How Outsourcing Saved America

A lot of people are talking lately about outsourcing and how much good it does for America to ship our loser jobs to some foreign country where we pay Pedro, the 12 year old bean counter, the equivalent of 28 cents an hour to lace shoes or work on new Microsoft products.

The reason that I bring this up is that I, along with I suspect a lot of you reading this, are a victim of outsourcing.

The Story

My dad's HP printer wasn't working the other day and since historically if a problem with technology is more complicated then how to start a new game of solitaire, my dad will always call me. For the sake of the story, I will give a sample problem and a sample solution.

Problem: The computer isn't working.

Solution: You have to hit reset.

Problem: Where is the reset button?

Solution: It's on the computer

Problem: Seriously, what's a computer?


Okay, I admit that the last "problem" may have been overexaggerating my dad's lack of technical expertise a little bit. So to make up for that I will introduce another serious of "problems" and solutions.

Problem: My Coffee Holder isn't working.

Solution: You mean your cd-rom drive?

Problem: Whoozy Whatzit?

Solution: Yes, exactly.


Clearly, old people and computers don't mix. There is really nothing that can be done about this. I recomend shipping them all to Africa. Now back to the actual story already developing as it occurs.

The Real Deal

I can't stand calling large companies for help, since they clearly don't like helping anyone. If they did then you would actually be able to get someone on the phone when you dial their number instead of wading through a maze of "press 1 to get to this department, press "2" to go back, or press "3" to hang up."

By the way, anyone that needs a computer to tell them to press 3 to hang up has some serious problems that I can't rectify by merely making fun of them.

The HP website had a link to online help which i decided to make use of as an alternative to writing them a letter or pressing 35 different buttons on my telephone and waiting 15 minutes to speak to someone who is clearly from India.

So naturally within minutes I was typing in an online chat window to an HP service representative who was clearly from India. The amount of time I had to wait after asking any question of Solomon was to put it mildly, exhorbant. If you don't know what that word means, here is a link to look it up dictionary.com. Remember, type in exhorbant and you'll find what you were looking for.

After spending a lot of time typing things, waiting for his response, and then trying to translate his response into serviceable English sentence structure I was about ready to quit. Then the office telephone rang and my dad burst into the room in his normal state (with his shirt off) and demanded that I get up for just a minute. I tried to explain to him that I was fixing his computer and I was online with someone, and for all practical purposes I might as well be on the phone with him. He told me it would only take a minute, which I interpreted from previous experience to mean that he would be talking on the phone for 5 minutes and then be back to playing Solitaire shortly thereafter.

Later, a transcript of our chat arrived in my email:

Solomon: Joshua are you there?

Solomon: Joshua I will be unable to help you if you do not respond.

Solomon: Joshua I have enjoyed helping you as it suits my purposes 100% to enable your printer to function at its full capacity but it appears as if you are gone and so I cannot help you any further. May the stars shine on you and your family.

I repeated the process the next day and spent a nice relaxing hour of my life with Ather. I tried to explain to Ather that Solomon had walked me through a number of steps already, but Ather was very insistent.

Ather: Please Joshua, you must do exactly as I ask If I am to help you.

Me: You are clearly from India. Do you worship Vishnu?

Ather: Joshua I am forbidden from divulging my location, and please do not make fun of my god.

Ather obviously did not gather that I was being a little bit tongue in cheek with him and he wasn't able to fix my dad's printer either. However he did end the online chat session by showering blessings on me and my family for which I am forever grateful.

Which brings up the next problem, how come nobody fixes anything anymore? Printers cost like 200 bucks or less, so how can an industry of fix it people survive by charging nearly 200 dollars to fix something? This goes back to how industries don't want to help you anymore, they want to charge you like 15 bucks a month for an extended warranty which will definitely solve your problem, the only catch of course being that the amount of money that you spend on the warranty with them will be almost exactly equivalent to the amount of money that you could have spent on a new and by now better product.

In layman's terms: Throw everything away when it's broken and buy new junk!

Oh yeah I almost forgot that the main topic of today's blog was supposed to be about outsourcing. Well, in a wierd way it was because I was making fun of Indian's and automated computer voices that "speak" to you when you want to know how 100 dollars could have been charged to your credit card without you knowing it.

editor's note: if the indians speaking in today's blog didn't at least make you chuckle, then try picturing them with giant beards and mustaches.