One Night at the Call Center
An Indian Tech Support Center Sets the Stage for a Night of Change
Chetan Bhagat's novel takes place on Thanksgiving at a technical support call center in India for an American appliance company.
A call center. Six co-workers. Nine hours. This is the setting for One Night at the Call Center, Chetan Bhagat's first novel.
Business is on the decline at Connections, the Delhi, India, tech support call center for a major American appliance manufacturing company at which the six-some works. Call volumes are low, and the team's boss, a micro-manager who takes credit for his employees' work, is threatening layoffs, or "rightsizing" of the office. Twenty six year old narrator Shyam, or "Sam," as he is known to his callers, has just broken up with his girlfriend and is feeling low. Ex-girlfriend Priyanka works with him and is setting up to move to the United States and marry a Microsoft whiz kid. She makes wedding plans at work with female coworkers Radhika and Esha, while Shyam mopes and eavesdrops on her calls. Shyam's friend and coworker Vroom hates the job they do, but loves the money that comes with it. And Military Uncle rounds out the group; his proper name is unknown to the others, and he sits in the corner of the room and works the Internet chat portion of the tech support they provide.
Together the group answers support calls on what is Thanksgiving day in the United States, from the mundane (defrosting a refrigerator) to the bizarre (a customer getting an electric shock from taking apart their oven because the turkey wouldn't fit). They assume American names and accents, and are constantly reminded by their boss to be more polite to callers.
When the phone lines go down, they decide to take a break from the call center and steal one of the company's commuter buses to drive to the nightclub "Bed," where they receive a phone call that changes all of their lives.
One Night at the Call Center becomes one night that changes everything in the call center workers’ lives. Relationships are tested, marriages fall apart, and bonds are broken and reformed in the span of less than an overnight shift.
American readers might object to some of the generalizations made in the novel, most notably that Americans are fat, lazy and stupid. Despite these stereotypes, the novel does give an interesting glimpse inside the goings on at a call center, and what happens when the employees hang up their headsets and talk about daily life as twenty somethings living in India.
One Night at the Call Center
Bhagat, Chetan
New York, Ballantine, May 1, 2007
