Disliking Call Centres Does not a Racist Make

[Low Key]

I don't get why everyone gets worked up over being called a racist when they clearly aren't. If some jerk thinks you are, that is their problem. More than likely, they are picking on you to cover their own racism. You know, I think some folks should just try being a dick for about a week so they can learn blowing off nonsensical crap like being called a racist isn't the end of the world. It's very liberating.

In other words, ignore them. Your so called "friends" obviously don't know you well enough to the point that they make snap judgments against you. Giving it a second thought only validates them and defending yourself against such baseless accusations only makes you look more guilty.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

I don't care for call centers in general, but my experience is diminished significantly when I'm forced to communicate with someone with a heavy accent. The reason is simple enough - if I'm calling such a center, I'm probably already annoyed and being forced to interpret their use of english and ask for them to repeat themselves time and again does nothing to reduce my irritation.

 

[Tourette]

Overseas call centres are so annoying that companies now advertise they do not have or use them as many companies that did lost a lot of business due to this.
Are they racist for this too? No, of course not or they wouldn't be allowed to advertise the fact they do not use them.
I myself will hang up if I was put through to a customer service representative who did not understand me or I could not understand them or at least ask to speak to someone who can.
This isn't rude or racist, it is wanting efficiency and competance in getting what I want/need without the hassle of getting something that wasn't asked for and having to do the whole thing again.

 

[Mcface]

How exactly did you word it?

Well someone said something about being on hold to HP tech support for a few hours and I basically went "ugg god I hate foreign call centres" and bang I get called a racist.

Typical bimbo, if you ask me. Because she assumes "foreign" means race. Fuck, If my call center was to Germany, Russia, Africa, Japan, I wouldn't give a fuck, if I can't understand what they are saying I'm going to be pissed.

mmm that reminds me of a frustrating call I had to place several years ago to tech support for a Funeral Home Management System I was installing for a customer (and boy did it take us a while to find one of those... lol). I ended up on the phone with a dude from the company, and I swear he had the deepest, hardest to understand, I don't know how you'd say it, South American? I mean you know those American accents from the southern United States

I mean he was an actual employee with the company that made the software, so that was cool, but we had a hell of a time understanding each other, me with my thick Aussie accent and him with his thick whatchacallit accent, it worked out in the end but we were talking in phonetics at one stage in order to get things working (you know Alpha Echo Kilo, etc).

So yea nothing to do with race, just the frustration from trying to make yourself understood and understanding the other person.

Ohh yeah, I know what you mean. I'm from the east coast of the U.S, lived here all my life and I still can't understand southern accents.. The really thick ones are like a totally different language.

 

[TimeLord]

We have to phone a foreign help-desk for any problems at my work.

No-one likes doing it because none of them barely speak English so when you rattle off the problem to them they spent 20 min of silence typing up what I just said then only to repeat the first line of what I said back to me because that's all they have written!

You are not along in hating foreign call centres OP. But you are alone in the unfortunateness of your friends calling you racist because of it.

I apologise on behalf of the human race

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

The language barrier is also a problem. Some of the idioms and syntactic idiosyncracies of individual speakers and the language as a whole make it very hard to communicate with someone only taught English english. The difference being that often the call-centre staff, while they may speak fluent English, have only been taught RP, correct diction and fully structured sentences English, the way you might learn another language at school. This is more of an enbuggerance than you might think.

I've been having this problem myself lately, working for the catering department of a univeristy during conference season. We have 200 Italian kids (16-18) through every mealtime who speak only the most basic English. When they want to ask something they usually ask in Italian, making the usual over the top hand-gestures one expects from a Fawlty Towers sketch. I'm not an air-traffic controller, I can't interpret you waving at something, no matter what language you're speaking (This was also a frequent problem I had working at a supermarket, and that was with English speaking customers.)

That's the other final annoyance is when you aren't quite on the same page as to what you're talking about anyway. If I have a word I use to describe something, and someone comes along and uses a different word to describe the same thing, but we don't realise we are describing the same thing, it becomes impossible to communicate until the discrepancy has been sorted out.

I love the English language, but sometimes I hate how flexible it can be.

 

[CobraX]

You're not being racist. Whoever that ***** is crying racism needs a good slap upside the head. quote]

We have a winner.

 

[Valksy]

No, I don't believe that is racist at all and I can see why the accusation would be disturbing.

In the UK there are companies these days who - as part of their advertising - expressly and specifically state that they have UK call centres. Which tells me that marketing research has told them that it IS a big deal to people, big enough to be a genuine selling point. And yes you could end up being connected to someone with a broad Birmingham or Geordie accent who is perhaps a little harder to understand, you have the confidence to know that if you need to deviate from the script, you can.

 

[Inco]

Get some racist friends.

They'd never call you racist.

They'd probably say "Stop being so not-racist!"

Would solve everything.

For me, that's the exact opposite. They make up nationalities for people (i am their favourite target because I try not to be racist.) just to be racist to them.

