The Quiet Ones

♣♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣

Alvin Estrada has been working in a call center for some time, his first job, when in the midst of boredom from a flurry of repetitive calls daily he discovers that he can create a dummy account and funnel credits from unsuspecting customers there, which he later transfers to a relative’s bank account in California before being forwarded to his account in Manila ready for withdrawal. The ruse starts with small amounts of 10 - 15 dollars for every transaction before it turns into hundreds. Soon, several other members of the team join the scheme and they all experience a sudden windfall which they enjoy as long as they can. Unfortunately, all good things come to an end and all scams are eventually discovered. Now on the run from the authorities who have tracked all the paper trail leading to them, Alvin makes a run for it, transferring from hotel to hotel and flying from city to city. Is he shrewd enough to evade legal consequences?

What I like best about this novel is how author Glenn Diaz pretty much summarizes the zeitgeist of the early aughts during the call center boom in the country. If your life revolved around Metro Manila during that time, then you probably knew someone fresh out of university answering phones with a faux American accent instead of working in the industry they should have belonged in, if you haven’t done so yourself. To many, being part of the Business Process Outsourcing industry became some sort of stepping stone for financial stability, while some became comfortable with the setup and decided to no longer leave.

While The Quiet Ones is not really Call Center 101, it still uses the BPO industry as a backdrop, meaning anyone who has ever worked as a call center agent won’t find it hard to find something to relate to in the story. Perhaps you will remember those first few nights you went live or your very first call and that nervous feeling. Maybe you will agree with the common pros and cons of working in such an environment because you experienced them yourself. The bottom line is that the BPO industry has been a new reality for most in the Filipino workforce, so it’s weird that it barely figures as a storyline in local cinema and literature.

The narrative is framed using Alvin’s escape to start and finish the novel. In a way, the manner by which The Quiet Ones is structured feels screenplay-ready, as if anticipating an eventual film adaptation. It begins with bits and pieces of a call center heist, the main perpetrator rushing to the airport to escape after being found out. The next chapters then devolve into individual stories of all the characters involved as well as some individuals they meet along the way but do not really have anything to do with their scam. The book ends on an ambiguous note, leaving the reader to fill in the blanks as to how the storyline might have wrapped up.

Glenn Diaz’s prose is full of references that only Filipinos will understand, so I was spending half the time reading the novel wondering whether an international English-speaking audience would be able to appreciate it because so many of those specific local references will probably just fly over their heads. As a Filipino who has worked in a call center myself, though, I really enjoyed The Quiet Ones, not just for the nostalgia but for the verbalization of everything I believe the industry to be and the role it has played and continues to play in the lives of many Filipinos.

One common critique against Diaz is that he is trying hard to be profound. I guess the storytelling might come across as such, but I read it as simple philosophical musings of an exhausted mind. If you've ever worked night shifts, you’d know that misery with existentialist undertones are common companions when you go home sleep deprived and operate in a daily schedule that is opposite to those working in other industries. Your life is turned upside down, a trade off between financial stability and getting used to a different way of life.