How do you outsource that?!

So there hasn’t been a whole lot of hubbub in the press lately about outsourcing. I used to run my own business and outsourced some work at one point. The word “mistake” springs immediately to mind. When the Indians that you outsource to then turn around and outsource some of their workload to the Indonesians, well…again, the word “mistake” springs immediately to mind.

I’ve gotten out of the business of having my own business though. Now I work for a Fortune 50 company as part of their Internet Marketing group. Yes, that means I work on the web sites. I do not do the programming, though that kind of thing is definitely in my repetoir. Our programming isn’t outsourced where I work, but could be well-defined as being “insourced”. We don’t ship the work out overseas, we just ship the workers in. I’m all good with that. I don’t care who does a job, as long as it’s done right and well. And by someone locally where there’s a modicum of oversight.

But that isn’t what this post is about. What this post is about is an extra-special, something different I’ve noticed with the imported workers. I don’t know if it’s just a cultural difference, or some deeper mass psychosis caused by something bad in the curry. Whatever it is, it is disturbing. For whatever the reason, I have been regularly encountering people talking on their cell phone in — the restroom.

Now, I really don’t know who they’re talking with on their cell phones. I’m assuming it isn’t business since they are speaking in their native tongue. But if it isn’t business, then it must be family or friends. At least that’s what goes through my head as I’m either occupying a stall or urinal and one of these guys walks in, already engaged in conversation, and begins to take care of business. While still engaged in conversation. Like I said, I can’t understand a word they’re saying, but I can definitely tell when the guy in the next stall breaks in the middle of a word, and I’m sure the person he’s talking to, that can understand what he’s saying, can tell even better than I.

If that’s what you do at home, hey, whatever. If your wife / kids / parents / friends don’t mind listening to your private moments, well then they’re just damn weird. But this is all about me, and for crying out loud I don’t want whoever you’ve brought into the bathroom with you to be listening in on whatever I might be doing in there. Can’t say that I’m terribly comfortable with you being in there with me in the first place, and now you’ve just doubled my psychic struggles with the public restroom. Thanks. If I wasn’t such a WASP I’d probably reenact the restroom stall scene from “Austin Powers” just to get the person on the other end to ask you what the heck was going on and hopefully shame you into some tact.

Just in case it hadn’t occurred to you yet, being on the phone means that one hand is occupied. Have you ever tried washing up with only one hand? Do you know how hard and ineffecitve that is? Yeah, well neither do most of these guys using the phone in the restroom, because they don’t even try. So now they have not only shared their “business” with whoever it is they’re talking with, but also their complete lack of hygiene.

Yuck.