biased, offensive, and self-glorifying, it quite simply draws erroneous conclusions from a set of numbers altogether ignoring the growth in human potential among those hard-pressed to rise to the challenges of life.

(I, by the way, dedicate this post to my mother, 4^th among 8 children, poor all her life and exceptionally intelligent all this time.  :)  Happy Birthday.)

Tweetums is my name and customer satisfaction is my game. LOL

(Actually requested superiors for some space in the monthly bulletin and to be allowed to do this. LOL. For my beloved day job, I offer one piece:)

The Secrets To Excellent Customer Service

“Put on a happy face.” “Be friendly.” “Be helpful.”

Commonly shared tips on achieving top-notch customer service seem easy enough to follow until you receive your third or fourth irate client of the day. You’re feeling physically drained, your patience is wearing thin and you’re fighting every urge to snap back as fiercely as the other person.  This is the real challenge of customer service: being George Clooney cool even in the most trying of circumstances.

We’ve collected some pieces of advice to help front liners nurture pleasant and mutually beneficial relationships with customers. Here they are:

1. Empathize. In other words, ask the question: How does this problem make my customer feel? If I were in his position, how would I feel? When people in dispute do not make a conscious effort to understand each other’s position, the argument turns into a tug-of-war of wills. Empathy, meanwhile, enables people with different perspectives to find common ground.T
2. Listen closely and sound back.  By allowing a person to finish his train of thought with genuine interest and without interruption, you are on your way to making him feel better.  Actually, most clients who go on and on about a concern already understand that the problem is larger than you or your function, but they insist on being heard, and they need to vent. If you can, scribble the key points onto a notebook to capture everything.

Also, make it a habit to sound back after listening. This means repeating what the customer has said to make sure that you have a good grasp of his message and point of view. Imagine what would happen if waiters neither took notes nor repeated orders. Don’t assume that you understand perfectly.  Sound the message right back.

3. Keep your promises. On semi-panic mode, many front liners offer assistance only to realize later that these promises are as doable as building bridges across 7,100 Philippine islands. While grand commitments are done with the best of intentions, they can lead to disappointment, loss of credibility and more complaints. Be realistic in giving assurances and be sure to follow through.
4. Remember it’s not about you! While listening to an irate client, it is normal and extremely common to feel attacked personally and be hurt even though these problems are not caused by you. Neither can you fix them on your own. Most people with unpleasant feelings directed towards you simply have their own difficulties to deal with. Do not be hard on yourself and do not take things too personally. Reminding yourself of these can help you stay patient, focused and responsive to challenging situations. A customer complaint no matter how intense need not be your personal drama.

These are four from a long roster of tips that can enhance customer service.  Check this corner again next month for more useful information! “Customer service is not a department, it is an attitude.”

Bakit Kelangan I-Baby Ang Poor?

On Rappler, there is a nice article about poverty in the Philippines, a response to actress Bianca Gonzales’ tweet that the squatters are being “babied.” It was more informed than dramatic, far more toned down than the comment wars sparked by the controversial tweet.

 I liked it except that it concludes that apathy is a problem bigger than poverty itself.  According to the article, by not being understanding and patient of the situation of the poor, we are “dehumanizing” each other. What an intense verb.

Being Pro-poor

An acquaintance of mine who owns a large and successful taxi service company decided one Christmas to buy meals for street children. He was overcome, he said, by an urge to “give back” so he drove around in his car and gave food away. I could barely keep the words, “nice but unsustainable,” from coming out of my mouth. Had he brought down the daily taxi rental he charged to drivers from 800 PHP to 600 PHP, he would have been able to augment the daily income of many families and still continue to operate a successful business. Honestly, I won’t judge for as long as you spare me the self-satisfied grin.

Charity work brings immediate relief and that is truly great but when mixed with misguided self satisfaction, it becomes a major barrier to actually helping. It’s like donating computers to far flung schools where the kids are hungry and have no clean water to drink. We tell ourselves we’ve done our share, and that’s enough, but that’s not true. The lives of the poor do not change even when we decide to perform an act of kindness – just any act of kindness – for a single day.

When we talk about the plight of the poor, somehow the discussion always turns into a discourse on humanity or into a celebration of the extraordinary kindness of ordinary people.  We have to stop making this an issue of compassion. Our problem is not that we are unkind. Our problem is that the specific issues that impact how much we earn and how much we can buy are so complex, it is difficult to figure out the direction to take. Sometimes the conversation becomes more about helping and less about understanding how.

Paying For Life

Bianca Gonzalez was right. We cannot ask landowners or even the government to allow informal settlers to freely make use of private and public property just because we feel sorry for them and they have no place else to go. To exempt the poor from being subject to Philippines laws is to apply double standards. It is condescending and more importantly, inefficient.

