For those of you that aren’t familiar with the TV show “Outsourced”, I’ll sum up the premise for you. Basically it’s about a guy who works for a novelty company in Kansas City who comes back from manager training to find nearly everyone from his office has been let go, and everything has been outsourced to India. His boss tells him that if he wants to keep his job, he needs to pack his bags and move over there to run a call center. After some reluctance he does decide to move, and hilarity ensues (obviously).
I was a big fan of the show….for the one season it was on TV. I thought it was hilarious, and could only imagine what it would be like to be thrust into a totally different culture like the main character had been. I have done a fair bit of traveling in the US for my job, logging a lot of miles and hotel points. I’ve been to probably 20 different states for work, and have lived in New Jersey for a span of 6 months and Hawaii for a year. Those are pretty different cultures in and of themselves, right? ….or at least so I thought. I couldn’t imagine what the main character, born and bred in the Midwest, must be going through.
Fast forward a year, and I get a meeting invite from a director at work. I had no clue what it could be about, so when the time came I made the walk down to his office hoping for good news. For the most part the conversation was a blur but I remember how he opened the dialogue, “Cliff, I’m not really sure how to do this, so I’m just going to cut to the point.”
Ruh-roh.
If you isolate that sentence by itself, and consider the circumstances, one might think that’s not a good start. Luckily he kept going, and the conversation didn’t turn the way I thought it might be going. After talking briefly about company strategy and expansion, and me becoming more confused and relieved at the same time, then came the next sentence I can remember. “The company has an opportunity for you in India, if you’re interested.”
Talk about confused! I went from thinking the worst was happening to being asked if I was interested in moving halfway around the world. I have no clue what my reaction was, or what my face might have looked like at the time. I’m a pretty laid back guy who doesn’t get rattled by much, and I’d like to think that I remained unfazed and stone faced, but that probably wasn’t the case. I have no idea how much time passed between the time he said that and the time I was able to formulate a coherent sentence. Could have been two seconds, could have been two minutes. I think I said, “Yes, that is something I might be interested in.”
The rest of the meeting was spent giving me a rundown of our India operations and our expansion in broad terms, and got into somewhat what my role would be, although it was far from defined. I only know that because I kept the notes I managed to scribble down. The meeting didn’t last much longer than 20 minutes. 20 life changing minutes. As I was preparing to leave he leaves me with this nugget, “Don’t want you to feel any pressure either way, but we need to know as soon as possible.”
I don’t think I ever actually considered not going. How many people get an opportunity to live overseas on the company? Sure, India isn’t the most glamorous place in the world at first glance, but still. What an opportunity for a great experience, right? There were a million reasons to go, and not many not to go.
The meeting was on a Friday so the universe had an entire weekend to warn me if it didn’t want me to go, but no signs revealed themselves. I set up a meeting when he was first available early the next week to accept, and then the wheels started moving!
Sadly, at that time 95% of what I knew (or thought I knew) about the Indian life and culture was from watching Outsourced. I realized that trusting the TV show was an unwise tactic, but what else did I have to go on? The internet? I would later do some studying up with some more reputable and accurate sources, don’t get me wrong. I’m not an idiot. But it humors me now when I run into situations that were addressed on the show, and how accurate they were in some cases, and how embellished other situations were.
Either way I can’t help but parallel the main character’s path to India with my own, down to the fact that we’re both from Kansas. So I think it’s only fitting that the title of my blog be—
The Real Life Outsourced: A Kansas Farm Boy in India
I’m sure hilarity will ensue.
**Post Script - This is my first blog attempt, so I’m not sure what form it will take. I imagine some entries will be short with just an anecdote or a story, and I’m sure others will be longer as I delve into different topics that I have a particular interest in. Hopefully someone besides me reads this, but if not, at least it will be a good log of my experiences I can look back on in 50 years and hopefully get a good chuckle at. I’ll try to update it as often as I deem necessary, or as often as my experiences and time warrant. I’ll include as many pictures as I can, for as one of my esteemed colleagues says, “A picture is worth a thousand words, but a visit is worth a million pictures.” Who knows, maybe my experiences will inspire a visit from someone! Any and all suggestions and comments are welcome.
