On February 13th of 2004, I posted for the first time here, with the name of "AC", which stood for "Anonymous Cog" as a way to talk about my experiences working in an inbound call center. I got the idea from when my sociology professor talked about Max Weber's idea that people are cogs in the machine of society, thus removing any individuality. I had also recently read George Orwell's book "1984" and felt like the main character, Winston Smith, as he wrote how he really felt about his world in his secret note book with the cream colored pages that he hid behind the loose brick in his apartment.
Writing an anonymous blog and not getting caught is hard. Everything must be disguised, people's names changed. It's been close to 20 years, and I've changed jobs several times, and the call center is closed, but the company still remains in another form. I still have contact with some folks, even one of the managers that was good to me.
My name is John Homan. I live in Northern Indiana. I work in a Middle School as an ESL paraprofessional. That means I go with students to classes to help them and teach small English classes, and do tutoring after school. I got the job because I'm bilingual, so I get to translate for the school too. It's one of the best jobs I have ever had.
You can find out more about me at Twitter. My handle is @john_homan. It's the one with the picture of Winston Smith in the 1984 movie,(some things never change).
I also have a soundcloud account with music and poetry and an instagram account.
If you want to email me, use this address: anonymous.cog@gmail.com, it forwards to my personal email.
In revealing who I am after so many years, I hope anyone who reads this blog understands some caveats about this work. Because it was anonymous, so I could keep my job while going to college, the stories and conversations had to be changed enough to make them not easily recognizeable. This is not fiction, but there were changes made to keep it secret. There's also the fact that writing anonymously makes your voice much more free than regular writing when people know who you are. If you met me in real life, I would be slightly more boring than AC. That said, I'm proud of this blog, and it connected me with a lot of people, and they helped me, and sometimes, I helped them.
Lastly, a big shout out to my freind Tom Vanderwell. Tom is the CEO and President of a company that helps call centers improve their performance. We met early on in my blog, and besides my wife, he was the only outsider who knew who I was. It was awesome, because we should have been enemies, but in the end, we both wanted call centers to not suck.
And as always, thanks for reading,
AC (John)
