Phone Racism

What do you do when you realize you are behaving poorly simply because the people on the other line speak with a New Delhi accent?

The dichotomy is you couldn't find a more polite,pleasant person on the phone than a person based in India. 

Doesn't matter. The more polite they are; the nastier I get.

It took my 16 year- old- daughter Berit to point it out. After a grueling conversation with a tech support person who I was convinced didn't understand what I was "really"saying, Berit shared her observation of the interchange.

"You're a racist."

And so I have done some soul -searching.

My daughter is right. I definitely have a "a tone" that I use as soon as I hear the accent. It's as if "hearing" the accent causes all of my patience to evaporate and that's before I have even described my problem.

I think that qualifies as racist. But I'm a phone racist.

If I met someone from India in person, I wouldn't get the "tone". I wouldn' have any angry feelings. I wouldn't anticipate that they couldn't help me no matter what I said. I wouldn't demand that they "slow down because I can't understand a word they are saying."

Yup, I've said that. And probably worse.

My racism is situational. It's a  strictly phone -based racism.

Some friends who have the responsibility of working with their Indian based phone banks explained it to me this way, " you get angry because they don't deviate from the script. It's like talking to a robot."

And then I realized I don't just save my phone racism for the kind folks in India. I am brutal to the automated phone robots who screen your calls before putting you through to a technician. I get the same "tone"-- I absolutely despise the chipper, always pleasant robot voice that needs me to tell them the model number of my computer, my account number and the nature of my problem.

While it made me feel a little better, I am still appalled at my abhorrent behavior.

I know my anger is displaced. The person in India is just doing their job-- a job they were hired to do by an American firm that doesn't  seem to care whether their customers are abusive, rude and mean to their employees.

It's really an awful situation. The people in India deserve better. The customers deserve better. Shame on the companies that have created a system where everyone loses.

Customers lose because we are not getting the service we deserve. Employees lose because their employers are allowing them to be on the front line and take this awful verbal abuse.

By making me face my own racist behavior, my daughter has helped me realize that I need to start confronting the real source of my anger--the companies that won't spend enough to help improve the quality of service provided in their call centers.

So from now on, if I have a less than adequate phone interchange, I will write to the company. I will lodge my complaint and I will make suggestions on how they can improve their service.

One more thing. I apologize. My behavior has been completely unacceptable.