Do You Outsource Enough—Or Should You Delegate It?

A lively one-sided discussion unless you start your own column

By Ed Goldman

With so many people working in-, at and from home these days—yes, you’re being prepositioned—the concept of “outsourcing” has become a bit nebulous. A company’s own in-house employees have become consultants (I’m stifling myself from saying “outhouse employees” since I often am one of those.)

Well, just because you’re not going to a physical workplace other than the card table you opened in your sump pump enclosure doesn’t mean there still aren’t ex-officio tasks (or better yet, exo-office tasks) you’d like to delegate to someone else. 

Here are some new outsourcing possibilities you may wish to consider since you probably have at least four hours a day to do so even though your time card indicates you’re working at least nine-and-a-half (“But I’m not complaining”):

1. OUT-HOARSING. Are you tired of losing your voice from yelling “Defense!” while watching the Sacramento Kings, in person or on TV, lose still another game? Why not hire someone to do your entirely futile bellowing for you? An out-hoarsing consultant can work from anywhere, even Fallujah, provided you can afford the roaming charges. This consultant is a trained yelling professional, who knows how to breathe from the diaphragm (or other commercially available contraceptive devices). Ultimately, the lungs you save may be your own.

2. OUT-SAUCING. You invite your fellow hybrid employees to a weekend barbecue—outdoors, of course, to limit both pandemic passing and carbon monoxide poisoning—and right before they arrive, you remember you haven’t marinated the pork ribs. While this wouldn’t be problematic since you’ll claim they’d been marinating overnight, regardless, what could damage your scenario is that you also have zero BBQ sauce in the kitchen larder to haphazardly pour over the ribs. This is when a quick call to an out-saucier can save your bacon, so to speak: He, she or the non-binary they will hop in one of the firehouse Rescue 8 vehicles and, sirens piercing the calm of your neighborhood, deliver a mason jarful of (essentially) ketchup to you. Why the firehouse delivery car? Because everyone knows the best barbecue sauce is made by firefighters as well as by ranch-hands named Zeke or Cal. My Dad, one of the former, made one that I still dream of and awake salivating for. I’ve long suspected the secret ingredient was honey-dabbed methamphetamine.  
3. OUT-SASSING. Your not being in the office means you won’t have the chance to make the off-the-cuff snide remarks that have become your  trademark around the workplace, as well as the source of at least two defamation lawsuits. By contacting @sarcasm or #me-so-darn-nasty, an experienced insult comic will: (a) talk back to your boss; (b) make fun of Midge from Accounting’s Easter rumballs a full month before she even defrosts last year’s batch; and (c) create variations of the traditional office bon mot, “I’m okay… for a Tuesday!” that you can deploy whenever anyone asks how you’re doing, which probably isn’t very often, given your mean mouth.