63
Three years after he retired, former government employee TS Rajagopalan went back to work—at a call centre
Nearly three years after my retirement, I was a terribly bored 63-year-old, itching to get back to something that resembled the nine-to-six grind of the past. It's not that I didn't try. For 30 years, as an engineer with All India Radio, I had manned and managed transmitters, set up radio stations and studios from scratch in remote rural towns in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka and, during the last few years of service, even kept books as the warehouse in-charge.
However, agriculture had been a lifelong passion. I bought a few acres of land near Trichirapalli with my superannuation benefits and gave it a serious try for more than a year. But things didn't quite work out for a variety of reasons, and I was back in my Chennai apartment.
What next? Should I translate the Mahabharata to Tamil and discover the hidden writer in me? Learn a new language? Sanskrit, perhaps. There was too much time on my hands and even greater confusion in my mind. I took the easier option and decided to do nothing. Maybe inertia was a family legacy.
Like most retirees, I too found succour in TV soaps. Having buried the feeling of guilt in a tiny corner of my heart and reconciled to the idea that I had no special skills for an active post-retirement career, I jumped headlong into the world of Tiruppavai, Anandham and Kolangal. There was a time when I had nothing but scorn for 'serial' addicts, but before I knew it, I too became one. Kolangal is Tamil telly's answer to Kyunki… I wouldn't miss it come hell or high water.
My sons in New Jersey and New Delhi knew it was a bad idea to call me between 9 and 9.30 pm. Ergo, when the phone rang during that happy half-hour about a month ago, I muttered a few curses but picked it up anyway. It was my nephew Karthik from Mumbai. There were the mandatory exchange of pleasantries, and I was hoping the call wouldn't last too long. Now, I'm glad it did.
Thirty-year-old Karthik is the director of a Mumbai-based BPO company. "Mama, we are planning a new centre in Chennai and I want you to look after it," he said.
The seriousness of his tone made me sit up. The anticipation of getting back to a day job excited me no end, but I was also gripped by fear. I didn't have the faintest idea of what went on inside a BPO. All I knew was that they were populated by fresh-out-of-college youngsters who apparently spoke in a faux American accent. Surely, I'd be the butt of all jokes.
"How can a 65-year-old coexist with employees who are barely out of their teens?" I asked him. But like the good salesman that he is, Karthik assured me that it wouldn't be a problem. "I have seen you at work and you are a dynamic person. We need an elderly manager to shepherd a bunch of people who are short on maturity. I know you can do it. In any case, I'm just a phone call away. Can you make it to Mumbai tomorrow? And, by the way, the dress code is formal." It was all too quick for me. Perhaps that's how it works in the corporate world, I thought to myself.
I might have been consumed by doubt but my wife was all for it. The prospect of a vastly reduced newspaper and journals bill clinched the deal for her (with not much to do all day, I'd buy nearly 20 magazines a week).
A trip to Mumbai beckoned. I had to meet the other directors and the CEO of the company, and there was the minor matter of salary negotiations.
I hurriedly called up one of my sons to figure out what constituted a formal dress code. I had never worn shoes in my life and rarely tucked my shirt in. A belt was needed only if the tailor had been a bit liberal with the trouser waistline. Four sets of formal clothes (powder blue and grey shirts, plain or thinly-striped and no checks), a pair of shoes and a shiny new belt were quickly procured.
Negotiations in Mumbai took place swiftly. In less than an hour, my appointment letter was ready and it was agreed that I would be the Chennai head on a 'consultancy' basis. I was given a quick guided tour of various departments—the work floor, administration, finance and HR. A short BPO-for-dummies tutorial followed.
Monday next, I biked down 20 km to my new office with the excitement of a school kid out on an excursion. The security guard outside the three-story building on Chennai's IT corridor gave me a quizzical look. "Is this Eureka BPO?" I asked him hesitantly. He couldn't quite believe that the bespectacled, grey-haired senior citizen in front of him had actually come there to work. He responded with a series of rather probing questions. Thankfully, someone came down from the office and put me out of my misery by asking: "Are you Mr Rajagopalan?"
The office was essentially a giant 5,000 square feet hall where hundreds of men and women in their early twenties seemed to be chirping away on their headsets or tapping the computer keyboards frenetically like worker bees. For 35 years, I had worked out of offices that were little more than a hole in the wall. There would hardly be three or four others sharing the crammed cubbyhole of a room, sitting behind mounds of files and ledgers. The vastness and the collective busyness were indeed intimidating.
Unable to contain my curiosity, I went near one of the headset-clad boys and eavesdropped. "Hello. Good morning, madam. I'm calling from ABC appliances. The annual maintenance contract for your washing machine runs out in a month. Do you want to…," he said, and then, abruptly halted his well-rehearsed sales pitch. He had suddenly turned pale. He kept nodding with his eyes closed, as if somebody had nailed his lie. After five minutes of hearing what must not have been a very pleasant volley of words, he mustered up enough courage to respond. "Extremely sorry, madam. Our technician will be there tomorrow morning." When he hung up, the relief on his face suggested he'd narrowly escaped a death sentence.
This BPO exclusively serviced Indian companies, and irate customers on the phone can be really nasty. I asked the harried youngster why he didn't give back some to the rude lady, especially since the mechanic not turning up was no fault of his. "That's just not done in this business, sir. Moreover, she's vented all her anger on me. So when the mechanic meets her tomorrow, she might actually be nice to him," he reasoned calmly.
If a supplier or a customer spoke to a government employee in this fashion, you can imagine the outcome. Until then, I had thought of call centre agents as e-coolies, who mechanically called people from the comforts of an air-conditioned room like wound-up clapping toys. Maybe I was wrong.
Just then, a few workstations away, I heard loud cheers and fervent clapping. Men and women were congratulating each other. There were handshakes and hugs. I discovered that it was a new team set up just a few days ago to telemarket policies for a new insurance client. They were celebrating the successful sale of the first policy.
Aged 21 or 22, and dealing with faceless voices at the other end of a telephone line, which are rude most of the time, for a little more than Rs 5,000 a month, these were the little moments of joy that seemed to keep them going. It is a very different way of looking at life for millions of people like me who've worked for the government all their lives. Just an hour at the new job had given me an insight into how the service industry works—something we all take for granted.
Some years back, I implemented a computerised system of record-keeping for AIR's warehouse for the southern region purely out of a personal drive. Rendering the giant-sized ledgers that contained almost 40 years of accounts obsolete without too much official support was a mammoth task. But there were no handshakes or performance bonuses. Not even a congratulatory memo from the superiors. I had never heard of an HR department in my long years of service. Today, my responsibility as the centre head includes HR.
Today's youth are a restless lot. I've realised that all it takes is the lure of a few hundred rupees for them to change jobs in the BPO industry. Most of them, armed with a BE, B Tech or an MCA degree, aspire to work for bigger companies and multinationals. To aspire for bigger things, as I've learned over the past few days, is great. Hopefully, the well-educated, yet underpaid, agents will find professional and financial success at a much bigger company, and I see it as my job to make sure their stay in this company is profitable and enjoyable for all concerned.
And by the way, I manage to get home just in time to catch Kolangal.