I Spent Forty Minutes Convincing a Robot I Was a Human Being

I Spent Forty Minutes Convincing a Robot I Was a Human Being

The broadband went at twenty past nine on Tuesday morning, which is precisely the sort of detail nobody needs except that it matters enormously when you are, as I was, halfway through composing an email to the harbourmaster's office about a mooring fee I still maintain was applied in error.

One second the little wifi symbol was there, smug and full-barred.

The next, nothing.

A small triangle with an exclamation mark in it, which is the modern equivalent of a man in a peaked cap shrugging at you.

So I did what you do. I rebooted the router, unplugged it, counted to thirty like they tell you, plugged it back in, watched the lights cycle through their pointless little disco, and when none of that worked I went onto my phone and opened the chat window, because there is no longer a telephone number for this sort of thing, not really, not one that leads anywhere useful. There is Ellie.

Ellie introduced herself immediately and with what I can only describe as suspicious enthusiasm.

"Hi there! I'm Ellie, your virtual assistant. I'm here to help get you back online!"

Two exclamation marks in eleven words. I should have known then.

Nobody that pleased to see you at half past nine on a Tuesday is entirely trustworthy, and certainly nobody who isn't a person at all.

I explained the problem.

Ellie told me she understood how frustrating that must be. I explained it again, in slightly different words, in case the first version had been unclear, and Ellie told me — verbatim, I am fairly sure, because by the third occurrence I was reading along like a man following the subtitles to a film he already knows — that she understood how frustrating that must be.

We then embarked on a tour of troubleshooting steps I had already completed, presented to me one at a time as though freshly minted, each one greeted on my part with diminishing patience and on hers with the same unwavering, glassy warmth.

Check the lights on your router.

I have.

Try turning it off and on again.

I have.

Is the router in a well-ventilated area, away from other electronic devices?

It is in the hallway, Ellie, it has always been in the hallway, it was in the hallway when you and I were introduced eleven minutes ago.

At one point I typed, with what I felt was admirable restraint, "I THINK I NEED TO SPEAK TO AN ACTUAL PERSON," and Ellie replied that she understood how frustrating that must be and would I like to try turning my router off and on again.

I nearly put my tea straight through the phone screen.

Genuinely — spat it, a fine mist across the kitchen table, because there is something about being soothed by a machine that has not listened to a single word you've said that produces a very particular kind of rage, the kind that used to be reserved for parking wardens and now, apparently, belongs to chatbots.

This went on, and on, and on. Forty minutes, near enough, of a very patient, very sympathetic-sounding nothing, before something in the system — some quota of despair I must have finally triggered — released me to a human being called Pam.

Pam had my line fixed in about three minutes flat. She asked one question, said "ah, yes, that'll be the exchange, it's a known fault, give it twenty minutes," and it was done. Three minutes. Forty of Ellie. I do the maths on that sort of thing more than is healthy.

What gets me isn't that the chatbot failed, exactly — I'd half expected that. It's the shape of the whole exercise: you're not calling to get help any more, you're calling to prove, to something that cannot actually be convinced of anything, that you deserve to be handed on to someone who can.

Forty minutes of performing frustration at an audience incapable of recognising it as frustration.

There's a small, undignified relief that comes with age, mind — I've stopped feeling I need to be polite to Ellie.

Thirty years ago I'd have thanked her at the end out of habit.

Now I just close the tab.

That's one of the freer things about getting older, actually — you stop apologising to the furniture.

Pam, if you're reading this, and you almost certainly aren't, you're very good at your job. Ellie, I don't know what you are, but I hope, wherever you're routed from, someone is having a worse morning than either of us.

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PS If you’re trying to work out what to do next — without hype or reinvention 

— I have 2 new things up on Gumroad. The Quiet Income Playbook

and, but you’re probably not ready for this: The Authenticity Stack: 55 Prompts to Build a Publishing Business Without Sounding Like ChatGP