Post by The City Manager on Jun 8, 2007 5:15:06 GMT -5
First, understand that I call myself a Liberal, with a capital "L," and I'm proud of it.
Employees where my wife works had to go online and take Diversity Training, and it had to be completed by a certain date. About the same time, the company announced that the computer "Help Center," the department that office workers call with computer issues, was being outsourced.
My wife speculated that the two events were related, and of course, she was correct. The first time she called, she was unable to understand the person on the other end, and they said they'd have someone call her back in ten minutes, which never happened. Others in her department have reported having the same kind of experience.
I imagined the location would be somewhere in India, or perhaps the Philippines, but it's turned out to be Mexico, and company people who worked on the contract are already apologizing to employees.
It reminds me of a legislator in our state who thought that a mandatory seatbelt law was such a good idea in cars that it should also apply to motorcycles. Yet, even if you've never ridden on one, it doesn't take much imagination to understand that if a motorcycle goes down, the first thing you want to do is get off, rather than have it drag you... and keep you... in the flaming wreckage.
At some point, Corporate America has to realize that outsourcing is not always a good idea. And that some money-saving measures can be costly in the long run.
