For the past two weeks, I have set aside my side hustles online to be active on roving the streets. Our Rescue Buddy is working on Smart Communications, one of the largest mobile networks here in the Philippines. The extended deadline of the implementations of Sim Card Registrations was coming to its deadline (last July 25). Even though internet is advantageous for its convenience nowadays, still not everyone knows how to use it, especially the elderly and working parents who doesn't pay much attention to the uses of technology.
The company looked for 15 agents to be assigned in 6 different stations around Bacolod City. Our buddy needed manpower, the rescuers lend a hand as fast as possible. By July 12 we were deployed to our respective stations, and ours don't have much people visiting, then we opted to roam the streets to saturate the place and extend assistance to those who needed it the most.
Rain or shine, here we go.
For 13 days, we have been patiently asking everyone we met in the streets as we walked every pavements, come inside of every establishments, and knock on every houses if they have registered their Sim Cards already. Since if they haven't yet, we offer our assistance for free. All they have to do was to share their mobile number, then tell us the OTP sent, and present a Valid ID. After that, the rest of the work would be taken care by our team. They don't evwn have to worry about the internet usage because we were using our own mobile data.
Narrow pathways, muddy roads, and confusing pathways! Even with this, we're still enthusiastically looking forward to help more people every day. Especially the elderly who knew nothing about it, they were the ones who we mostly have helped. Some were working adults who were too busy to care about such thing and some of them were impatient people who couldn't bear to deal with the issues of the Network's portal.
The common issues we have encountered were the very poor network signal in the location. No wonder people don't want to subscribe with their internet promos but still use it anyway for their affordable promos in texts and calls. Even when I was working, I used other network because their signal is much faster than the ones were working for. Some issues were about the capturing of ID information, because some were old issued IDs and it's already worn out or their phone's camera captured it blurry, which they didn't have the slightest patience to try over and over again. Another one was their portal, some of its functions weren't working and we couldn't input some necessary informations to be able to proceed in the next page and finish the registration.
The pay that we would be receiving from this can't actually compensate for the efforts we give, our daily expenses, and for compromising our health due to bad weather conditions. However, it wasn't what we came for from the very start. Our goal was to help people, bearing the same passionas we have in Rescue.
Besides, while we were doing our job, we could travel to places in the city that we have never been before. Have a taste of some foods that is only particular in the area. Moreover, we have meet and talk to people like us that have shared some history in Rescue that wasn't taught by our Instructors. We hold a secret that no one in our batch ever knows.
July 27, 2023
🌸 ayane-chan