My First Week In The Optus Operations Floor

It's been a week since we were endorsed to the Ops (Operations) floor. I missed training, the drinking sessions, laughing and bullying times with each other. I miss my wave mates who treated me nice and loved me the way I am.

At first, I'm sad because I was the only one who was distributed to one team, my other wave mates, they were in one team and being handled by one of the team leaders who joined us for training. Eventually, as I meet my new team mates one by one, I feel okay already and happy and I just realized that being with tenured agents gives me an advantage when it comes to handling calls. I'm not saying that my wave mates are not good, it's just that since we just came from training, what they know is what I know as well. Training is just the tip of the iceberg and everything will be learned in the operations floor.

Interacting with Aussie customers for me is better than the Americans. They are much nicer. I've noticed that the irate Australian is the equivalent of a nice American. Most of the Aussies are understanding once you tell them the current situation. They value honesty and they would even thanked you for being straightforward to them. I love them already!

Honestly, I'm still grasping for processes but I know, with the help of my SME's (Subject Matter Experts), my team leader and my team mates, I can survive this account.

Learning The Australian Culture

On my previous blog, I made mention that I was transferred to Optus, which is an Australian account. Our trainer, Mike discussed the noted facts about Australia this morning.

First, its capital which is Canberra (the stress is on the first syllable... well that's somewhat new to me because previously, I'm putting the stress on the second syllable... now i know how to pronounce it right!).

Mike also showed us some of the country's best places such as The Sydney Opera House and The Uluru (others call it Ayer's Rock, notable for appearing to change colour as the different light strikes it at different times of the day and year, with sunset a particularly remarkable sight when it briefly glows red. Although rainfall is uncommon in this semiarid area, during wet periods the rock acquires a silvery-grey colour, with streaks of black algae forming on the areas that serve as channels for water flow.)

Sydney Opera House

Uluru/Ayers Rock

 He also flashed Australia's flora and fauna as well. Included  were kangaroos, koala, and the seawater crocodile which is larger than the Komodo Dragon.

The topic got intense when he introduced the vowel sounds in the Australian accent. They are somewhat similar to the British English but with a "twang" and "drawl". When he let us hear a  few words, luckily, I was able to get most of the words. There are still words I did not understand, because I'm not so into it. Their accent is thick and there is a tendency that you might write another word which sounds the same. We're just starting with the phonemes but I know there's a lot more to come.

I'm starting to love learning a new accent, will there be a time that I can call myself an Aussie??? How I wish... Hahahaha!!! =)