Temporary loss of identity

This week has been spent at home convalesceing from my back injury. From where I can see it, I did nothing wrong to invite this pain in the arse, except to ensure that I lead a busy life, chocablock with 60 hour weeks and 24 hour weekends (Read: Active Time Spent doing things or being places) for the last 3 years. Ever since I've been out of college and into BPO's, I don't remember taking a day off and sitting back, just letting the world be.

And now's the time the forces of nature strike back, forcing me to take a rest when I do not need it. I have a new team of people some of whom have just joined the big bad world of BPO's, and I'm supposed to be the one making that entry easy for them, just as people in the past made it to me. It's difficult, to put it mildly, being sick and on the backburner when you know that there are things to be done and people to be initiated, into what I can recall as a very invigorating but stressful time of our lives.

Most of these folks (in my team) have just come out of college and put their foot on the 1st rung of the corporate ladder. The 1st rung is the toughest, its also the most backbreaking kind of work that you can do. Tell me, all of you those Non-BPO peepah, how many times a day can you put a smile on your face and just tell that Guy on the other side of the atlantic that the problem is with his computer not with your company, the internet service provider....?? And then listen to his tirade about all of them being the same, passing the buck from one person to another.

People in the western hemisphere can't really get a grip on the way computers function and the support that is given to them. It's left for us little minions to explain that as it comes.

In my previous organisation, we had a good racket going. Some of our clients were ISP's and some of them PC Manufacturers. The customer would call in, with a problem with the modem, and after due troubleshooting (Genuinely) sent to the PC Vendor. The PC Vendor would troubleshoot and then send the Customer back to the ISP. The Customer would go crazy calling in again and again, and threaten the ISP to cancel his account. The retention team would then offer the customer a router(which he did not need) and ensure that he stayed on. This entire circus would rebegin some 3 months later. In the process, my company netted a good amount of money taking all those calls and saving the customer, when the all the customer needed to do was find someone like our Nehru place Bhaiya and have them fix what the problem was. But no, that can't happen. If they took their computer out to the shop where they bought it, they'd come out about $200 poorer with no guarantee of their problem being resolved.

Me thinks next step in the BPO evolution, the Govt. should work on opening Nehru Place like marts abroad, and the foreign govt's should give us grants, exemptions et al to make this a success. I mean the money's what we need, and the money's what we'll get. All my techie freinds stuck in BPO jobs will have the chance to go abroad and the world will get to see what a bunch of ass kickers we are.


The last 2 days were just about the most magical in my life. Can't share details though, they will have to remain classifed for my partner in Crime). I'll be back soon. Please pray for my recovery, and if in case you are reading this much after this period of pain has passed, please pray that it doesn't come back.

Backbroken Mountain.

(For those of you not clued in, I'm 6'3", and sick home with a aching back.)