As I start to write every week, in the back of my mind is the
knowledge that when I’m finished, I’ll
”
paste
”
my words into an e-mail message and send them to the Free Lance,
usually in a matter of seconds.
As I start to write every week, in the back of my mind is the knowledge that when I’m finished, I’ll “paste” my words into an e-mail message and send them to the Free Lance, usually in a matter of seconds.
This means I can write and send my column any time of the day or night and know that it’ll get there in time.
Today, however, my internet connection has stopped working.
I tried all the things I could think of on my own: shutting down and starting over, turning the modem off and on, going away and doing something else for awhile. Nothing worked.
I called the toll-free help line and waded through the voice-operated menu until I reached a live human being.
She identified herself as Helen, and we started analyzing my problem. During one of the pauses while she typed in information or waited for a response, I asked where she was located.
I’ve always done this, even before call center staffing was routinely outsourced outside the US. It would tickle me to be sitting in my usually mild California environment, talking to somebody in snowy North Dakota or Iowa.
Helen said she was in Southeast Asia. Maybe it was my imagination, but she sounded a little evasive.
A motley assortment of thoughts and feelings stampeded through my brain: Oh dear, Southeast Asia, the tsunami. Ugh, outsourcing … not good for American workers … goody, a momentary connection with a person in another part of the world.
During another pause I asked if she had been affected by the tsunami. “Thank God, no,” she replied.
I asked her what country she was in: The Philippines, on the other side of the South China Sea from the tsunami’s devastation. I’ve been to Manila; she is located in Cebu, many islands and 300 miles away from anything I had seen.
Helen wasn’t able to solve my modem issue during our phone call but I still enjoyed having her – so far away, where it’s already tomorrow – be part of my day. It reminded me how small the world has become.
Some of her co-workers in the call center are from India and she thinks they lost friends and relatives. So I’m no more than three degrees of separation from the tragedy.
On TV, we see images of mud, broken buildings, palm trees and dark-skinned people. Any of those people could be the cousin, uncle, friend of somebody in one of the outsourced call centers that are at the other end of many toll-free numbers.
I don’t like it that big corporations are outsourcing this work. There are plenty of people in this country who could use the jobs. But it’s not the fault of the people in the call centers.
The impact of the tsunami will be felt for years. Cities and towns will be rebuilt and people will go back to work, but they will never be the same as they were before the waters came.
For those of us who were spared the devastation, may we also never be the same: let us be more aware, more curious, more willing to work together for good.
