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powerhouses now buy all their linens from China? Change is hard. Change is hardest

on those caught by surprise. Change is hardest on those who have difficulty changing

too. But change is natural; change is not new; change is important. The current debate

about off-shoring is dangerously hot. But the debate about work going to India, China

and Mexico is actually no different from the debate once held about submarine work

leaving New

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London or shoe work leaving Massachusetts or textile work leaving North Carolina.

Work gets done where it can be done most effectively and efficiently. That ultimately

helps the New Londons, New Bedfords and New Yorks of this world even more than it

helps the Bangalores and Shenzhens. It helps because it frees up people and capital

to do different, more sophisticated work, and it helps because it gives an opportunity

to produce the end product more cheaply, benefiting customers even as it helps the

corporation. It's certainly difficult for individuals to think about "their" work

going away, being done thousands of miles away by someone earning thousands of dollars

less per year. But it's time to think about the opportunity as well as the pain, just

as it's time to think about the obligations of off-shoring as well as the

opportunities. . . Every person, just as every corporation, must tend to his or her

own economic destiny, just as our parents and grandparents in the mills, shoe shops

and factories did.

"The Monitor Is Burning?"

Do you know what an Indian call center sounds like? While filming the documentary

about outsourcing, the TV crew and I spent an evening at the Indian-owned "24/7

Customer" call center in Bangalore. The call center is a cross between a co-ed college

frat house and a phone bank raising money for the local public TV station. There are

several floors with rooms full of twenty-somethings- some twenty-five hundred in

all-working the phones. Some are known as "outbound" operators, selling everything

from credit cards to phone minutes. Others deal with "inbound" calls-everything from

tracing lost luggage for U.S. and European airline passengers to solving computer

problems for confused American consumers. The calls are transferred here by satellite

and undersea fiber-optic cable. Each vast floor of a call center consists of clusters

of cubicles. The young people work in little

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teams under the banner of the company whose phone support they are providing. So one

corner might be the Dell group, another might be flying the flag of Microsoft. Their

working conditions look like those at your average insurance company. Although I am

sure that there are call centers that are operated like sweatshops, 24/7 is not one

of them.

Most of the young people I interviewed give all or part of their salary to their parents.

In fact, many of them have starting salaries that are higher than their parents'

retiring salaries. For entry-level jobs into the global economy, these are about as

good as it gets.

I was wandering around the Microsoft section around six p.m. Bangalore time, when

most of these young people start their workday to coincide with the dawn in America,

when I asked a young Indian computer expert there a simple question: What was the

record on the floor for the longest phone call to help some American who got lost

in the maze of his or her own software?

Without missing a beat he answered, "Eleven hours."

"Eleven hours?" I exclaimed.

"Eleven hours," he said.

I have no way of checking whether this is true, but you do hear snippets of some oddly

familiar conversations as you walk the floor at 24/7 and just listen over the shoulders

of different call center operators doing their things. Here is a small sample of what

we heard that night while filming for Discovery Times. It should be read, if you can

imagine this, in the voice of someone with an Indian accent trying to imitate an

American ora Brit. Also imagine that nomatter how rude, unhappy, irritated, or ornery

the voices are on the other end of the line, these young Indians are incessantly and

unfailingly polite.

Woman call center operator: "Good afternoon, may I speak with . . .?" (Someone on

the other end just slammed down the phone.)

Male call center operator: "Merchant services, this is Jerry, may I help you?" (The

Indian call center operators adopt Western names of their own choosing. The idea,

of course, is to make their American or European customers feel more comfortable.

Most of the young Indians I talked to about this were not offended but took it as

an opportunity to

have some fun. While a few just opt for Susan or Bob, some really get creative.)

Woman operator in Bangalore speaking to an American: "My name is Ivy Timberwoods and

I am calling you . . ."

Woman operator in Bangalore getting an American's identity number: "May I have the

last four digits of your Social Security?"

Woman operator in Bangalore giving directions as though she were in Manhattan and

looking out her window: "Yes, we have a branch on Seventy-fourth and Second Avenue,

a branch at Fifty-fourth and Lexington . . ."

Male operator in Bangalore selling a credit card he could never afford himself: "This

card comes to you with one of the lowest APR . . ."

Woman operator in Bangalore explaining to an American how she screwed up her checking

account: "Check number six-six-five for eighty-one dollars and fifty-five cents. You

will still be hit by the thirty-dollar charge. Am I clear?"

Woman operator in Bangalore after walking an American through a computer glitch: "Not

a problem, Mr. Jassup. Thank you for your time. Take care. Bye-bye."

Woman operator in Bangalore after someone has just slammed down the phone on her:

"Hello? Hello?"

Woman operator in Bangalore apologizing for calling someone in America too early:

"This is just a courtesy call, I'll call back later in the evening . . ."

Male operator in Bangalore trying desperately to sell an airline credit card to

someone in America who doesn't seem to want one: "Is that because you have too many

credit cards, or you don't like flying, Mrs. Bell?"

Woman operator in Bangalore trying to talk an American out of her computer crash:

"Start switching between memory okay and memory test. . ."

Male operator in Bangalore doing the same thing: "All right, then, let's just punch

in three and press Enter . . ."

Woman operator in Bangalore trying to help an American who cannot stand being on the

help line another second: "Yes, ma'am, I do

understand that you are in a hurry right now. I am just trying to help you out. . ."

Woman operator in Bangalore getting another phone slammed down on her: "Yes, well,

so what time would be goo . . ."

Same woman operator in Bangalore getting another phone slammed down on her: "Why,

Mrs. Kent, it's not a ..."

