Editor's Corner

Normally, I use this space to elaborate on the top story of the week gone by. This week, however, I'd like to share a funny story.

I subscribe to a daily CRM headlines newsletter, as one of dozens of sources for selecting the right stories for each issue of FierceEnterprise. (All FierceMarkets stories are hand-selected by us editors, not automated by .RSS feeds or any other mechanism.) Anyway, yesterday, the other newsletter ran a story titled "CRM School: A ray of hope for mentally retarded children." I'll pause while you chew on that.

I thought, "That can't possibly be right! It's got to be either a joke, or some isolated slime-bag corporation trying to save a few bucks by hiring disabled people, or some naive do-gooder causing more problems than are being solved by giving the disabled people a chance to answer help-desk calls."

Regardless, this was a link I had to click on, right? I noticed that the link referred to an Indian publication, which gave it that much more credibility as not being a joke -- after all, it was a call center story, and everyone knows India is where call centers go to die.

And that's how I read the story about "Chenga Reddy Memorial School for Mentally Retarded Children," or as shortened in the headline, CRM School. So the next time you hear someone claim that English majors are worthless, consider the CRM School, and score one point for man over machine! - Evan