At several points in my life, I have found myself outside the scope of traditional employment. Feeling stagnated by the nine to five (or beyond) routine, I have solicited various projects on a contract basis from my home — or I have taken up random odd jobs, say, trudging door-to-door in business districts hoisting up marathon training posters for $12 per hour.
In other words, I have been unemployed, if you wanna be a dick about it.
At the particular time in question, I had been finished with the California Bar exam for about six months. The knowledge that I had passed the exam had been followed closely with inter-continental travel and herbal refreshments. Eventually, I realized it was time to buckle up, or buckle down, or however the expression goes. Merely having passed the exam was not going to pave a career for me, or bring me anywhere near the capacity to repay my student loans. I needed — *gulp* — a job.
This epiphany took me straight to the “Et Cetera” section of Craigslist.
I have always liked the idea of participating in focus groups and usability studies. In college, I had earned quite a bit of pocket cash by surrendering myself as a guinea pig to various social experiments. I hoped in earnest to be able to provide my token brown female twenty-something opinions to various delegates of capitalism in return for a flexible schedule with a bit of disposable income — and I did succeed on several counts. I provided my opinions to varying parties, from social networking websites to a product design company which sent designers to people's homes to learn of people’s rituals surrounding medicine (I, with my belly proudly protruding out of my blouse and empty pizza boxes and beer bottles surrounding me, proclaimed that I preferred sticking to natural remedies).
Then I remembered about a gig I had in college, which had been brought on through en email forward indicating that a labor union was in need of Hindi translations for some fliers concerning union activity. I had rapidly zoomed in on the opportunity like a fly on a pile of shit, and had made some pretty decent money out of it. What if I could find another paid position to translate English to Hindi, or vice versa? I would even be making use of one of my undergraduate degrees!
Lo and behold: a keyword search for “Hindi” yielded a listing for an economics research consulting firm that required someone with knowledge of the Hindi language to make some phone calls to India. That sounded amazing! I sent it my resume and was promptly invited in for an interview.
At the interview, I was explained the following situation: A man from India had come to the States, and had been taking a road trip somewhere in California, when he got severely injured in a car accident which ostensibly occurred due to faulty and inadequate road signs. Now, back in India, he had filed a lawsuit against the state of California to recover damages for his injury.
This company I was interviewing with had been commissioned by the state to research the costs of medical care and general living in India, premised on the belief that the state may owe money to the plaintiff, but it should be in the currency of rupees, as the man could receive comparable treatment while remaining in India. The task at hand involved making phone calls to various doctors, hospitals, and vendors of medical equipment and supplies to determine the costs of the needed products and services.
I asked which part of India the plaintiff was living in.
“Tamil Nadu.”
“They actually don’t speak Hindi in Tamil Nadu.”
“Oh…”
“BUT, I think I can work it out.”
“Are you sure? Is the language you speak similar?”
“No, not at all, but a lot of them know English and they might know some Hindi, and I’m sure I can figure out a way to communicate with them.”
“Well, if you’re confident about it, why don’t we see how you do for a couple of days and then take it from there.”
Score!
I set off on my research, conducting a myriad of Google searches to find my way to hospitals and sellers of medical equipment in India. At long last, I came across a reliable chain of hospitals, which would seem to be a one-stop shop for most of the information I needed; I had been provided a lengthy list of procedures and medications for which figures were needed.
It was about 9pm California time, and about 10:30am India time. I had braced myself with some snacks, knowing I would be doing this for the next six hours or so, while business hours were ripe on the other side of the world. I picked up the phone and dialed the number to the hospital. It was answered after about four rings with a curt “Hallo.”
“Yes, hi, I’m calling from a research consulting –”
“Yes, madam?”
“Hi, yeah, um, I needed to find out the prices of — “
“Hallo madam?”
“Could you tell me the price –”
“What, madam?”
After a while, it became clear that the man simply could not understand me.
“PRICE! WIAGRA!”
“One minute, madam. Transferring to pharmacy.”
After a few minutes of listening to the hold music which sounded like an ice cream truck, I was forwarded to the pharmacy, where another gentleman interrupted me with “yes, madam?” after every three words or so. The list of items for which I required prices was extremely lengthy, so eventually the person would pretend to put me on hold and never come back until the phone would disconnect, or would simply hang up with no notice. I had to make sure to keep my calling card fully reloaded, but now I knew the drill. I would place the call, avoid all pleasantries, and at the outset, simply state “Pharmacy!” in my best Indian accent. Once transferred to the pharmacy, I would just state, “Price, Witamin C.” “Price, magic bullet suppositories,” et cetera. I had a bit of trouble with the calcium pills; I knew to pronounce it “calshum,” but the “pill” part was what threw off the operator, until I got my act together and asked “Price, calshum tablet!”
Several months later, after I had discontentedly strapped myself down with a “real” job, the research consulting firm called me for another assignment. They now needed me to make calls to Mumbai to determine the types of salaries drawn by jewelry designers and marketing research analysts from the jewelry industry there; apparently some other Indian who worked in such a capacity had been injured, and the lost wages in rupees needed to be determined.
Unlike the folks at the hospital, who, but for a few requested clarifications, seemed fairly disinterested in who I was and why I was repeatedly calling to find out costs of various male-oriented treatments, Mumbai jewelers were far more suspicious and shrewd.
“Hi, I’m calling on behalf of a research consulting firm, and we’re trying to determine the standard salaries for jewelry designers and market research analysts in Mumbai…”
“Where you are calling from?”
“From the such-and-such group in California.”
“You’re calling from California?”
“Yes.”
“It’s 3am in California.”
“Yes, it is…”
Click.
It was a challenge, but finally I came up with an adequate sample size to satisfy the research requirements.
After 14 months, my firm job wasn't really doing it for me -- despite all the entertaining histrionics -- so I quit and moved to the town where I wanted to live, with lofty ambitions of going private. It indeed is quite the bomb to have been competent and successful in taking cases on my own and seeing them to completion. But it’s this “Et Cetera” that keeps drawing my attention, whether greeting people at a wedding, or volunteering on a film crew. Why can’t you skip the main course and just have a bunch of small plates? Of course you can; there are all sorts of people in this world, and they pave all sorts of paths for themselves. Only time will tell whether what ends up saving me is the Spanish tapas, or the Sanskrit one.
0 comments:
Post a Comment