Here's an idea Mr. President....

At some point in the past month, I had to deal with customer services representatives from BellSouth, Sprint, and DirecTV within a 2 day time span. (This should have been a lesson into consolidating all my services with one company, but alas that's a discussion for another day.) Now I'll ask you to take a wild guess...how many English speaking reps do you think I talked to...yep, you guessed it - NONE!

Now whether or not they handled my problems sufficiently is not the matter at hand here (because essentially they did), the thing that irks me beyond belief is why these major corporations have to have call centers in foreign countries! So here's my idea Mr. President...how about we take some of this bailout/stimulus money and offer incentives or tax breaks to BellSouth, DirecTV, Sprint, etc to relocate call centers in the United States?

And let's think about this a bit further for a few moments. What type of jobs is the new President offering for all those American's who are out of work - infrastructure. Do you know what that is? Building bridges and fixing pot holes. Think back to the CCC of the 40's - they built state parks; pavilions, cabins, hiking trails, clearing brush, etc. Now let's think about out of work American's, what do you think they would prefer - building a bridge or having a job in a call center? That's a no brainer.

American's love those call center jobs, easy, no college education required, comfortable surroundings, team environment, etc. I mean - who are we kidding - push comes to shove I'd work in a call center all day. $14 + an hour, yes please, where do I sign up?

I'm sure there is something to be said for the call centers in foreign countries providing good for the community etc, but if we are going to pull out of Iraq and GITMO post haste then as a whole we can't be that concerned with the general betterment of foreign countries.

So here you go Mr. President, this is the first of my million-and-one brilliant ideas - hope you're reading this.