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Overseas Production BY KIERSTEN CONNER-SAX (as Daisy Greene) The press
reports are accurate: I intend to outsource myself to India. As a
self-employed author and homemaker, I read the stories of industries
outsourcing jobs to the developing world with interest. How can I pick up on
that trend? I asked myself. Is it really affordable to continue to pay myself
American wages and benefits? Increasingly, the answer seems to be no. In fact, my
stockholders demand that I stop. How can you do
that? you may be asking. It's not possible to outsource magazine writing and
childcare! This is where I began, like every clever CEO, to think
"outside" the box. My clothes, cars, and electronics are already
made almost exclusively overseas, and I outsourced my childcare years ago
when I hired a West Indian nanny. Writing is a
bit trickier, but not much. Once I receive an assignment, I e-mail it to my
young protˇgˇ in India. He works on it overnight. I wake up in the morning,
and voila! One error-free article, perfectly punctuated and grammatically
correct. I give it the once-over (adding my byline) and send it off. By
setting up an e-mail filter, any requests for revision sent by my editors are
automatically redirected straight to India. Thus I avoid one of the great
inconveniences of modern reporting: talking to people. Editors are frequently
picky and detail-oriented, and the subjects of my stories seem to think
everything is about them. I have solved this problem by having my Indian
friend make up any facts he can't find on the Web, or, alternately, by having
him contact Thomas L. Friedman, whom he has on speed-dial. Increasingly,
however, I would like to outsource my personal life to India. After my West Indian
nanny leaves for the day, I find myself with up to three hours of childcare
to provide, and myriad other demands on my time: husband, friends, pets,
calls to return and dinners to make. These tasks may
be outsourced without a degradation of production quality. First, I will
create a videoconference link with a childcare expert in India, who can watch
my precious Taylor while she plays in her locked playroom. As to my
friends, a telephone exchange could transfer their calls overseas, where they
would leave a message on what they think is my answering machine. I could
then return the calls after my team of psychologists and comedians listen to
them and recommend topics for discussion, methods of conflict resolution, and
witty bon mots to keep conversation fresh. Recently, I
began the personal outsourcing process by hiring an Indian psychotherapist, who
charges a good deal less than $250 for a 50-minute hour. Dr. Nadkarni helped
me see that my husband and I could have another child without the distress
that accompanied my daughter's birth: we can outsource the baby. Pregnancy is
messy and dangerous, but luckily for the American consumer, China and Romania
have numerous production overruns on adoptable infants. Dinner can
always be takeout, likely prepared by Americans, but you can't have
everything. Some may
question the moral implications of my plans. I believe there are jobs too
degrading and dangerous even to be performed in a red state. Why not send
those jobs overseas, where people are happy for the low-paying, backbreaking,
soul-deadening work? We have effectively run out of poor people to exploit on
our own shores. Thankfully, the world has provided a ready supply elsewhere. As I have my
nanny tell my daughter, you have to innovate to survive, or the market will
quickly leave you behind. So, where do I
myself fit into this scheme? Why couldn't my husband or my editors outsource
these tasks around the world themselves, thus cutting out the middleman (me)? Because I
provide value-added benefits. What are value-added benefits? No one really knows, but they seem to be terribly important, and only available in the United States. |
©2005 by Kiersten Conner-Sax
From "50 Tries" at www.connersax.com