Same woman operator in Bangalore getting another phone slammed down on her: "As a

safety back . . . Hello?"

Same woman operator in Bangalore looking up from her phone: "I definitely have a bad

day!"

Woman operator in Bangalore trying to help an American woman with a computer problem

that she has never heard before: "What is the problem with this machine, ma'am? The

monitor is burning?"

There are currently about 245,000 Indians answering phones from all over the world

or dialing out to solicit people for credit cards or cell phone bargains or overdue

bills. These call center jobs are low-wage, low-prestige jobs in America, but when

shifted to India they become high-wage, high-prestige jobs. The esprit de corps at

24/7 and other call centers I visited seemed quite high, and the young people were

all eager to share some of the bizarre phone conversations they've had with Americans

who dialed 1-800-HELP, thinking they would wind up talking to someone around the block,

not around the world.

C. M. Meghna, a 24/7 call center female operator, told me, "I've had lots of customers

who call in [with questions] not even connected to the product that we're dealing

with. They would callin because theyhad lost their wallet or just totalk to somebody.

I'm like, 'Okay, all right, maybe you should look under the bed [for your wallet]

or where do you normally keep it,' and she's like, 'Okay, thank you so much for

helping.'" Nitu Somaiah: "One of the customers asked me to marry him." Sophie Sunder

worked for Delta's lost-baggage department: "I remember this lady called from Texas,"

she said, "and she was, like, weeping on the phone. She had traveled two connecting

flights and she lost her bag and in the bag was her daughter's wedding gown and wedding

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ring and I felt so sad for her and there was nothing I could do. I had no information.

"Most of the customers were irate," said Sunder. "The first thing they say is, 'Where's

my bag? I want my bag now!' We were like supposed to say, 'Excuse me, can I have your

first name and last name?' 'But where's my bag!' Some would ask which country am I

from? We are supposed to tell the truth, [so] we tell them India. Some thought it

was Indiana, not India! Some did not know where India is. I said it is the country

next to Pakistan."

Although the great majority of the calls are rather routine and dull, competition

for these jobs is fierce-not only because they pay well, but because you can work

at night and go to school during part of the day, so they are stepping-stones toward

a higher standard of living. P. V. Kannan, CEO and cofounder of 24/7, explained to

me how it all worked: "Today we have over four thousand associates spread out in

Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Chennai. Our associates start out with a take-home pay of

roughly $200 a month, which grows to $300 to $400 per month in six months. We also

provide transportation, lunch, and dinner at no extra cost. We providelife insurance,

medical insurance for the entire family- and other benefits."

Therefore, the total cost of each call center operator is actually around $500 per

month when they start out and closer to $600 to $700 per month after six months.

Everyone is also entitled to performance bonuses that allow them to earn, in certain

cases, the equivalent of 100 percent of their base salary. "Around 10 to 20 percent

of our associates pursue a degree in business or computer science during the day

hours," said Kannan, adding that more than one-third are taking some kind of extra

computer or business training, even if it is not toward a degree. "It is quite common

in India for people to pursue education through their twenties-self-improvement is

a big theme and actively encouraged by parents and companies. We sponsor an MBAprogram

for consistent performers [with] full-day classes over the weekend. Everyone works

eight hours a day, five days a week, with two fifteen-minute breaks and an hour off

for lunch or dinner."Not surprisingly, the 24/7 customer call center gets about seven

hun-

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dred applications a day, but only 6 percent of applicants are hired. Here is a snippet

from a recruiting session for call center operators at a women's college in Bangalore:

Recruiter 1: "Good morning, girls."

Class in unison: "Good morning, ma'am."

Recruiter 1: "We have been retained by some of the multinationals here to do the

recruitment for them. The primary clients that we are recruiting [for] today are

Honeywell. And also for America Online."

The young women-dozens of them-then all lined up with their application forms and

waited to be interviewed by a recruiter at a wooden table. Here is what some of the

interviews sounded like:

Recruiter 1: "What kind of job are you looking at?"

Applicant 1: "It should be based on accounts, then, where I can grow, I can grow in

my career."

Recruiter 1: "You have to be more confident about yourself when you're speaking.

You're very nervous. I want you to work a little on that and then get in touch with

us."

Recruiter 2 to another applicant: "Tell me something about yourself."

Applicant 2: "I have passed my SSC with distinction. Second P also with distinction.

And I also hold a 70 percent aggregate in previous two years." (This is Indian lingo

for their equivalents of GPA and SAT scores.)

Recruiter 2: "Go a little slow. Don't be nervous. Be cool."

The next step for those applicants who are hired at a call center is the training

program, which they are paid to attend. It combines learning how to handle the specific

processes for the company whose calls they will be taking or making, and attending

something called "accent neutralization class." These are daylong sessions with a

language teacher who prepares the new Indian hires todisguise their pronounced Indian

accents when speaking English and replace them with American, Canadian, or British

ones-depending on which part of the world they will be speaking with. It's pretty

bizarre to watch. The class I sat in on was being trained to speak in a neutral

middle-American accent. The students were asked to read over and over a single

phonetic paragraph designed to teach them how to soften their r's and to roll their

r's.

Their teacher, a charming eight-months-pregnant young woman

dressed in a traditional Indian sari, moved seamlessly among British, American, and

Canadian accents as she demonstrated reading a paragraph designed to highlight

phonetics. She said to the class, "Remember the first day I told you that the Americans

flap the 'tuh' sound? You know, it sounds like an almost 'duh' sound-not crisp and

clear like the British.So I would not say"-here she was crisp and sharp-'"Betty bought