A Filipino Bachelor's Jurassic Cell Phone

At 2:45PM Saturday afternoon, on my way out of the village, I received a text message from my female boss.

She inquired if I can come to the office at 2PM in the afternoon because she wanted to discuss something with me.

Apparently, the SMS was sent much earlier. I didn't receive the SMS sooner because my Nokia 5110i celfone doesn't have any signal whenever I am inside the house.

Which suits me fine. Those who know me well enough have my landline.

I returned home and called the office. My boss answered the phone. I explained that I needed a celfone upgrade, badly.

I asked her what was up.

She was uncomfortable. I asked her if she preferred a face-to-face meeting. I told her that we can meet on November 6 since I will be in Malolos on the 30th and absent on the 31st.

She relented and told me what's on her mind.

She asked about a previous job I held, how I perceived another school's Franchiser when I was a consultant of one of its Franchisees.

I told her point blank that I, the center manager and the owner felt that we were being screwed by the franchisor.

I may have exagerated a bit, but that somehow puts things in perspective. That was how I felt. I was also getting bits and pieces from my former boss on how he got sold into the franchise.

Eventually, I got to see the financial projections presented to my previous employer. And the franchising contract. I really felt that he was really sold by his colleagues.

My boss was really silent. I wondered if I offended her with my vocabulary or she was processing things that had been happening to the business the past months.

She got to the meat of the matter. She told me that the school's management wanted to expand the business and she wanted to find out if I am also willing to expand my responsibility to include the franchisees apart from corporate sales.

The reason being that the franchisees are considered accounts and should fall into my hands being an account executive.

I refused, telling her that handling the franchisees requires a lot of time and needs focus.

At this point, I am doing comfortably with my job as corporate account sales representative, handling corporate training and placement.

No pressure here, really. And most of my clients are nice.

On the side, I made a marketing plan for the soon-to-be-opened branch. It was just really a tactical plan. Nothing fancy and new.

I refused my boss but I had to assure her of support. So, I promised to help out with the franchisees' center marketing. I promised to align the marketing efforts of the franchisees and to come up with regular marketing themes for the system.

So, without having to give me a raise, I have accepted additional responsibility.

Of course, I can decide to feel bad about the whole thing or I can be take on the job, and do well.

After all, this is a challenge I have wanted since I have dreamt of putting up my own school.

Please tag me if you were positively or negatively affected while reading this post. Filipino bachelor. Thanks!

I am a management consultant for technical, vocational education and training (TVET). I started The Legally-Recycled Bachelor blog as part of product research on search engine optimization and search engine marketing. I am a Filipino bachelor with two children. My wonderful children reside in the USA with their mother.

Waiting on Tables: A Day in the life of a Filipino Bachelor

I have been waiting for the "hefe", a hard-nosed businessman who is my current employer. It has been a really long wait, almost 4 hours now.

Right after eating lunch, my boss immediately sent me to Eastwood, Libis to wait for the hefe. I was chosen because I conceptualized the advertising and promotional plan for the Eastwood branch.

Frankly, I don't feel lucky because the task given is very challenging with a low probability of success. It is as if I am being set-up to fall flat on my face.

To start with, the branch has been opened because the property is being leased at 200Php per sqm. It is considered a good deal because current rent in the area is above 500Php per sqm.

The only problem is how to exploit the "good deal."

The solution was to accrue the leasehold to two affiliated companies owned by the hefe.

One, a domestic recruitment agency catering to call centers and the other, an institute that specializes in call center training.

I have conceptualized a marketing program based on very meager resources, having to resort to on-the-job-trainees to help implement the program.

Another employee tasked to ensure ROI is already complaining that she can't do it by herself, having been the only one assigned on a full-time basis.

As for me, I have to continue reporting to Makati half of the week, the other half, to conduct and lead the awareness campaign for the Eastwood branch.

I have discussed the whole matter with my immediate superior, telling her of my concern for stretching our manpower pool thinly to cover all the bases.

I have in fact asked her to abandon the project.

But it is just not possible anymore, the hefe having gotten a two-year lease on the property.

This is really an interesting situation.

The branch is located in Eastwood which has pretensions of being a high-end location. On-site marketing is strictly prohibited.

The building administrator disallows outdoor signages since it will "destroy" the facade of the building.

The employees can not do leafleting within the compound unless space is rented in the the restaurant area. Streamers that will indicate the existence of the institute have also been disallowed.

To be accurate, I can do all the above as long as it is not within Eastwood.

My boss slashed the allocated budget for the banners intended for posting within the residential areas near Eastwood.

I am in deep-shit.

The main advertising medium used is print ads. It is not effective considering the costs involved and the inquiries generated from it.

The planned advertising campaign mainly uses below-the-line tools.

I have proposed an off-line and online advertising campaign.

The thing with the online campaign is that the institute's database is hardcopy.

The previous employee tasked to encode only did 10% of his job while getting 100% of his salary. I was pretty much amazed that he lasted a whole year, his reason being that his previous superiors were not strict with his deliverables.

There's some negligence here, obviously.

Good thing is that he is not with the institute anymore, although he transferred to the recruitment affiliate.

The hefe, it seems, has a high tolerance for incompetence.

This is not really a bad thing, especially considering my situation. But I think he has verbalized that he will close the institute if it continues to lose money which makes me return to my topic.

Initial activity has something to do with coming up with a database, fast.

This is easy since Eastwood hosts a lot of call centers and one call center alone processes about a hundred applicants on a BAD day!

Hiring rate is between 2-5 per hundred applicants, so, there's lot of fish to catch!

I just have to catch them in the right place at the right time.


Please tag me if you were positively or negatively affected while reading this post. Filipino bachelor. Thanks!

I am a management consultant for technical, vocational education and training (TVET). I started The Legally-Recycled Bachelor blog as part of product research on search engine optimization and search engine marketing. I am a Filipino bachelor with two children. My wonderful children reside in the USA with their mother.