I lived next to an Indian family for a while, you know, the more numerous ones, and their 15 year old daughter dressed up like a native American for holloween one year. This was in a relatively small gated community in Newport Beach, and I thought it was the best halloween costume possible for the time and place.

oh, it's not about that... It's about how annoying it is to talk to a person with an Indian accent!

I used to work at a call center. I'm desperate for work so I probably will again.

I'm going back to school and I need money. I'm on antidepressants, seeing a therapist and I've gotten rid of my helium tank so I think I'm ready. The only reason having sex for money is my plan B and not my plan A is that I need to lose some weight.

I don't recommend getting a call center job unless you know in advance when you're going to quit. If it doesn't shit you out in a couple of weeks it will hold on to you like a fucking vice.

The hell? What's wrong with a call center job?

Also, Blue, every comment you post is like a sad short story. Don't ever stop.

Please marry me.

The correct response is "what ISN'T wrong with a call center job?" Because everything. Everything is wrong. I worked one right out of college for an unaccredited distance-learning college with a total of 8 employees. I left because I couldn't put my morals on hold long enough to con people out of money or to justify giving someone a fake degree in "Fire Safety Management" or "Naturopathy". I decided my for-real college degree could be put to better use. They tried to lure me to stay by offering to allow me to "study" for their fake MBA.

Have I out-sadded Blue yet?

Madison University, run by the infamous Kimberly McKinney if anyone's interested.

I quit by leading people to the old Miskatonic University website. Lulz.

Okay. I'm sure you've had a customer service job before, right? Some people love those jobs and some people hate them, but everybody has had customers that try their patience.

In call centers the happy customers and the angry customers are sent to different departments. If you're new, you're likely going to deal with angry customers every second of every day. That part of the job really sucks but isn't really the thing that makes it a crappy job.

The real problem with the job is the level of control management has. The tools of the industry mean they get very fine grain reports on every second you're at work. If you were punctual before, now you're going to have to have a talk with your supervisor about you being consistently 15 seconds late from break. Whatcha doing, concentrating on something important for the customer? It's been 11 seconds since you said something, now you're required to talk about the weather! They give you a very specific goal for your average handle time. Not meeting that goal will get you in trouble, meeting that goal will get the goal reduced further. You basically do well until you meet the limits of your natural ability and then you get in trouble. You learn to tailor your performance to whatever things they're trying to crack down on. You make a calendar of what you got in trouble for and when. You are very aware of the specific date that warnings about the quality or handle time roll off of your record. Even the top performers still have two or three warnings about something. (four gets you fired)

In order to work there for any length of time, you learn to strategically fuck up at your job. If someone doesn't do a step right, you make a mental calculation. Will fixing this problem take more time than scheduling a tech? Send the tech. Sometimes you get conflicting information. Your supervisor says do X but the people that evaluate your calls say don't do X. Either way you're going to have a sit down conversation with your supervisor where they have a demeaning conversation where they ask you questions about your personal life and try to convince you that getting fired would have a negative impact on you and your loved ones. You're a plate spinner, you cut corners in whatever category you still have some warnings left in. And then one day, sometime around the day you get vested, you get fired anyway.

my friend once trenchantly called Philadephia "the biggest small town in America"

I'm offended by the notion that I would prefer to talk to someone from Jersey than someone from Delhi.

As noted elsewhere, Psy is actually against Korea's posh "Gangnam Style", and his music video is, in fact, a condemnation of ostentatious lifestyles. He's trying to make rich, materialistic dandies look like idiots by doing that goofy horsey dance.

So when he told the newslady that, yeah, Philly was a pretty fancy place, I'm betting that was a diss that went right over her head.