> It was about 3 or 4 days before the upper
>management was willing to acknowledge that they
>had made a big mistake, and that we do need those
>on-site geeks after all. But the contract had
>already been signed, so there was no choice
>except to fly some help-desk folks from India to
>the US to do whatever it is that on-site helpdesk
>folks do.

A lot of companies do crap like this. I'm not sure what pointing this out has to do with anything, other than maybe showing that no IT people are harmed by your doing IT work for call center wages, since your company apparently wouldn't be hiring them to do it at fair wages anyway. Which was only a small part of the point I was making, regardless.

>
> My company looks at information technology as if
>it is a needless expense. My degree is in
>Information Technology (or at least it will be,
>when I complete it at around March). Can you
>guess what kinds of exciting career prospects I
>can look forward to with this company?

Is there some law that says you have to work for this company after you graduate? What's stopping you from getting a real IT job at a company that doesn't treat its employees like this?

> I have lived a hard life. I once saw a list of
>the ten most painful experiences that a human
>being can experience in a lifetime. Of those
>ten, seven have happened directly to me or my
>family, and one of the remaining three came close
>to happening.

Hey, sorry to hear that. No, seriously. Whatever else I say, don't take it like I'm belittleing your past experiences or questioning the hardships you've been through. I've been lucky to not have experienced many myself, and I'm thankful for that.

> I'm not about to claim that I've had more pain
>than anybody else - I know that that's not true.
>But I have definitely had enough pain in my life
>to know what is and what isn't important. And -
>believe me, money is not important in and of
>itself. The purpose of having money is to pay
>your bills - past, present, and future.
>Sometimes you have it, and sometimes you don't.
>When you don't have it, life is hard.

Certainly true.

> But it's also at those times when life is at
>it's hardest, that God lets me know just how much
>he cares for me. It's not that things get
>desperate, so I get all pious, and God decides to
>have mercy on me; rather, it's that God really is
>in control of the situation all along, and *all*
>I need to do is to let him handle it. I don't
>have to understand it - after all, if he really
>is an all-powerful, all-knowing God, then his
>thoughts are already far beyond my own. I either
>trust him, or I don't. And if I really do trust
>him, then I don't worry about my present
>circumstances. (I mean, what's the worst that
>can happen? I can die. And then I get to meet
>him face to face. Whatever heaven is like, it's
>got to be better than this place.) All I really
>need to know is that I *am* here for a reason,
>and that reason may not be one that comes to my
>mind.

This part I don't get, though. I'm not religious myself, so maybe that's why. But you seem to be saying that you're not going to bother to try to fix anything bad in your life yourself because God is in control and things will work out. That doesn't seem to me to be at all a healthy way to look at things. You're going to just take what comes and not work to better your lot in life because you figure that whatever you get you must deserve, or must be planned out in advance by God? That doesn't make any sense at all to me. Doesn't God help those who help themselves?

>
> That is enough to provide contentment amid bad
>conditions. Contentment is something that eludes
>even billionaires. And as for happiness - real
>happiness - well, it sure helps to have people
>around you that know you well enough to know your
>weaknesses, but who choose to focus on your
>strengths instead. Around such people you can be
>yourself, and it's still considered to be a good
>thing.

Yup. But you can find such things in a company that is willing to pay you a fair wage for the work you do, too.

If you're still in school and getting your degree, then I can understand working a "lesser" job and doing what you're doing in order to get experience and a job history to put on your resume. But after that, if you continue to just accept your lot and not move on to bigger and better things, why did you even bother to get the degree? You don't need one to work a call center job.

-- Dave