American Telephone and Telegraph was the company responsible for wiring America. Today, the company that it evolved into is AT&T. I remember as a kid and as an adult that the old landline service was pretty good. If things didn’t work we went next door to the neighbor to use their phone. We called the number shown on our monthly bill and asked a friendly lady for help. Soon, a repair truck would appear in the neighborhood and a technician buried his head in a panel of multi-colored wires. Eventually, our phone rang and the man said our phone was fixed.
Fast-forward to today. The cell phone that I bought two weeks ago doesn’t work; it tells me that it has been blocked from the internet, and I should contact the company. At first, I didn’t get nervous. I just drove down to the AT&T store where I bought it. Luckily, the same agent I dealt with was there. We started out with great enthusiasm until him I told him what the problem was. His face turned stoic. “Did you lose it or report it stolen? That is what happens when a phone is lost or stolen.” How? My phone hasn’t left my sight. He gave me a phone number to call and said to ask for “Advanced Tech Support.” Okay, I kept a landline just for this purpose, so I could call the company and ask for help.
I called the number he gave me. A deaf and dumb operator (AI robot) begins asking how she can help. I asked her to speak to an Advanced Tech Support agent. She repeated the question. This time, I tell her my phone is blocked. She responds, “Go to AT&T online.” Like an asshole, I did that. The first pages are all verification of my account. I give all the info I can remember. The screen is stuck on a blank box asking for a passcode. I pump in the passcode I remembered from when I opened the account for my land line. It wasn’t recognized. The screen won’t advance without the information. Now, what? Frustrated, I search the pages for the word “service”. I finally find it in very small letters at the very bottom of the page. To get there I passed through page after page of smiling young ladies spieling about the new I phone 17 in super shiny colors. I wondered if there was one color that performed better than the others. In between the sexy colors I saw boxes explaining various usage plans, and pictures of smiling faces. I wasn’t smiling. I dialed the number for service and another robot answered. She repeated the same questions I got from my first attempt.
Eventually, I outwitted the robot by shouting and screaming until she transferred me to a real human. Except it wasn’t a human, the robot placed me into a line to get to a human. After listening to music for too many minutes, a real human did finally answer. The connection was scratchy at best and I had to keep asking the agent to repeat. The best way to describe this conversation is by relating that I had better conversations with my buddies when we held tin cans connected with string against our ears. The so called agent wasted precious minutes trying to get into my account to help me. One would think that giving someone at the phone company a phone number is information enough to do that. She insisted on name, address, city, country, zip code, last four digits of my Social Security number and the pass code. After struggling with four versions of my pass code she finally turned the page too get to the real stuff like the IMEI number which is nineteen characters long. I had to repeat it three times. In the middle of the third attempt my landline went dead. WTF? Then it began ringing. I stumbled to the kitchen to get the phone but it too suddenly stopped ringing. Both of the handsets had dead batteries.
Technology is wonderful when it works, but when it doesn’t, the world becomes a very dark place.
Artificial Intelligence is so stupid that it will be generations before it comes even close to replacing humans. Notice the picture of the man holding a hammer with a bent wooden handle.
Filed under: Aging, Sarcasm | Tagged: Artificial (Un) Intelligence, Cell phone service, Smart phones | 5 Comments »
