21st Century Sales

AWOL.  Absent Without Official Leave. 

Last Thursday, my call center agent in the Philippines, didn't show up for work.  She didn't call, email or otherwise inform me, her supervisor or anyone else in her place of work where she was or what was the matter.  Did she get into an accident?  Was she mugged?  Did she get sick and end up in the hospital? 

Friday came and went.  No news.  We tried calling her home and cell phone.  No answer.  We tried tracking her down through friends in the office.  Tasha was fairly new, so not that many people knew her.  No luck finding out more.

Manila has its violent side.   If something terrible happened to her, surely we'd hear over the weekend?  Nada.

Monday was another cliffhanger.  Someone apparently saw her crying on Wednesday afternoon.  Was it a family crisis?  A guy problem?  Still no word from Tasha.

We're now getting behind on our project.  I consulted Wikipedia.  At what point does AWOL become MIA (Missing In Action) or Desertion?

Today I had a conference call with Tasha's supervisor and the management of the call center. I was subtlety reminded that there are cultural differences between the Philippines and North America.  Although I was assured that this had never happened before, Tasha's manager did point out that not all people share the same attitudes toward work.

Coincidentally, last Thursday was the first of March. 

No, I thought, it can't be possible?  After all of the training, all of the time and energy invested in learning the role and the CRM system and all of the trust we developed, she dumped me! Here I've been worried about her well being and my agent has likely been using the last few weeks to make a few bucks while waiting for her real job to start.  The pain!

Sigh.  Now it's back to the interview stage....