Battling the Bots

 

by Pa Rock

Human Being

I have taken my stand against artificial intelligence, especially that which powers customer "service" chatbots, one of the more aggravating drains of personal time on the planet.  I will deal with automated electronic voices over the phone for a limited time when I need information or assistance, reluctantly, and always with rising blood pressure, but it will be a cold damned day in hell when I accept and engage in conversations with a machine - where it was the machine that called me!

I deal with two insurance companies, and because of the tyrannical way in which they run their prescription operations, I have to contact both several times a year.  I can usually get my called bumped up to the human level within ten minutes or so with one of the companies, and when that happens the issue is normally resolved quickly and without symptoms of an impending stroke.  The other insurance company, one of the largest in the United States, is a different story.  I have been on the phone with their chatbots for up to thirty minutes before one or the other of us finally terminates the call with no human-to-human contact.

The second company, (which ironically has the word "human" in its name), the one where humans apparently only work in the home office shielding the muckety-mucks from direct customer contact, has been trying to contact me for the last six months or so - via automatic calls.  Three or four time a week a number calls that I don't recognize.  I pickup but remain silent, and then a recorded voice comes on saying "Hello, this is ______ calling," and it is at that point that I hang up without telling the irksome bot to sit and spin on a flagpole.  I "automatically" disconnect every time, and yet the shameless bastards keep calling.  Whatever extra service or insurance add-on the company wants to sell me goes unheeded because I am obviusly not worth the time or expense of human-to-human contact.

Well, for all of the useless retailers who want to sell me something, here is how Pa Rock rolls:  You want to talk to me - then put a damned human being on your end of the line.  This crusty old hillbilly does not waste his valuable remaining time on the planet chatting with chatbots.  It looks to me like a company with any pride at all would quit using machines to call after the first few dozen hangups - unless trying to kill me off with a stroke was the goal all along.

But, you keep doing your thing, and I'll keep doing mine.

I'm Pa Rock, and I'm still here!