..that is reality in call centers in foreign countries. The book I read recently by Paul Theroux, a collection of short stories (actually just three) about India. So realistic and such likely portrayals of true life, it is easy to believe these things could and really do happen. One of the stories will make the hair on your head stand on end. Involving a bad man that came to a bad end due to an uncontrollable elephant. No more details necessary.
The tale that lingers in my mind was about a young woman who sort of fell into a job working in a call center. She was from the US, had finished college and was taking a year off to travel, wander, enjoy experiencing the world. Her friend/traveling companion bailed, she found herself on her own, traveling as a white, female, relatively wealthy, smug, independent, single in India = a recipe for disaster. But fairly uneventful as she traveled to an ashram and settled into a life of peaceful serenity of the mundane daily tasks required for a resident in a reflective, meditative environment.
This girl, Alice, gets a job training native Indians in the syntax and colloquialisms of common American English - really a different language from the stilted, archaic classical Brit-speak English most natives learn in Indian schools. And really does her job so well, those call center workers can fool the people who are coming to them with their problems with technology. Whether the 'first world' people with their modern appliances are having problems with their washers and stoves or computers and smart phones, the workers at the call centers have the language as well as tech skills to have the callers believe they are right next door.
Which makes me always ask when I call those toll free 800 numbers: where the CSR person is actually located. And notice that they have gotten very Non-specific. They won't tell you where they are. They will say Texas, or central Mississippi, or the Asia, but not really tell you anything. And they are SO good at masking their accents, coming up with common names like Jen or Shane, they can make you think you are talking to your cousin or neighbor or someone you met at the Starbucks last week... Beware!
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