…well… indirectly. As I’m sure you are aware, the majority of the world’s call centers are based in India due to the readily available cheap labour there. The others are unaccountably based in heavily accented areas of Britain such as Liverpool or Scotland. It is more than likely that each and every one of you has had to call one of these god awful places, or has received a call from one trying to sell you something you don’t want.

You have no doubt battled with the operator, trying desperately to cling on to every, mispronounced word, and frantically attempting to decypher the pigeon English in your head into something vaguely coherant. The average citizen, however, only has to deal with these frankly distressing phone calls perhaps once or twice a year. Now immagine that you work in a profession which involves phoning Microsoft for every little niggling point when Windows just won’t accept that CD key, or, when it does, it doesnt want to validate itself, instead throwing a big tantrum and threatening to disable itself in 30 days unless you type in a magic number which only Microsoft employees are aware of.

I suppose there is an upside of the Microsoft call centres; that is the operators themselves seem to be semi retarded. You can pretty much tell them whatever you want and they will be unable to know what you mean so just unlock the computer for you. Thus:
Caller: Please can you activate my copy of Windows XP?
Operator: Is it only on one computer?
Caller: No, I work for an Islamic militant group and we need Windows on our laptops used for bombing the Western world
Operator: OK sir, your new key is…

You see my point I’m sure.

Hello, and welcome, to the first edition of the problems of working in IT. Now, I’m sure we all have problems with our chosen careers, but I have chosen to outline a few nagging little points about choosing a career in IT.

As I’m sure you are aware, the IT profession is one which is staffed mainly by employees of the male variety. There is a scientific explaination for this, which is that girls can’t use computers, but I digress. It is for this reason that the fact of the matter is, there is an abundance of cock in IT related jobs. I shall use a good friend of mine as an example.

My friend works for a small company which writes software for larger telecommunications companies (for the sake of argument, lets call him Toby). Toby works in an office in Cardiff staffed by 7 guys and one average-looking, but married girl. This obviously means that the chances of picking up some poon-tang from work is very slim (though not impossible). The company also employs 3 other members of staff who all work abroad, all of which are, unfortunately, guys (so no phone sex).

My point is this, until we start teaching girls how to use computers, the workplace will be a dull, lifeless pit filled with ball sweat and the odd stray pube. I say start to educate girls in basic mouse work at the age of 3 and maybe some of them will be able to browse the internet without throwing a hissy-fit by the age of 21.