Australia has become increasingly culturally diverse and I find it particularly confusing that, at a time we are bringing in hundreds of thousands of migrants from other countries, we are actively promoting the handover of Australia to Aboriginals.
How does that work out?
Our new arrivals must find it hard to understand: are they welcome here, or will they, in decades to come, be seen as invaders.... ?
It took me back to a time, a few years ago, that Redhead, my Mum, had a conversation with an Indian man when she called an online service provider to update her credit card details.
Now, before I get started, it must be difficult for Indians and other nationalities to come to terms with our Australian idiosyncrasies.
In fact, there are language classes held to ensure that all these language problems are sorted out. Warning. Parody ahead.
Now that Australia is becoming less Crocodile Dundee and more Dark Emu, I truly feel sorry for the new Australians trying to make sense of our nation.
But back to Mum.
And so it was, that this particular morning, Redhead valiantly attempted to renew her card details by phoning her internet provider and prepared herself for the normal " your call is important to us " stuff and, with luck and a fair wind, get through to someone before the card came up for expiry again a few years down the track.
And that is when it got interesting.
Her patience and fortitude paid off and was soon talking with a " very nice young man ' from India.
Now, Redhead is not too flash with accents, so he could have been Indian, Philipino or Irish... but I am punting that she was on the money this time and he was indeed Indian.
Most call centres these days are Indian or Philipino and I personally find the Indian accents far easier to understand than the others... perhaps because I love Bollywood movies and watched every episode of " It Ain't Half Hot Mum" when I was a kid.
It must be difficult for our new Australians to assimilate when there is an emerging culture of Aboriginal culture within a country that has been for so long regarded as " Aussie. "
Truly it must.
However, back to the phone call.
The " very nice young Indian man " asked her to type the numbers of her new card. She diligently did so. Something didn't work and her typing didn't seem to register at the other end of the phone. Could she please try entering them again? Over and over again, the numbers were seemingly ignored and over and over again, she typed until she was pounding out the numbers with an energy that, had she been playing tennis, would have been Ace serves each and every time. The tension was palpable. After what seemed like 15,034 attempts at bashing in the numbers, she finally exclaimed " I never had this trouble with my old provider! They used to just take the money and I never, EVER had this sort of problem! "
Forget the fact that her old provider had a direct debit set up, not a credit card payment……
The very nice young Indian man apologised and said that he could not understand what was going wrong. In fact, it was as though she was not typing anything on her phone keypad. It was most peculiar.
Redhead looked down and saw the problem. She had been sitting at her computer desk and pounding out the numbers on the computer keyboard, not the telephone.
The nice young man assured her that all was well and they finished their call with warm congratulations all around and apologies to each other. He no doubt hung up and nipped off to shoot himself or find a really good therapist.
Perhaps he needed a nice cup of tea after that.
It reminded me of something I wrote some time ago when I had a Senior moment.....
“ ….Mum called later in the afternoon. I had fallen asleep. The phone woke me. I reached over to the bedside table and picked up my empty tea cup. Realising my error, I put it down, grabbed the phone and then pressed the answer button. The TV turned on. Third time lucky, I grabbed the phone handset and it worked! Apparently tea cups and TV remotes don’t function as telephones… you learn something new every day.
What I do know is that the recording of the call between the call Centre bloke and Redhead will no doubt be sent straight to HR to be used in all future training sessions for the bit about “ How to stay calm under stress. “
The young man will be Employee of the Month and, at future Staff training sessions, they will visit him in the psych ward and laud his calm under pressure. His gnawed off limbs and frequent mutterings “ please don’t make me talk to people over 80 again “ will be used to train staff that sometimes, just sometimes, the customer isn’t always right.
I plan to give Mum a call shortly on the TV and ask her if she has having trouble with her teacup as mine doesn’t seem to be working. Maybe the nice Indian chap could help sort it… assuming he isn’t in therapy right now or being hauled off to the Funny Farm by the Men in the Long White Coats…..
Joking aside, can we get back to being Australian?
This holier than thou stuff is doing my head in.
The thing I have always loved about Australia is that we are Australian.
I ran this article by Redhead this morning and she said " I can't see anything wrong with it. You are having a laugh. It is fun. We need more fun and less division. "
Ain't that the truth?
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