I read an article in today's Washington Post about the stress that some call center employees in India feel when it becomes glaringly obvious that they are disliked by Americans. The article also spoke of the subterfuges and lies that they employ to fend off that displeasure.
The article says that call center agents will refer to themselves with American-style names, pronounce words as Americans would do, become familiar with popular American television shows, and even pretend to live in American cities, down to having a map of the current local weather available so that they can refer convincingly to the current climate in their pretend 'home city'.
Despite this, they do get found out, and when they do, they get grief, and they get stress. It affects their emotions, and how they feel about themselves and what they do.
When I first read that, I thought 'Good - glad that they are getting some of what they are causing -- at least they are employed, which is more than the people whose jobs they stole can say." And then I realized: they didn't steal the jobs. The company that employs them, or employs the service that employs them -- that's who stole the job, spirited it offshore, and reaps the profit.
So why aren't we lambasting the callous CEOs who orchestrated this?
No comments:
Post a Comment