(no subject)
I tend to not have any major opinions about anything too politically charged until I have some firsthand experience with it -- for example, the fact that I'm, say, a woman sends me into fits of righteous liberal indignation concerning abortion, women's rights, fair pay, etc. So for most of my life I was too uninformed to be neutral on globalization. I watched corporations tout it and college students get all het up about it but I didn't really care until I started working here, and now I hate it.
I've never been comfortable with the outsourcing my company does. We can't convert the books we distribute, since we've only got four people, so we send them to India. And there are difficult phone calls, and emails full of mangled English, and a million daily annoyances that have me alternately cursing their stupidity and flogging myself for thinking that way of people who aren't working in their first or even second language. And then there are the French, who haven't yet begun work on any of my publishers, so I don't have to deal with them on a daily basis, but to hear the rest of the office talk about them, they're even worse. And after watching myself and my fellow Americans dealing with two overseas companies and cultures, one Western and one Eastern, in the near year-and-a-half I've been here, I've begun to sort out what really makes me uncomfortable about globalization.
Put simply, it's unrealistic, inconsiderate, and ultimately unsustainable.
My basic understanding from my own experience is that globalization simply can't work because of culture clash. Different cultures have different conceptions of what service entails. I know little about India beyond what I've gleaned from accounts of people who've been there, either from books or people I've spoken to, but plenty is happening on a daily basis over there that would be considered rude or intrusive in America. While driving, for example, it's customary to honk your horn and flash your lights near constantly. In India, that's a courtesy that signals your presence, the same way that a turn signal politely informs an American driver of your intent. However, in America, this signals that the driver is a complete dick. I talked to my boss about his adventures in India, and he mentioned the phenomenon of service-by-mob that he noticed while in a hotel, or a restaurant, or possibly both -- a million people all offering something that, to an American, comes off as hounding and intrusive. He said that our production team used to basically do that via email, effectively tying someone up for the entire day. I read on Consumerist, I think, that it was considered polite over there to answer, when a customer needed something, that it would be ready in a much shorter amount of time than it actually would be. And over here, especially in my line of work, you sort of need as exact an estimate as possible when a client's waiting. The same phenomenon is true of the French -- they provide customer service in their customary way, and it clashes with American customs in doing business. My coworkers complain to no end that the French are rude and even sometimes unprofessional. Of course they are, they're judging them not by French professional standards, but by American.
You put these together and you see how quickly frustration will set in. Diplomats and even some higher executives from disparate cultures can and will work with each other because they'll take care to learn a little about the other culture, but they also work well because they'll only have to see each other briefly. Now put your typical American office drone alongside your typical French or Indian office drone. Consider how little, if any, they know about each other's cultures and what to expect from them. Usually they know nothing. And consider also how often they have to work together. All day, every day. (This leads to a whole new set of frustrations and problems when you try to match up schedules, especially when the other party is halfway around the world.) Put two people completely ignorant of each other together and you'll get all sorts of problems. I can't understand this person on the phone. This person's French is terrible. What does this word-salad email even mean? These people can't do anything right. And why is this happening? Because these people are all judging each other by the standards of their society, their culture, their business practices. Everyone begins to expect everyone else to conform to them.
And here we get to the part that provides my daily doses of white guilt -- who decides what the standard is? This is where globalization, for me, begins to feel like imperialism. America barges on into some other country and immediately demands that they restructure their notions of service to match ours. Well, what gives us the right? Why are we forcing people to work in a brand-new language and deal with people from a different culture who aren't even going to fairly judge the work they do because of these different standards they abide by? Is there some great value to this that corporate America can see and us peons can't, or is it just for cheap labor?
I've never been comfortable with the outsourcing my company does. We can't convert the books we distribute, since we've only got four people, so we send them to India. And there are difficult phone calls, and emails full of mangled English, and a million daily annoyances that have me alternately cursing their stupidity and flogging myself for thinking that way of people who aren't working in their first or even second language. And then there are the French, who haven't yet begun work on any of my publishers, so I don't have to deal with them on a daily basis, but to hear the rest of the office talk about them, they're even worse. And after watching myself and my fellow Americans dealing with two overseas companies and cultures, one Western and one Eastern, in the near year-and-a-half I've been here, I've begun to sort out what really makes me uncomfortable about globalization.
Put simply, it's unrealistic, inconsiderate, and ultimately unsustainable.
My basic understanding from my own experience is that globalization simply can't work because of culture clash. Different cultures have different conceptions of what service entails. I know little about India beyond what I've gleaned from accounts of people who've been there, either from books or people I've spoken to, but plenty is happening on a daily basis over there that would be considered rude or intrusive in America. While driving, for example, it's customary to honk your horn and flash your lights near constantly. In India, that's a courtesy that signals your presence, the same way that a turn signal politely informs an American driver of your intent. However, in America, this signals that the driver is a complete dick. I talked to my boss about his adventures in India, and he mentioned the phenomenon of service-by-mob that he noticed while in a hotel, or a restaurant, or possibly both -- a million people all offering something that, to an American, comes off as hounding and intrusive. He said that our production team used to basically do that via email, effectively tying someone up for the entire day. I read on Consumerist, I think, that it was considered polite over there to answer, when a customer needed something, that it would be ready in a much shorter amount of time than it actually would be. And over here, especially in my line of work, you sort of need as exact an estimate as possible when a client's waiting. The same phenomenon is true of the French -- they provide customer service in their customary way, and it clashes with American customs in doing business. My coworkers complain to no end that the French are rude and even sometimes unprofessional. Of course they are, they're judging them not by French professional standards, but by American.
You put these together and you see how quickly frustration will set in. Diplomats and even some higher executives from disparate cultures can and will work with each other because they'll take care to learn a little about the other culture, but they also work well because they'll only have to see each other briefly. Now put your typical American office drone alongside your typical French or Indian office drone. Consider how little, if any, they know about each other's cultures and what to expect from them. Usually they know nothing. And consider also how often they have to work together. All day, every day. (This leads to a whole new set of frustrations and problems when you try to match up schedules, especially when the other party is halfway around the world.) Put two people completely ignorant of each other together and you'll get all sorts of problems. I can't understand this person on the phone. This person's French is terrible. What does this word-salad email even mean? These people can't do anything right. And why is this happening? Because these people are all judging each other by the standards of their society, their culture, their business practices. Everyone begins to expect everyone else to conform to them.
And here we get to the part that provides my daily doses of white guilt -- who decides what the standard is? This is where globalization, for me, begins to feel like imperialism. America barges on into some other country and immediately demands that they restructure their notions of service to match ours. Well, what gives us the right? Why are we forcing people to work in a brand-new language and deal with people from a different culture who aren't even going to fairly judge the work they do because of these different standards they abide by? Is there some great value to this that corporate America can see and us peons can't, or is it just for cheap labor?