lobsterchick's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Death to SBC I picture the demise of SBC to be as follows: Customer Service is in Calcutta. The Indian people who are six years more educated than I am lean over their computers, sweating underneath their mosquito netting for the $3 a day they earn. One ceiling fan turns lazily, doing little except slowly stirring the already soupy air. A supervisor walks the room, brandishing a whip. Anytime one of the support staff introduces him or herself as "Mahatma" or "Sanchali," the supervisor cracks the whip against the offender's back, prompting a cry of pain and a quick revision to "Sean" or "Cindy." Whenever one of the "Sean"s or "Cindy"s suggest anything other than "Move your modem four to five feet away from the nearest electronic equipment," they lose one of their dollars for the day. They can't afford that, so they memorize the script and repeat it dutifully in the face of increasingly enraged customers. Finally, when the customer will not stop screaming "I! WANT TO! SPEAK TO SOMEONE! WHOSE NATIVE LANGUAGE! IS AMERICAN ENGLISH!" (no, really, my sister actually did that), they transfer the call to a guy in California. Who is in the tenth grade and can fix your problem, from California, no matter where you are, in about eight to ten seconds. Unless your problem is a phone line that has, in the last five years, gotten water in it about 700 times. Then, you get a local office. Which is a little like this: It's brightly lit, staffed with people with permanent smiles and "Hang in there!" mugs. Unlike their Indian counterparts, they know they have you by the short hairs, so anything you say is countered with an even more intense grin and maybe, for good measure, a maniacal chuckle. Instead of being paid $3 a day, these people get double what minimum wage is plus incentive posters. The posters boast brightly-colored titles like "Customer Crybabies" and "Rage Rate for April." For every customer that cries on the phone or threatens to kill a service rep's dog, that rep gets a star on the corresponding chart. After 10 stars, they get a T-shirt. After 10 T-shirts, they get a lunch cooler. After 10 coolers, they get an MP3 player. After 10 MP3 players, they get a car. Everyone in my local office has eight cars from SBC and more T-shirts than they can donate to charity (American Kidney Fund says, "No more, please!"). The company spends so much money on these incentive programs that they can scant afford to pay Tommy Lee Jones, unless he agrees to take his salary in soft-sided coolers. Which I doubt he will. Since there is such a glut of T-shirts in the American offices, the employees decide to pool their resources and engage in a little humanitarian aid. Flyers are passed around encouraging donation of unwanted shirts, coolers, and MP3 players. A massive crate, bigger than the building, is filled with cast-off items and airlifted. To India. Where the SBC employees rejoice, anticipating clean water, medicine, and malaria vaccine. Finding, instead, the corporate-branded crap, they all collapse and die. Leaving the guy in California and all the smilers in the local offices to do customer support. For which they are now paid $8 and stripped of their incentive programs. Outraged, they band together (informally, of course -- no unions here!) and quit their jobs, leaving the company an empty shell of its former glory. At least, that's my fantasy. 12:19 PM - 28 April 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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