So I'm writing this kinda to share my very first Real adult experience in the workforce because I didn't actually think I'd live to become a functioning member of society so here we are.

Everyone knows getting a job (specially your first job) is incredibly stressful and kinda sucks but nothing prepared me to step into the world of customer service and tech support as a call center agent.

Kiddies, I fucking hate talking to people, or so I thought when I applied to my first call center job. The company that hired me offered a whole lot more than what I was expecting for being bilingual and having previous tech support experience so really, I couldn't say no when commissions couldn't help me cover my medical expenses. On top of that something I later noticed is that call centers seemingly prey on young people since they target all their positions to people under 30 and their marketing campaigns are... interesting.

Well, landed a job as an outsourced agent for a red satellite tv company and while they gave me many perks as if I were THEIR employee the company that did employ me demanded so much from us, not only that but having to handle up to 50+ calls per day for a quarter of what an US agent makes didn't really help with keeping my morale high. Despite all that I found the job to be quite enjoyable because I'm a person that likes solving problems and the old ladies blessing your entire family for hearing them out made it all worth it at the end of the day.

Where I'm getting at is how these demanding, badly paid, predatory jobs suck the life out of young people like me. Six months into taking calls I was already starting to think that I'd be stuck forever on the phone being told I'm stealing jobs from them good white American folks while also demanding I fix shit the customers broke or don't know how to operate or being told by an old lady that she'd find out where I work and shove her bills up my ass if it came up higher than expected (lol!).

Naturally, my only escape from that hell was art, and to this day even if I'm not working call centers anymore I still use art to cope with the stress of making just enough money to pay the bills and save up to move away from family but how can you even find time to draw or de-stress when your job is constantly "on crisis" and "requiring mandatory overtime"?

By the time I switched call centers and unfortunately landed in Amazon customer service I had reached a point where even grabbing a pen felt like a chore because I had so little time for myself and the emotional toll of working for such a shitty company and dealing with the most passive-aggressive customers I've ever dealth with had me wanting to use what little free time I had to rest or just do something that wouldn't allow me to slip into deep thought.

Right now I'm finally out of that hell. I have to admit I loved the core aspect of customer service and it taught me many life and work skills I would've otherwise struggled with later on, but man did poor administration and exploitation taint that experience.

Unfortunately the damage left by such toxic work environments is lasting and now I'm on the brink of retiring art for good because I had FORCED myself to keep drawing and designing because I felt like I was supposed to keep doing it despite being clearly burnt out (and struggling with my psychiatric treatment but that's another can of worms) and it only conditioned my brain into thinking producing art=obligation.

Now, the good side of this is that with therapy I'm finally overcoming the chronic burnout working for call centers caused and was actually advised to give art a temporary rest while I get over my PTSD (turns out waking up in cold sweat giving your greeting spell or explaining why a bill is so high is a sign of work related PTSD) and get my psychiatric treatment straight again so not all is lost and I'm confident I'll fall in love with art and design again eventually.

The point of this post is to, y'know, air out the experience I had as an artist who had to work at call centers to make a living, and to let anybody out there in the same position know that your life doesn't end at the call center/company you're stuck with and better times are around the corner, but it's very important to learn how to know when we're getting burnt out and to ALLOW OURSELVES TO TAKE A BREAK.

As artists, when we're very passionate about it, we feel most of the time that we GOTTA keep drawing, drawing, drawing, churning out pieces and pieces every day to compete with today's social media algorithms otherwise we won't be noticed. While that's partially true because of how abusive and predatory social media trends are nowadays, we also gotta remember that art is OUR passion, something we do out of LOVE and not just to get gratification from other people, and it's okay to put the pen down for a few days and touch grass, read a book or play a game. We're not machines.