Call Center Blues
Jul. 9th, 2011 09:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
katewritesMother Jones published an article titled: My Summer at an Indian Call Center.
This article has a lot of the problems that I usually associate with white-guy-going-into-a-new-culture articles. He never really addresses the situation of privilege he's coming from. Early on in the article he writes about the job interview:
"Fine, Andrew. Actually, we were not listening for content primarily as much as your voice tone and voice confidence and communications skills, which in fact I am happy to report is all excellent, so I am recommending you for top marks. Congratulations." I knew she was just following the script, but I couldn't help feeling a swell of pride. "Which means you are selected for our exclusive BPO job search course this Sunday. Which means all I'd need from you now are 500 rupees."
I forked over the 500 rupees, which was nearly a week's pay for the average Indian worker—but which was, on the other hand, $11.
The hilarity of this exchange is that he's proud of speaking English better than some Indians, even though he's a white, upper middle class American. Moreover, throughout the whole article the subject of money only comes up in the context of him relating how much the amounts would be for "average Indian citizens" without addressing his own finances.
From this exchange you can tell that money is not an issue for him, this is not going to be a summer in a call center, this is instead cultural tourism. Unlike the other people working at the call center, he is not relying on this income. There's no sense that this job is anything more than a random "real India" experience for him. It's not a game that has any real consequences, he never once addresses the meaning that this has for him.
I guess that wouldn't be a problem, if he'd made any attempt to immerse himself in the culture. But throughout the article there's this tone of telling us how things are based on things that his friends have told him without much firsthand experience. And a tone of judgement on the call centers in general:
Next is "culture training," in which trainees memorize colloquialisms and state capitals, study clips of Seinfeld and photos of Walmarts, and eat in cafeterias serving paneer burgers and pizza topped with lamb pepperoni. Trainers aim to impart something they call "international culture"—which is, of course, no culture at all, but a garbled hybrid of Indian and Western signifiers designed to be recognizable to everyone and familiar to no one. The result is a comically botched translation—a multibillion dollar game of telephone. "The most marketable skill in India today," the Guardian wrote in 2003, "is the ability to abandon your identity and slip into someone else's."
One of the weirdest things for me about moving away from America for a year was that when I went to most city centers, they had American food. Burgers, pizza, fries, these were the constants of street, mall and restaurant food. The thing was, they were not American-style, but a reinterpreted, remixed version of American food. The fact that the cafeteria serves adjusted American foods isn't necessarily a sign of an evil corporation, but rather a side effect of globalization in general.
He also has this hilarious moment where his privilege hits him in the face. And then he chooses to ignore it rather than address it at all.
Had I been Indian, I would have fit right in. As it was, my tawny hair and near-albinic skin made me a spectacle.
"What's he doing?" a girl behind me whispered in Hindi.
"He's writing!" her friend answered.
The hilarity is unintentional. Someone is asking, "What's he doing?" and a friend answers what he's literally doing, but on a more meta-level that was the question I had throughout the article. What's he doing? He's writing. He's taking his less than three weeks (he did not even finish training, so "Summer at a Call Center" is more accurately "Two Weeks at Call Center Training") experience and writing about it. Unlike the girls, who are living that life.
There's also the moment of hilarity because he notes that he doesn't fit in, but kind of in an annoyed way. Aw, man, doesn't it suck that I stick out when all I want to do is pretend to be Indian for a little while? You know to make my experience more "genuine."
He has this hilarious moment where he explains why he's living at a workers' hostel instead of with other expats:
"You didn't want to live with other expats?" she asked.
"Not really," I said. "Most expats just order in Domino's and complain about the heat. I wanted to have a fuller experience."
"So you have something against your fellow countrymen?" she asked. My trainer and coworkers thought it perfectly natural that white people should want to self-segregate and eat bland food.
Please, again, note that he thinks it's totally reasonable to take this job just for shits and giggles. He clearly has the funds to not take this job, but chooses to take it anyway. For the fuller experience. Without acknowledging the privilege that goes into the assumption that taking a highly sought after job is ok because it's part of having a "fuller" experience in India.
