Outsourced

            We watched several clips from a movie called outsourced, the clips were mainly about different in cultures, and how it could leads to bad relationships between one and the other. It is about this American manager called Todd who used to work in US but he got sent to India to manage the company’s branch there.

            First clip shows the first impression when Todd makes his first meeting in the Indian branch, and clearly he doesn’t know anything about the workers there and he didn’t even bother to know their names before he started, because he was unhappy with being there in India. He starts with criticizing their English accent and forcing them to speak like and American, even made them say they are from Chicago, an American state. The Indian workers didn’t seem to deal with that easily and there was one worker who keeps arguing and disagreeing with him, Asha. In the 2^nd clip Todd listened to his workers questions and decided to answer any questions they have, they seemed to like the “American” stuff they are selling he was surprised they liked these American stuff, because he wouldn’t expect a different country with different culture to be liking his culture stuff. The next clip shows Todd trusting Asha, the worker who argues with him, he promoted her to assistant manager, one who isn’t American or related to America, to help him reach the goal they want to reach before a certain time.

            The fourth clip shows that Todd made a meeting, he decided to listen to his workers, but this time unlike the first time he remembered their names, it showed an improvement in his managing skills, however not his cultural knowledge, as he explained to a worker a burger brand or a cow brand, which burns the cow to put the company initials or brand name, the workers were shocked because some of them consider cow’s sacred, and Todd had no idea why they were shocked, so Asha, the assistant manager, suggested to Todd to learn a bit about India and their culture. The following clip showed the workers were pretty good at their job, so Todd was happy about that and it was obvious that there been an improvement by getting to know his workers, so he apologized to them and he confessed  he should learn more about India and their culture, so as a way to show he’s sorry he asked how can the workers be more comfortable at their work space, because it was more like an American office, so agreed that they can make any change in the office as long as it doesn’t affect their work, the workers were happy to hear that. The last clip shows an angry customer who was mad about the company being from India and not fully American while many American people need a job and could use this job. Then Asha took the call and dealt with the customer in her way and not pretending it’s all American, as Todd demanded on his first meeting, she showed him that it’s being in India is much cheaper that being in America, then the customer agreed to buy from the company. So what I learnt from these clips is you need to be open minded and know who you work with to know how to deal with them.