Fedex and the Art of Staying Sane in an Insane Place

Following the movement of the call centre to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia last year, where I spent 2 months helping with the transition (lived in a 5 star hotel, all meals out...yes it was just horrible and I suffered greatly! LOL), I had a choice between redundancy, or staying with Fedex as a representative in a newly created department called Customer Care. Now I could have walked from Fedex with a nice fat redundancy pay out but I decided to stick around, which just goes to show that even intelligent people can be utter idiots! LOL Sometimes I do wish I had walked but even on the bad days, this job is way better than the old ball and chain of customer service. No calls dropping in, no timed calls and a lot more freedom to do what I like when I like, which gives me lots of freedom to structure my day. I have also built some great relationships with my customers, which is far better than the 'call and run' interactions I had in the call centre. I am also blessed with some great colleagues who I like working with, 2 of whom are ex-customer services reps. So all in all, while it ain't perfect, its a darn sight better than the job which preceded it, and at this stage, I plan to stick around till at least July 2006 (10 years at Fedex!!)to get my long service leave (8 weeks + my usual 4 weeks leave), which means I can potentially be on holidays for 1/4 of next year! Ya gotta love that!

I plan to start doing courses in web content writing at Fedex's expense, of course, next year so that by the start of 2007 I can get myself into a less corporate, more creative line of work. Then there's also the novel, which has finally reached manuscript stage, and has been seen, to positive response, by at least one publisher. No contract yet though, but I aim to push hard for that next year. I am feeling increasingly burned out from customer service/care and getting into some creative endeavours will be just what the soul doctor ordered!

Above - (left) Gervase, Motass & Roy; (right) Latha, Andrew (me) and Christine (manager). My other colleague Michelle was away that day.