Racism is just a phone call away, says this report on the front page of today’s Times of India. Frustrated at being ‘Bangalored’, crusaders from the “Western” world have now taken the fight into their own hands – literally – by picking up the telephone.
And what is truly disgusting here is not the abuse itself (racism in any form is disgusting, to be sure) – but the way employees at call centres have been advised to handle such calls. The report says that ‘they have been told never to hang up on the caller’. Instead, “de-stressing, yoga, and special training on how to deal with this is given to us”
And in case you are wondering what this special training is all about, it enables the recepient to press the ‘mute’ button so that inadvertent responses to abusive language are not heard by the caller. Sure, it is imperative to protect the sensibilities of the caller – hw can we even think of using offensive language against a white?
To what lengths will we take servility?
I had written a while ago about my experience in a call centre… where the supervisor I chatted with told me, oh, these people work here for the glamour. Yeah, sure.