Outsourcing Inconvenience

My nephew was forced to evacuate from Houston during the Rita threat
and his boss at Time-Warner cable kept asking him to get back soon,  as
customers were demanding refunds and free cable TV due to poor service.
Like many of his co-workers, he wasn't keen on getting back to face the
customers' gripes and ire. Yes, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita wreaked
havoc and caused inconvenience in the USA. Now, the Times of India
reports that the staffing shortage resulted in tons of overtime for India's
call center workers :
Raging Rita keeps Bangalore busy
BANGALORE: Hurricane sisters, Katrina and Rita, have brought in
some additional work for call centre agents in Bangalore.

For instance, some agents have to attend to 100 to 120 calls a day,
against 35-40 calls otherwise.

Florida, which alone employs around 50,000 contact centre agents,
became the worst hurricane-hit city, while an equal number of agents
are working in Louisiana, Texas, Houston, New Orleans and
Mississippi put together.

The hurricane effect made many call centres to divert work to internal
locations like Colarado and other destinations like the Philippines,
Ireland, Mexico, Brazil, and India with Bangalore, Noida and Gurgaon
taking the bulk of the traffic.

A project manager at a Noida-based BPO said: "We have received
some amount of work from Florida and Lousiana, so we have to ask
some of our employees to work multi-shifts." Many companies in
Bangalore too have done similar arrangements.
Rest of the article here