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Broke Wife, Big City
I just want to
pay my bill
By Aprill Brandon
I don’t know if you guys have been keeping up with the news lately, but
according to the headlines I’ve been skimming on Twitter, robots are
poised to take over all our jobs. Or something like that. I never
actually click on the links because as the mother of a toddler, all I
really have time to read are listicles about how to lose 10 pounds in
10 days.
(Note to the editors of Huffington Post: If you really want to keep
people informed, you should start combining the relevant news of the
day with the fluff. For instance, I would totally read a story with the
headline “Scientists have finally created artificial intelligence and
also, here are 8 fruits with anti-aging properties”).
It sounds scary, I know. But I, for one, am not worried about the day
the robots inevitably take over the world because as it turns out, they
are just as incompetent as us humans. I know this because I just spent
the last hour sparring with a completely incompetent automated menu
robot for the electric company.
See, contrary to popular belief, it’s actually incompetence that is the
real job generator in this country.
For example, let’s say you work at a company with the incredibly
creative name of Company Inc. Your boss’s boss, Pete, hired your boss,
Tim, because they “know” each other through networking (networking, of
course, being a fancy word for how dumb people keep getting promoted).
Now Tim is utterly incompetent. But Pete can’t just fire Tim. Their
kids go to the same tennis camp, for crying out loud. So, to pick up
the slack caused by Tim’s incompetence, Pete hires Carol, who happens
to be the wife of his golf buddy, Tad, for a brand new position with a
fancy title like “associate manager of operations” that sort of
indicates she’s also your boss but not really but kind of but not
really but it doesn’t really matter because it doesn’t stop her from
acting like she’s your boss anyway.
Carol is also incompetent. Sales go down. Your workload doubles because
no one besides you knows how things work.
Starting to feel the heat from his bosses, Pete decides the best move
is to fire Tim and Carol and promote you.
Ha! Kidding. That would actually make sense.
No, Pete decides to hire a 21-year-old “social media liaison” named
Kimi because obviously the problem is brand recognition. Kimi is also
your boss. You think. It was never really made clear. But she sure as
hell acts like your boss during her bi-weekly presentations on dumb
crap like “Utilizing Twitter Hashtags For Maximum Penetration Into
UnTapped Markets.”
Meanwhile, Tim gets a huge bonus for bringing his frat brother,
Winston, on board to be the new assistant manager of associate
operations. Winston is also your boss, or at least that’s the way it
comes off when he informs you that you will be taking a retroactive pay
cut because times are tight in the company right now and there is
simply no more room in the budget. The good news, however, is that they
are making you a part-time employee so they can take you off the
company’s insurance plan, meaning you’ll have more time to spend with
your children.
So, obviously, as you can see, there is a direct correlation between
incompetence and job creation. You now have four direct bosses. Four
people who had jobs created specifically for them because the person
hired before them sucked so hard.
America!
Anyway, what was my point? Oh yeah, I was trying to pay my electricity
bill and there was a glitch on their website and so I had to deal with
one of those automated menu robots on the phone and it was horrible and
blah blah blah.
But the point is, the robot was just as incompetent as any human. It
couldn’t help me. And 67 minutes later, when I finally got a human on
the line, they were able to resolve the issue thoroughly and
efficiently.
Ha! Kidding again!
No, Lydia was unfortunately unable to help me, so transferred me to her
manager Raj, who was unable to help me, who transferred me to his
manager, a fast-talking, angry woman whose name was something like
Pffffftboobra (or so it sounded when she shouted it at me) and so on
and so on.
And that, in a nutshell, is why I’m not worried about robots taking
over all our jobs. Because no matter how sophisticated we make the
robots, they’re still being built by humans who have no less than four
idiot bosses breathing down their necks. Meaning the robots will be
deeply flawed because Tim, Carol, Kimi and Winston will continually
come up with unnecessary “improvements” for you to add to the system
just so it looks like they actually do something all day.
Which means eventually the customer will always need to talk to a
human.
Which is really for the best considering only a human brain can truly
appreciate the vulgar, curse word ladled rant from an exhausted mom of
a 16-month-old (who is screaming in the background) about how all she
wants to do IS PAY HER FRACKING BILL, YOU $#&^ing MORONIC TROLLS.
Can’t get enough of Aprill? Can’t wait until next week?
Check out her website at http://aprillbrandon.com/
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