Ferrablog

The other day, the kids had on the movie "Kangaroo Jack". Don't ask me how it gets there, but the twist at the end is that the Jerry O'Donnell and Anthony Anderson characters were supposed to deliver mob money to a man in Australia, and it turned out that the guy was a hit man and they were the ones to be hit. (Yeah, I'm wondering too if the movie was appropriate for the kids. It has the cute kangaroo, but it's a bit darker than the promos would lead one to believe. But I digress.)

Anyway, this conceit came to mind when I read this story in USA TODAY detailing how companies offshoring work are essentially making the employees being let go train their overseas replacements:

But workers such as Myra Bronstein aren't convinced.

On a Friday in 2003, the former WatchMark software tester was part of a team of workers summoned to a meeting. There, she says, managers handed out letters explaining that the testing staff was being laid off. Managers then told the group that their replacements would be workers in India, she says. The workers were flying in and would be in the office Monday. She says she was instructed to train them.

Bronstein felt trapped. She says she believes that if she refused, she would have probably been fired without severance and would have been ineligible for unemployment benefits. If she quit, she says, she wouldn't have received severance or been eligible for unemployment.

The next week, she and the other employees facing layoffs were introduced to the workers who were taking their jobs. The workers from India, she says, would be earning a sixteenth of what she had been paid.

''I was staring hard at my shoes and trying not to cry. It was hideously awkward. I felt forced,'' says Bronstein, 48, of Mercer Island, Wash. She is still unemployed. ''It was very deflating and dehumanizing to train your replacement. I felt sucker-punched. It was as if they handed us a shovel and said, 'Here, dig your own grave.' ''

There just isn't any shame left these days, I suppose. Here's hoping N. Gregory Mankiw is forced to stay around and train his replacement this December and January.