My financial and medical benefits are administered by a large international service provider, the kind that has call centers all over the globe. Owing to the repeated change in my status over the last year and the sheer incompetence of the Online Automatic Information Updater, I have often been stranded without a necessary service inspite of payments made religiously each month. Late and Finance Charges are a fate worse than leprosy to my financially-neurotic family.
Either these call centers in “Toronto and New Hampshire,” as I’ve been told, are abuzz with female benefits representatives of exclusively Indian ethnicity OR the centers are in India with Indian workers. The latter option seems more reasonable given a) the higher likelihood of a group of women with thinly-veiled Indian accents actually being in India and b) they do not struggle with any part of my name.
Each time I am towards the end of a call with one of these ladies, I ask for her name. Before you accuse me of yanking this poor woman’s chain, I simply want to know if she will be honest with someone whose name is Maitri As-South-Indian-As-ThairVadai-Last-Name. Yesterday I had the pleasure of speaking with Brittany Smith and her manager, Holly McMichael, a name offered of her own volition. While speaking with Holly, I asked where her center is located.
“We’re in … uhhhh … New Hampshire.”
Yeah. Right. Common decency stayed my next question, “Are you really in New Hampshire?” Of course, she’s not going to tell me where she really is lest she loses her job, much less her standing as a call center manager.
The discomfort arises from this: As an American of a mere 15 years, I can hear through Brittany’s and Holly’s accents easily to realize they are neither American nor in this country. Can’t other Americans who have lived in this country for much longer than I do the same? Are these Call Center Socio-Linguistics Lessons fooling anyone? Alternatively, do regular Americans just not care as long as it’s a Holly, Jim or Joe at the other end who can take care of the problem? If this is the case, I should not have to hear from quite a few colleagues that “they have just had it” with the Benefits and IT call centers because neither can these representatives speak understandable American* nor can they help solve local problems.
*I cringe when Americans accuse foreigners, especially Indians, of not being able to speak English. They speak English perfectly, even better than the average American at times, but they don’t do it with an American accent. Be specific.
Melvin Durai has picked up on this trend in his own humorous fashion with the latest edition of his column:
On this warm afternoon [in the year 2020], the professor is teaching three ambitious [American] students how to communicate with Indian customers.
Professor: “Okay, Gary, Randy and Jane, first we need to give you Indian names. Gary, from now on, you’ll be known to your customers as Gaurav. Randy, you’ll be Ranjit. And Jane, you’ll be Jagadamba. Now imagine you just received a call from Delhi. What do you say?”
For the life of me, I cannot see how the transparency of Harini or Jagadish can hurt the average American. The American name is window dressing and signifies nothing, not when the desired outcome is my problem fixed in cogent English. Or is it? In this nation of a growing and contributing Indian-American population, that the non-Indian segment demands coddling with vanilla and white bread is troubling to someone who sees the advantages of participation in a global economy. Why can Indians not be themselves in a race they are currently winning? On whose terms are they participating in the pursuit of happiness?
