Call Me 'Miss Outsourced'

In 2005, I was outsourced. I felt the rumblings of the oncoming economic collapse years before it happened. This was more than just a premonition.

'Outsourced' is just a euphemism for 'someone else is just as valuable but costs half as much.' During my last week of work at the company that outsourced me, I was expected to train the international employees on the nuances of publishing and the vocabulary of the rather eccentric clients. The experience was degrading, demoralizing, humbling, and an obvious sign of things to come.

Along with thirty laid-off friends and coworkers, I went out for a drink and pondered who to blame for this. It was a pitiful event, walking past Ben Franklin's print shop in Philadelphia. I couldn't help but wonder what Franklin would think of such an instance; would it go unnoticed to him in the now-bustling metropolis? Perhaps he would see it like I did: the once-mighty Publisher's Square being simply an introspective recollection of the power of the press in our city of freedom.

We even tried to joke about it; my coworkers knew about my career goals and felt sad for me. They gave me the title "Miss Outsourced 2005" and even made a pageant-style ribbon for me to wear.

The hangover-headsplitting clarity of the following day revealed no answers. I went on to blame myself, the CEO of the company, and my country's president. I blamed the workers in the faraway country—they'd be handling my work—a thought impossible to ignore as I literally packed up my desk items to mail them halfway across the world.

I tried to hate my replacements (after all, it took three of them to replace me, apparently), but they didn't even feel badly about what was going on because no one had told them. Though I grew more sarcastic by the day, I didn't have the heart to tell them how it really was. They were kind, helpful, and thoughtful; it wasn't their fault.

This had been my first post-collegiate job. I had taken it seriously, aspiring in my fresh-out-of-college-mind to be a publishing mogul because as an American with an education, I could supposedly do anything. I blamed President Bush—after all, I had spent so much time and effort rallying against him during my college years, it was comfortable.

I took other jobs and there was always someone with whom I could commiserate. Nothing quite matched, though—everything I did was for a paycheck, and there's a large gap between working to pay the rent and working for enjoyment. The whole experience could be summed up as bittersweet: I was lucky enough to find my dream job right out of college, and unlucky enough to lose it soon thereafter.

With our region's largest newspaper conglomerates folding into bankruptcy, many recent college graduates are eager to network with me—after more than two years of soul-searching and working for minimum wage, my determination alone landed me back in the publishing industry, and my office is comfortably closer to Ben's print shop. They are so worried and angry (not teenaged angst, but true, inability-to-pay-rent anger). I tell them to just survive; that's the best any of us can do.

Recalling different messages from last year's election (war, hope, tolerance, peace, vigilance), it's easy to see how the issue of outsourcing becomes buried under the larger problem of economy. It almost feels as though I've experienced a somewhat-rare disease that isn't really a medical priority because it's only symptomatic of a larger problem—but it needs to stop on a personal and widespread level.

What I am seeing in recent high school and college graduates is an optimism about the future of our country with a side of immediate desperation. These are people who want to put roots down and improve their communities and their country at large, but the prospect of job loss and outsourcing makes them feel uncontrollably transient.

While the sting of the outsourcing (and being labeled as 'outsourced') is no longer fresh, the years I spent serving up coffee for low pay seemed penance for my enjoyment of that job. I will not soon forget the humility I learned as a result of serving coffee to customers while I searched for years for that next opportunity.

At the center of the issue of being "Miss Outsourced" were my reactions; my feeling that I had been attacked personally. I felt disenfranchised and overlooked; invisible to my government and without value to my community. Being outspoken or complaining about it didn't help, and I can't imagine it always does with most issues. Despite popular belief, there's not always personal fulfillment in vindictiveness or constant sorrow.

We all have personal searches; goals which are concrete or abstract. Through this undeniable difficulty, I learned something about myself: it's unavoidable to take such a large hit as a personal attack sometimes, and if there isn't a new door to go through (or a new office to walk into), it's time to simply make one.