For BPO workers in their early 20s, the cigarette is a panacea for everything from peer pressure to lack of concentration.
They move around in packs, especially at night. They lurk near the back doors of offices, and almost all you can see of them are the burning red circles on their faces. They reappear every hour or two, almost like a ritual. At the end of the night, all that is left of their activity are empty butts, the stench of stale tobacco in the thick, smoky, morning air and some crushed packets with prominent pictures of diseased lungs and warnings that tobacco kills.
It is a scene in almost every call centre office in India, the world’s number one BPO destination. In the desperate need — not just to keep awake while the world sleeps, but also to assume fake accents and deal with angry, faceless customers, and deal with them fast enough so that one can move on to several other such angry calls waiting for your attention — the warning that smoking kills are forgotten. What remains is a desperate need to live through the next day, or rather, night, and shut up the warning signs from your body clock and stress levels with some quick-fix puffs.
-Agencies