So should the government step in and spend on massive relocation sites for those who have no place else to live? Would it be sustainable? In India, the government instituted a national mandatory school feeding program, which resulted in poor food quality being served to children.  The impact of expensive and ambitious projects for the poor work is debatable. On the one hand, they cost too much money and foster a culture of dependence. On the other, how else can the gap be bridged?

For example, many informal settlers are in fact employed and can afford to pay rent, but why spend if you can squat? The middle class sees this situation as free loading. The poor argue they do not have much of a choice.  Let’s be a little bit more detailed for now.

Buying a piece of land to call your own is a long shot even for the majority of the working class.

Camella Homes sells 20-square meter concrete boxes for roughly 1 million PHP. Deca Homes sells their endlessly linked prefabricated townhouses for a bit less and allow aspiring homeowners to move in after paying a 7,000 PHP down payment. It is quite a come-on but the structural integrity of the units is so questionable that those homes actually pose real risks to people. 

In order to buy a decent house, you need to have at least 100,000 PHP extra money saved and roughly 10,000 PHP extra cash every month for the next 20 to 25 years. If you happen to be single taking home 15,000 PHP a month even after taxes, which is a lot relatively (swerte ka na nyan), there is still no way for you to secure a housing loan from a bank.  Banks only accommodate those who gross 30,000 PHP to 40,000 PHP a month.

Being a Pagibig member helps but this agency requires the title of the property as collateral, a document which many developers cannot transfer to your name right up front. There’s nothing to be done about that.

So housing is not solely the problem of the poor or of the lazy. It is extremely difficult and nearly unattainable even for those who are actually fortunate enough to be properly employed. 

Poverty among the Working Class

Those who do not squat and do not own homes rent, which easily eats up 30% to 40% of the budget.

According to PayScale, a security guard in the Philippines can take home an average salary of PHP 10,000 a month, which is being extremely optimistic. After tax, rent, groceries and transportation, how much can an employed security guard set aside for tuition fees, health care and life insurance?

The situation might be a tad bit better if he were a regular employee receiving mandatory SSS, PhilHealth and Pagibig benefits, as well as 13^th month pay. Unfortunately, most janitors, drivers, guards and even clerks are employed through manpower agencies, many of them listed as cooperatives where there is no employee-employer relationship among “members.”

By outsourcing this way, many large companies can save on labor expenses and shield themselves from possible liabilities. And these are the same investors we count on to provide jobs, so much that we are considering revising our constitution just to keep them coming. Not regularizing manual laborers as a means of cutting cost is a prevalent practice that is allowed to persist without much policing.

For as long as the supply of labor far exceeds the demand, the situation will remain the same though.  If we demand higher wages and more benefits, we run the risk of businesses hiring fewer and we can’t have that either. The only thing that we can demand at this point is the strict enforcement of labor laws to make sure that those who actually work full time receive what they are entitled to under the law.

Job generation, the ultimate solution, is the priority of many governments, and it is ours as well but the task is gargantuan to say the least. 

Be an Employer

Creating a climate that encourages business is the task of the government primarily but we should pitch in by being even more enterprising than we already are.  Deciding to go into business and working hard for your small company to become successful and competitive require a lot of resources and balls but it beats charity in terms of alleviating the plight of the poor. Profit-oriented is not synonymous to exploitative.  If those who have the opportunity endeavor to be good and fair employers, that might be a more sustainable means of empowering the poor.

It’s true there are institutional barriers to being self-employed. It’s just not easy. All the same, it has to be encouraged. Repeatedly. If many of those who have the means succeed in doing business, the impact to others who will be employed is long term.

We cannot blame the rich and the middle class for resenting that a huge chunk is being spent on social services that provide immediate relief to the impoverished.  It’s a normal reaction.

However, the rich and upper middle class are wrong in believing that poverty affects them only by taking away their hard-earned money. It is not an act of charity, not even of compassion, to invest in poverty alleviation strategies. Growing poverty affects everybody, without exception, either by worsening prevalent social issues or by decreasing economic activity altogether. Smart measures have to be put in place to make sure everyone has the opportunity to be productive and to be a consumer.

We have all been screwed by the inefficiencies of our institutions but those who have hardly any to begin with have been hit the hardest.  Everyone, except OFWs, is at fault. The government is corrupt and inefficient. Some members of the business community circumvent labor laws. The media sells us sob stories. The Church says “blessed are the poor.” The poor sell their votes. The rich and the middle class mind their own business, except on Christmas. And all of us, collectively, are at fault by being less when we could be more.

The article of Rappler reads, “The moment that we emotionally detach ourselves from the poor and their issues is the moment that we de-humanize them, and to a certain extent, we de-humanize ourselves too.“  Even though I agree with the end goal and even share the vision, I do not take emotional appeals like these very well. A whole lot is lost and the dialogue regresses when the focus shifts to the lofty concept of what it means to be human and compassionate and kind.

Helping the poor is not a ticket to heaven, nor is it some means of realizing our full potential as human beings.  It is an investment.