It’s totally fine that you’re in India (or anywhere else)!

Sometimes my phone rings. People call me for some reason that I cannot hope to understand, and I eagerly answer it thinking that I’ll be asked how it is that I keep my pubes platted so tightly as evidenced by the photo I uploaded to PortalOfEvil.com in 1998.

Recently I answered the phone and was greeted with these words after a perceptible delay after me answering and vocalising a grunt or passable greeting into my phone:

“Hello, my good name is Dave!”

This statement tells me a few things:

• “Dave” speaks at least two languages and quite possibly more than 2 given the observed application of grammar to English (because English grammar rules are basically horrible).
• “Dave” hasn’t been beaten into presenting a facade by his managers and/or supervisors completely as yet as he still speaks in a manner that feels natural to him.
• “Dave” is definitely working outside of the country where I took his call and in a call centre very likely staffed by people native to the locale of said call centre
• “Dave” may not actually be named “Dave”.

Regardless of the intent or reason for this particular call, there’s a trend that is very worrying. In the last 24 months, I have received over 100 calls from people who are working from call centres in India, Sri Lanka, The Philippines and other countries and on the vast majority of occasions the name presented by the caller has been chosen to attempt to make representations of being situated in the “West”. Technically it is quite trivial to determine where a call originates from, however the idea that a person is simply a tool to make a bunch of statements on behalf of an organisation who thinks their potential customers stupid is most worrying.

As big an Arsehole as I am, the only criteria that I grade a customer interaction by is the manner in which my concerns are addressed. If the person handling the phone and/or keyboard takes ownership of the situation and shows that they’ve every intent of making things right then that is an excellent outcome.

I’m not sure which is more worrying when reflecting on this development. The idea that companies have decided that deception serves a purpose at the cost of their employees and agents surrendering their own name or that such thinking is justified by some section of the public, no matter how small, judging a person by their location and/or heritage.

In this case (and this is likely to be extremely rare), I’m not the Arsehole here.

Either the companies insisting on this practice have zero basis in insisting on such actions, and they’re a complete pack of arseholes or there is some subset of the public that engages in racism and stereotyping that is used to justify this idiocy. In which case that subset is complete and total pack of arseholes.

Both of these outcomes are manifestations of personal attacks being entertained by accommodation. Seriously, Don’t Be An Arsehole!