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BOMB'bay and Bangalored

A couple of days ago my terrorist friend Bombed the wrong city. He was suppose to go to Bangalore City which is where our IT Department is getting outsourced to... Okay bad joke. I also made a bad joke about that at work. Incidentally two of our replacement Indians were in the vicinity training on our systems... They didn't like it one bit... or at least they appeared not to like it haha.

The IT Department here at work is comprised of many levels of support. Mine in particular is called Level 1 which is a euphemism for the dirty work. We're in the trenches dealing with the clients. For all practical purposes Level 1 is the only dispensable Department in our neck of the woods. It is the largest group of the IT enterprise and needless to say, collectively the highest paid. Unfortunately being the largest group and highest paid and not to mention possessing the most number of clients, is not enough to necessitate our existence. Large corporations such as where i work will compromise Tech Support quality to save a buck. In reality and in respect to our salaries, they're actually going to save Hundreds of Thousands annually which in the broad perspective of things especially in such a large Corporation is quite minute. But a buck is a buck... I see us as Collateral to the ever changing IT field. It changes as the wind blows they say and the cheap labors of the third world countries which ironically enough is where i come from. I imagine though if it were the Philippines i was losing my job to, it would be a bit more bearable lol. Our clients are still not aware to this day that their well paid-for accounts serviced by American Techies are getting Bangalored. I wonder if they'd prefer Filipino over the Indian Accent though... Either way they are not going to like it to say the least. But i suspect by the time i leave this company it'll be the last of my worries...

It's a strange thing knowing your days are numbered. It gives it the feeling of emptiness, void and if you are an optimist the feeling of exhilaration and excitement of venturing into new pastures all at the same time. It's a little schizo. Other than that it's business as usual at least until Sept 30th, our last day. The term "business as usual" however is enigmatic because with the ensuing layoff nothing is business as usual. You may say work is or as usual but everything else is rather unusual. People are openly seeking jobs online even using corporate emails to share prospective jobs to the rest of the Department employees lol. A communal job search. You don't see that very often. Its probably illegal...

Even though our days are numbered we are still required to do all the work rigamarole like the annual Sexual Harassment Training. How's that for suffering? To keep the blood flowing a select few of us had to attend the Quarter meetings with our senior corporate people from the east coast. You know those dull meetings about Organizational changes and or updates and plans, yea those... Having no practical purpose or use being at the meetings in a large conference room that's hardly half filled, we felt like chair fillers. Better yet we felt like fluffers at those gang-bang filmings to keep em' hard... fuck. What the hell were we doing there? The best part was when 'Kirk' the head of the entire IT Department made a subtle allusion to the Level 1 support group getting outsourced to India. This in his own words i swear "Some of our groups' we are actually sending Overseas" wow thanks a lot Kirk... How's that for subtlety? Shit Kirk where the hell is your sense of humor?? He should've said "Fuck it we don't need them here, India is much cheaper"... at least he'd gotten a laugh out of me and made me feel better about being in that nondescript meeting... although the others might have crucified him on the spot...

At any rate i'll miss this forsaken place. And i must admit this has been the easiest job i ever had. Sure 8 hours in front of a PC troubleshooting html for clients who couldn't copy & paste if their life depended on it seems tedious and humdrum. Well it is... but heck it pays well for the kind of work we did.

So i think i'll walk dogs for a living like that girl in the movie "In Her Shoes". I'd like that...

Posted by: Marc Gabay
Wednesday, July 12, 2006