In the beginning there was only you – a happy, care-free, prone-to-pain anatomical being. But later you were relegated to a lifeless number that is, ironically, more prone to pain. You were assigned painful student numbers from crawling, crying pre-school to, if your intellect or money permits, college.
Ancillary numbers continue to pester you. You were no longer just the person with a name, with a heart and soul that somehow can have multiple namesakes, thus the unique kilometric numbers assigned under your not-so-unique name. (I have at least 3 namesakes: one a priest; the other a policeman somewhere north of Metro. But if I were to believe Facebook, there are 6 more Joselito De Los Reyeses in the Philippines alone.)
How did they came up with these numbers? Only the gods of algorithm know.
You’re no longer just a name, you become your employee number – numbers in microscopic decimal places that maintains a certain level of efficiency for you to be promoted (or, ulk, demoted) in cardinal numbered positions. You also become your social security number, your health insurance number, your driver’s license number, your professional identification number. Your business is marked by profits, or loss, in numbers.
You dispense numbers with monetary signs sometimes from dumb, hopefully glitch-free machines opened by your personal identification number, or from high-quality swipe-friendly PVC credit cards marked by your 16-digit credit trust.
You can be contacted by your numerically-assigned friends and acquaintances via your unique phone numbers. You can send and receive data by way of your IP address which – you guessed it right – are numbers which seemed so random to a naked untrained eye. You consume data, electricity, and water supply by the numbers. You were told to bear the pain of being waterless or having intermittent data signal or low power supply by the number of hours, or worse, days. You count the number of days you can survive on your salary, the amount of which depends on the number of days and hours you toiled.
But that’s rushing this piece.
You see, we no longer live by qualification. We are in this painful world of quantification, this instant numbers-only call for action. Like, say, if I were to believe the Philippine Statistics Authority, I am not poor because I earn a little bit over than their “P10,481, on average, was needed to meet both basic food and non-food needs of a family of five in a month. This amount is the poverty threshold.” Tweak the numbers, and, voila, poor no more!
Public utilities, which are supposed to serve you well as a religiously-paying customer, gave Hindu-Arabic symbols to become your account number. You are your account numbers and any transaction can only be done using these numbers – not your name, not your debilitating need for a faster more efficient service: banking, electricity, internet, water supply, communications, or combinations thereof, but just that, customer account numbers. And if you are, regrettably, painfully, in need of their help, rest assured that several sets of numbers will be assigned to you:
Hi hello, Sir, Ma’am, this is your case tracking number for this inquiry: 8-108-1756-12-67, remember that set of numbert Sir, Ma’am. You can follow up using this case tracking number if no solution comes after 3 to 5 working days.... Yes, Ma’am, Sir, no need to say your name, just this 12-digit easy to remember tracking number. Yes, 3 to 5 working days, if no solution comes out, tawag na lang po uli kayo. Do you have any inquiry pa? Wala na? Thanks, Sir, Ma’am.
You don’t call the customer service hotline and tell them how intensely you need them to mend their services, say, bad cellphone signal, which usually happens in the province. You are just one of their many problems and, no matter how intense you crafted your anger-induced script, you will be just that – a number.
You call. This is your typical cellphone conversation, which, by the way, will ensue after a protracted battle with answering machines, to wit:
“Welcome to <insert company name> customer service hotline. Have you heard about our exciting new promos?”
Of course you’ve never heard of it, and you are not interested. Never will be. Not in your lifetime. You don’t call their customer service hotline to listen to the details of their crappy promos. You call to report about their crappy services. But you listen still, since it won’t stop until its infomercial is done.
After a two-minute (or is it two-hour?) promo spiel about another way of renewing your postpaid plan, you are given an option:
Press 1 for prepaid account, press 2 for postpaid account, press 3 to listen to our new and exciting promos...
You press 2.
Welcome to <insert company name> postpaid customer service hotline. Have you heard about our exciting new promos?
You beg for God’s mercy.
Press 1 to report a lost phone; press 2 to request for billing; press 3 for any inquiries; press 4 to listen to our new and exciting promos; press 5 to repeat this message; press 6 to go back to the main menu...
You press 3.
Please enter your 11-digit cellphone number.
You enter your 11-digit cellphone number.
Welcome to <insert company name> postpaid customer service various inquiries hotline. Have you heard about our exciting new promos?
You muster all your self-control so as not to slam the damn phone against the nearest concrete pavement.
Your conversation with a customer service representative will be recorded. Stay on the line. A customer service representative will assist you as soon as one of them becomes available. Have you heard about our exciting new promos?
You wait until the umpteenth cycle of that unexciting promo spiel before a customer service representative, at last, takes hold of the other end of the line. You feel the rush to speak, at last, to a human.
But wait, all you hear is a B-movie robot-like gibberish of a cutomer service representative spiel. Until you realize, painfully, that what you have called for is swift action on the bad telephone signal in your place some 200 kilometers away from the metro civilization; that you will go out of your way, to the nearest outskirts of a city, just to speak clearly about bad cellphone signal to a mechanized "human" incapable of understanding the pain of being relegated to numbers. And all that after another agonizing rounds of “Have you heard about our exciting new promos?” – Rappler.com
Joselito D. De Los Reyes is a research fellow of the University of Santo Tomas Research Center for Culture, Arts and Humanities, and chairperson of the Literature Department of UST. He obtained an MA and a doctoral degree in Philippine Studies from De La Salle University. He teaches literature, creative writing, research, and pop culture.