With love from India

I’m reviving my long stagnant blog, just for today perhaps, but maybe again..... you never can tell.

I’ve been getting a lot of phone calls from telemarketers. One specific variety of scam artist telemarketers. You know the kind, because I know I’m not the only one being targeted. They are the fast talker variety. Ones with Indian accents - this one happened to be from the North of India. How do I know? Certainly not that I can tell the subtle regional changes of his native Hindi language while he spoke English, but because I asked him.
I patiently listened to his spiel, “We are receiving error reports from your windows computer and as I work for the company, I can walk you through the changes to repair the damage”
When he asked if I was in front of my computer, I simply said “no”. He said, “that’s OK, I can wait while you turn it on.” But alas, that’s where the conversation changed. I think it’s because a friend of mine worked for a shyster of a telemarketer here in Canada for 2 weeks, or maybe because I’m just tired of all the scams. But I told him, that I hoped he was out there looking for another job. One that he could be proud of himself for doing. One where he could look in the mirror at the end of the day and know he wasn’t scamming people. He challenged me and asked if I could do that and if I could, what did I do. I told him I was a priest – that some days I was proud of what I did, but I also know that I could always do more – that it was hard. We spoke for 20 minutes. I told him he should get out of that job and find some way to live without profiting through taking advantage of people. I told him he was worth more than just running scams. He laughed and said I was like his mom when I told him that he was better than that. Smart mom. He has a degree in Business Administration, and can’t find a job. This was all he could get. He’s 23 years old, far from his home and staying with friends. He has a sister who has a job and, as he said, “is a good girl, not like me, the hacker.” I could hear the resigned way he spoke. Like he dreamed of something more, but also how he didn’t know if he would be able to do it.

There was a raw honesty in our conversation. He asked me to pray for him. And he asked if he could write down my phone number and call me again when he had a better job. Absolutely.

He is the second person from this particular computer scam that I’ve had this conversation with. The first has called me twice since saying how hard it is to find another job, but he’s still trying – and to thank me for believing in him.

What sort of a world do we live in where so many young articulate people can’t find legal employment? Think of that next time you speak to a company after hours and the person on the other end of the phone has an Indian accent and calls himself “Mike” instead of “Manjeet”. Instead of complaining that our jobs have been exported, give thanks that another person is able to feed their family (probably their entire extended family on that one salary). After all, that could be my new friend in India, finally being legally employed.