I am not kidding on this one. Hell, One of the people I know gets Jew jokes against him, despite being atheist. Trust me, it gets annoying after awhile... But they can make situations insanely funny at times.

OT- You aint racist, because they are that bad at getting the message across to you, that they are not worth the time to speak to. (the telemarketers) Hell, people think its scams when its another country, so they are less likely to agree to them anyways.

 

[Cherry Cola]

Get some racist friends.

They'd never call you racist.

They'd probably say "Stop being so not-racist!"

Would solve everything.

For me, that's the exact opposite. They make up nationalities for people (i am their favourite target because I try not to be racist.) just to be racist to them.

I am not kidding on this one. Hell, One of the people I know gets Jew jokes against him, despite being atheist. Trust me, it gets annoying after awhile... But they can make situations insanely funny at times.

OT- You aint racist, because they are that bad at getting the message across to you, that they are not worth the time to speak to. (the telemarketers) Hell, people think its scams when its another country, so they are less likely to agree to them anyways.

Well now you sucked the funny out of my joke.

DAMN YOU, CRUEL AND HARSH REALITY!

Excuse me while I go and act sarcastic in another thread.

 

[Inco]

Get some racist friends.

They'd never call you racist.

They'd probably say "Stop being so not-racist!"

Would solve everything.

For me, that's the exact opposite. They make up nationalities for people (i am their favourite target because I try not to be racist.) just to be racist to them.

I am not kidding on this one. Hell, One of the people I know gets Jew jokes against him, despite being atheist. Trust me, it gets annoying after awhile... But they can make situations insanely funny at times.

OT- You aint racist, because they are that bad at getting the message across to you, that they are not worth the time to speak to. (the telemarketers) Hell, people think its scams when its another country, so they are less likely to agree to them anyways.

Well now you sucked the funny out of my joke.

DAMN YOU, CRUEL AND HARSH REALITY!

Excuse me while I go and act sarcastic in another thread.

Well, I had to say that.. I always said that i had the most racist friends ever, and just found it funny that you said that..

Maybe I could try and shoot down that sarcasm in the other threads...... or not, cause that's a form trolling and I am too lazy.

 

[zombiesinc]

I deal with a similar situation at work, though it's every... day. We have a lot of people who have signed a contract to work in Canada, and within our establishment for an allotted period of time in order to work towards residency. So, 90% of our kitchen staff, and probably 60% of our overall staff are people from Sri Lanka or Ecuador. It's a huge problem to have so many staff members who don't speak English as a first language.

Communication in a kitchen is key. Absolutely essential, and without it, the shit hits the fan instantly. I often come off as racist to some people because I get so frustrated with most of them during a rush, but in reality I'm getting frustrated with the language barrier.

These days people are quick to slap labels on one another, but more often than not, they don't actually understand what that label actually means.

 

[Woodsey]

There's nothing wrong with what you said.

If you'd of said "I hate foreign call centres because I hate foreign people" then yeah, that's a problem. Hating foreign call centres because it's so much harder to articulate your point because of dialect, accent, grasp of the language and the quality of the line your on is perfectly reasonable.

 

[Tallim]

It's something I myself have issue with. I don't normally care unless you either can't understand the person on the other end, or they can't understand you.

In fact a place where I used to work, put all their shops on a foreign call centre. If you wanted to know why a delivery was late you had to call them, they would then call the depot, then they would call you back. Given it involved a lot of numbers and codes which are hard enough to understand all the time on a phone anyway, you often never found out.

So to sum up, providing there isn't a language barrier of any sort it's fine, otherwise it's a pain.

 

[JWW]

I understand. I was called a racist just for speculating if the immigration bill in Arizona might be correct. Just for considering the possibility.

 

[CrazyMedic]

I agree with you I had the same argument(more of a debate) about wither or not they should let the immigrants man the mic at carls jr I have no problem with them cooking my food but the second his voice and understanding of English comes into play shit hits the fan I ordered 2 big macs and got two quarter pounders with cheese. I come figuring I got the wrong order and because his English was so bad he though I wanted two cheese burgers and couldn't understand that I want my money back or something else to eat.

 

[Outright Villainy]

Along with all the reasonable in this thread, I agree that isn't racist at all. Communication is obviously a problem, so you've a genuine reason for not liking them.

Not racist!

Pretty simple...

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Try to explain to said lady that people who work at call centres aren't all the same race.

Then explain how said call centres are only abroad because they can pick up dirt-cheap labour and you're upset that people in Australia are having to support slavery in other countries.

Then stop...look at her...and ask if she supports slavery.

Game/Set/Match.

 

[KaiRai]

It's not racist. I mean, if I was in India, and got patched through to an Indian call centre, I'd thank someone for keeping it local and understandable. But if I'm British, and get patched through to an Indian, it's going to be a lot of "Can you say that again please?"

I mean, I sometimes do that with my British friends. Phone lines aren't completely clear sometimes. It's high time companies knew that.