Answering the phone WAS: Licensing snafu

[Bill Akers]

Walter Vaughan wrote:
> Barry Wiseman wrote:
> 
>>Of course, we're speaking of a company that actually answers 
>>their phone....
> 
> 
> Yesterday I answered the phone.
> 
> Let me preface this with I am pretty race agnostic. My best friend in college is 
> from Pakistan. My bother in law is Asiatic, and I have a sister in law who is 
> Hispanic. My sons ususally have anywhere from 2-6 friends over all the time on 
> the weekends and they run from every the poorest to the richest in North 
> Carolina, and every color in the rainbow. I could do a whole lot better, but I 
> consider myself okay around anyone even if I am the whitest white boy in NC (I 
> don't tan).
> 
> So.
> 
> I get this cold call from PCMall with this person who is now my account manager. 
> Fine, I'll listen for a few minutes. The only problem is that I can't understand 
> a word he's saying. People in Bangalore India need jobs too. But golly gee wiz, 
> I ask him to repeat things several times, and It's just making me crazy that now 
> I am feeling xenophobic. "Can't they find some farmers wife in North Dakota to 
> make these calls?", is all I am thinking. Do we have to shift all the jobs to India?

The lack of American English skills is easy to handle. I just tell 
them to put someone on the phone that speaks a brand of American 
English or just don't call back and then if they try to continue 
their unintelligible mutterings, I just hang up. Most don't call 
back and I don't know that I am, or my company is, losing anything 
from that. I don't feel that there is anything racist or ethnic 
about asking the caller and their company to respect YOU enough to 
try to address you in a language you understand. If you made an 
unsolicited phone call to a business person in Bangalore India they 
would expect you to make a very strong effort to make yourself 
understood, rather than you being able to insist that they had to 
make a strong effort to understand your American English.

Bill Akers