[geeks] Bad monster. No donut.

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

On Sun, Nov 12, 2006 at 06:07:15PM -0500, Patrick Giagnocavo wrote:
> In the future do what Dell's tech support does-make up a phony name.  
> Except in her case, she should change her email address so that it will 
> sound very manly - something that sounds like "Zapp Branigan" might be 
> good.  Maybe "Zack" instead in the event that someone tries to google 
> her.

Someone I knew in the 80's had that problem. She was stuck with using
the first three letters of her first name because it was androdgenous,
and a last name that belonged to despised ex-husband. It had been a
short and disasterous marriage, but her disertation and post-doc
work was published under it. If she abandoned the name, she abandoned
the work.

This was long before search engines, so she could not have just published
her work as Fred(rika) Rubble Flinstone which would have shown up if you
searched for her as Rubble or Flintstone.

I found out quite by accident that she is still using he published
name about a year ago when someone refered to her on a mailing list
I subscribe to as having written a new book.

One of the big jobs here is call center work. There are enough people
from the U.S. and Canada to fill a large call center. The problem is that
they are relgious and won't work Friday night (during the day U.S. time).

If the company has more than one call center, it's okay, the others take
up the slack, but in at least one case, a company had contracted for
an order center here and a different company to take the Friday and Saturday
shifts. The other company came in and underbid them for a full time contract.

In India, the big thing now is to hire Europeans in their early twenties
to work in the call centers. They don't pay them much, but Indian tax
law allows them to be housed, clothed, fed, etc for free. They work
in the call centers during the evening and party until dawn.

Their only expenses are recreational items. They work a few years and
go home, with most of their money in the bank, having had a really good
time. :-)

15 years ago Israeli tax law allowed that too, but now it does not and
it's hard to compete. 

Geoff.


-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM
IL Voice: (07)-7424-1667  Fax ONLY: 972-2-648-1443 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838 
Visit my 'blog at http://geoffstechno.livejournal.com/