Lessons From Mae of Malabon

May 26, 2019 • written by

I met Mae from Malabon at West Contact Services in 2013.

She inspired me to do well at Call Center Work.

This is her story.

She asked me to use a pseudonym when I write about her.

But I want this webpage to show up when people go search her name.

I met Mae from Malabon a few years ago.

Her English is okay, but at times made some obvious grammar or pronunciation errors.

She was a top seller where I worked.

She told me that she couldn’t speak English when she started looking for work.

She told me that she was the stereotypical pretty but dumb chick, and she didn’t want her situation to stay that way.

She wanted to become beauty and brains.

She said she wanted to become the practical kind of intelligent.

She used her internet time to teach herself how to speak very well despite all her disadvantages.

She sounds sharp and intelligent during conversations.

She can pronounce every word on a script perfectly.

Still, Myrtle can’t hold a long conversation, so she talks about topics she is comfortable with and has several “baon” or prepared responses that she can say perfectly well.

She’ll ask questions or share a story that will prompt you to share stories of your experience and change the focus from her English to your story.

She told me that she watched YouTube videos and had read lessons on my website.

She learned by asking people who spoke English well to correct her until she got it perfectly.

She didn’t care that people were laughing at her for her broken English.

She always responds “pano ba?” or “how can I say that properly?” whenever she made a mistake and noticed that people noticed her errors.

Our conversation gave me the idea to write every sentence in my script and responses down and ask myself on each one, “how do I say this better?”

I was amazed when I met her because if she can do it, anybody can do it.

I’m 100% convinced that she’s not very intelligent, but she had ambition.

She had a strong desire to succeed, and she didn’t care about what other people thought or said about her.

She has a negative reputation, but she doesn’t pay attention.

Her eyes are only fixed on her goal.

Your opinion doesn’t matter to her unless you’re genuinely helping her.

You need the discipline and drive to succeed.

Life was NEVER easy for her.

She had no choice but to earn call center money.

She became a teenage single mom who’s only a high school graduate from some unpopular school in Malabon.

She did better than me at every metric and KPI during our time working together.

Seeing her name on the bulletin board with high scores inspired me to improve my performance.

I saw myself as an actual top performer for the first time in my life because of her influence.

I stopped seeing the world from the perspective of “chance” and “luck” because her success results from the intelligent application of effort.

She made me see that if someone like her can do it, I can do it.

I have ZERO excuses.

I needed to apply what I learned to my job.

I needed to use my head.

I needed to think.

I needed to plan what to do and do it.

Many of the steps are uncomfortable, but I still need to act.

I smiled and sounded happy all the time, even if I was depressed.

I stopped thinking about my depression because I felt responsible for myself instead of blaming the world for my misfortune.

She showed me that you could do something even if your situation is terrible.

You can win even if people abandon you.

One of the triggers of my depression is a bad breakup I experienced in 2009, but she was in a worse position.

There’s nothing worse than having a partner leaving you with a child you had to take care of for the rest of your life.

Spending time with her made it clear that I HAD NO EXCUSE TO SUCK AT MY JOB.

I passed my regularization with her sales tips and motivational talk.

I became a top performer because I was trying to compete with her.

I did well in the agent rankings because I was aiming to exceed her score.

She won most of the time.

But I won a couple of times.

I became the top agent after a month.

I became a top agent and customer feedback champion by using strategies that I learned from her.

I used my sales skills to convince my customers to calm down and try my solutions.

I became the top agent for sales a year later.

You can have a shit situation, but if you use your brain a little, you can do well at work and make your life better even if you aren’t very intelligent.

I wrote this lesson to honor her and to inspire you.

Thank you for reading this far and thanks for your attention.

I am praying for your success. God bless!

If you made it this far, you should introduce yourself.

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