March 12,
2007
‘My Neem
Ees Neeeeel!’
“Customer
care desk. My name is Neil.”
Except that
it doesn’t sound like that. It sounds like this:
“Cuthdumah
cay disk. My neem ees Neeeeel!”
I do not
know everything. But I know this. His name is not Neil.
Nor, for
that matter, was the guy I called last week about my Internet connection
named Mike. And the guy Mrs. Krause had to call about her cell phone
problems was not named Jack.
Neil, Mike,
Jack . . . Not, Not, Not.
I am not
about to go on a crusade against overseas outsourcing. I’ll leave that
crusade for Lou Dobbs. Perhaps some of you remember Lou from when he was
a serious business journalist before he went wacko nativist. But I
digress . . .
If you want
to outsource your labor-intensive operations to India, China or East
Timor, fine by me. It will probably help make your products and services
more affordable for Americans who live paycheck-to-paycheck. Besides, if
you’re a CEO and a lot of your workforce is halfway around the world,
you can’t waste your time and mental energy standing around on the shop
floor or in the phone center trying to hear what they’re saying about
you. Without really cool technology . . .
Oh, sorry,
I was digressing again. Outsourcing is a simple market-driven reality.
If you can get cheaper labor at the quality level you need, and you
don’t, you’re a dunce. I do not want to be a dunce. That’s how I lost my
last CEO gig.
But. Do
not. Insult. My intelligence.
I am
perfectly comfortable with the idea that Jayinth Rajev Nandan, halfway
around the world in friendly Bombay, is going to take control of my
computer, figure out how to restart it in safe mode and restore whatever
file I just lost.
I’ve
reached Muhammed Abu Abbas Sahoob Saheeb in the Bahrain, and he’s going
to hook me up with a new mobile broadband connection card? All right! He
tells me at the outset: “Mr. Krause, I am from Bahrain, I speak with a
very heavy accent and I won’t be able to understand much of what you
say. But we’ll try to get through this the best we can.”
Honesty! I,
with my low-frequency hearing loss, am going to have a hell of a time
with this phone call. But Sahoob Saheeb is being straight with me and
he’s doing the best he can, so how can I do anything less?
Ah, but
that’s not the way it ever goes, now is it?
The call to
tech support at The Very Big Corporation of America leads you to a man
claiming to be named Neil. I am sure this is true. His father was named
Red and his mother was named Kitty. He was born in Omaha, and he picked
up that accent listening to Kuwaiti military communiqués on shortwave.
That kind of stuff is so infectious!
Yeah. His
name is Neil. My name is Billy Ray Cyrus. We’re going to have a nice
little chat.
Maybe this
is all Lou Dobbs’s fault. Maybe The Very Big Corporation of America is
scared to death to have anyone know they outsourced a job, and they
figure it’s far less trouble to have Sahoob Saheeb claim to be Neil –
however implausibly – than to acknowledge what is obvious to everyone.
If Lou
finds out that Neil isn’t really Neil, he might put The Very Big
Corporation of America on his Very Bad Corporations of America list, and
then where will that leave Neil?
Meanwhile,
I still can’t get my computer to work. Neil just told me to Rdeebuut Zee
Zeeeztim. They talk so weird in Omaha.
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