To India with Love (and a PC)

Leave it to Conan O’Brien to find the hilarity in a topic as complicated and controversial as outsourcing. In a recent segment, staff writer Andy Blitz answers the question, what it’s like to visit one of those tech-support centers located halfway around the world? He lugs his monitor and hard drive to India to track down Sharon, a help-desk technician for NBC, so that she can eliminate the pop-up ads flooding his PC once and for all. He wanders the streets looking for the NBC office, his computer balanced on his head like a water jug. He whines about pop-up ads to his rickshaw driver. He joins in a game of cricket. Finally, he arrives at the call-center cubicles, meets Sharon and promptly falls in love (a common reaction after being rescued by an IT specialist).

Silly? Sure. But there’s something undeniably satisfying about putting a face to that disembodied voice on the line.