Hello, my name is Jeem

Over the weekend, I took in the BBC’s “The Kumars At No. 42”–a hilarious sitcom/talk-show hybrid featuring an extended Indian family that has immigrated to London.  To help pay the bills, these fictional Kumars, incongruously, host a chat show from a television studio they’ve bolted onto their modest home in Wembley.  Real guest stars appear as themselves.

Actor Patrick Stewart was in the hot seat as I watched on Sunday.  Despite Stewart’s attempts to move the conversation toward his theatrical career, the Kumars mostly wanted to know about Star Trek.”  At one point, Grandma Kumar pressed Stewart on why there were no Indians aboard the Starship Enterprise.  “Didn’t you need IT support?” asked the grandmother.

The despicable thing is that US companies think we’re stupid and tell their outsourcing service provider to have their employees lie to their customers and say that they are not doing the service from the subcontinent.  They make the employees pretend to be “American” and use names like “Jim;” but because of the accent it comes out “Jeem.”  If it was really their given name and they were American (Which doesn’t really matter if you get good support), and they gave good support there would be no reason to lie.

Come on Corporate America; don’t lie to us — use free trade, but be honest when you do.  And more importantly give us good service.