This article has a lot of the problems that I usually associate with white-guy-going-into-a-new-culture articles. He never really addresses the situation of privilege he's coming from. Early on in the article he writes about the job interview:
"Fine, Andrew. Actually, we were not listening for content primarily as much as your voice tone and voice confidence and communications skills, which in fact I am happy to report is all excellent, so I am recommending you for top marks. Congratulations." I knew she was just following the script, but I couldn't help feeling a swell of pride. "Which means you are selected for our exclusive BPO job search course this Sunday. Which means all I'd need from you now are 500 rupees."
I forked over the 500 rupees, which was nearly a week's pay for the average Indian worker—but which was, on the other hand, $11.
The hilarity of this exchange is that he's proud of speaking English better than some Indians, even though he's a white, upper middle class American. Moreover, throughout the whole article the subject of money only comes up in the context of him relating how much the amounts would be for "average Indian citizens" without addressing his own finances.
From this exchange you can tell that money is not an issue for him, this is not going to be a summer in a call center, this is instead cultural tourism. Unlike the other people working at the call center, he is not relying on this income. There's no sense that this job is anything more than a random "real India" experience for him. It's not a game that has any real consequences, he never once addresses the meaning that this has for him.
I guess that wouldn't be a problem, if he'd made any attempt to immerse himself in the culture. But throughout the article there's this tone of telling us how things are based on things that his friends have told him without much firsthand experience. And a tone of judgement on the call centers in general:
Next is "culture training," in which trainees memorize colloquialisms and state capitals, study clips of Seinfeld and photos of Walmarts, and eat in cafeterias serving paneer burgers and pizza topped with lamb pepperoni. Trainers aim to impart something they call "international culture"—which is, of course, no culture at all, but a garbled hybrid of Indian and Western signifiers designed to be recognizable to everyone and familiar to no one. The result is a comically botched translation—a multibillion dollar game of telephone. "The most marketable skill in India today," the Guardian wrote in 2003, "is the ability to abandon your identity and slip into someone else's."
One of the weirdest things for me about moving away from America for a year was that when I went to most city centers, they had American food. Burgers, pizza, fries, these were the constants of street, mall and restaurant food. The thing was, they were not American-style, but a reinterpreted, remixed version of American food. The fact that the cafeteria serves adjusted American foods isn't necessarily a sign of an evil corporation, but rather a side effect of globalization in general.
He also has this hilarious moment where his privilege hits him in the face. And then he chooses to ignore it rather than address it at all.
Had I been Indian, I would have fit right in. As it was, my tawny hair and near-albinic skin made me a spectacle.
"What's he doing?" a girl behind me whispered in Hindi.
"He's writing!" her friend answered.
The hilarity is unintentional. Someone is asking, "What's he doing?" and a friend answers what he's literally doing, but on a more meta-level that was the question I had throughout the article. What's he doing? He's writing. He's taking his less than three weeks (he did not even finish training, so "Summer at a Call Center" is more accurately "Two Weeks at Call Center Training") experience and writing about it. Unlike the girls, who are living that life.
There's also the moment of hilarity because he notes that he doesn't fit in, but kind of in an annoyed way. Aw, man, doesn't it suck that I stick out when all I want to do is pretend to be Indian for a little while? You know to make my experience more "genuine."
He has this hilarious moment where he explains why he's living at a workers' hostel instead of with other expats:
"You didn't want to live with other expats?" she asked.
"Not really," I said. "Most expats just order in Domino's and complain about the heat. I wanted to have a fuller experience."
"So you have something against your fellow countrymen?" she asked. My trainer and coworkers thought it perfectly natural that white people should want to self-segregate and eat bland food.
Please, again, note that he thinks it's totally reasonable to take this job just for shits and giggles. He clearly has the funds to not take this job, but chooses to take it anyway. For the fuller experience. Without acknowledging the privilege that goes into the assumption that taking a highly sought after job is ok because it's part of having a "fuller" experience in India.
