This morning I placed a call to my mail-order pharmacy, expecting to take care of business in an easy two-minute conversation with a representative. Instead, a robotic voice answered and immediately put me through a useless, time-consuming session of questions that did not relate to my problem and did nothing to solve it.

Finally, I hung up and called back, only to get caught up in the same round of robotic questions. I was never given an option to speak with an agent. Even when I asked to speak with a live person—repeatedly, in fact—I was still caught up in the insane, robotic loop that led nowhere.

If I had only needed the two prescriptions the robot had listed for me, I could have placed the order and gone about my business. But I needed a third the AI couldn’t find, although it was clearly part of my prescription list.

Three attempts and fifteen minutes later, I finally managed to get past the idiotic robot to a real person. In less than a minute, I had placed an order for my three prescriptions. I could have breathed a sigh of relief and gone about my business, but I knew the ordeal was not over. In the future, every time I call with a problem that doesn’t fit the robot’s programmed questions, I will go through the same time-wasting, blood-pressure elevating, senseless ordeal.

And not just with the online pharmacy, but with every other business who has chosen to dehumanize its customers by removing themselves and putting us in the hands of robots. Or as they like to call it, “automated customer service.” Don’t believe a word of it. There is no real service involved here.  You, the customer, have become unimportant. The big companies don’t want to waste money hiring people to offer real customer service. They want to cut corners with AI. They want to remove themselves from you and make it next-to-impossible to hear what you have to say—good or bad.

I’m no conspiracy theorist, but I often wonder if using these misnamed “automated customer services,” the intent, all along, was to dehumanize us. It certainly was not designed to provide optimum customer service and satisfaction.

There is no good mental health without human interaction, no real quality of life, no opportunities for compassion, joy, love. There is only isolation, frustration, and the hopeless feeling that you might just be alone in this world. 

Although I’m writing on a tough deadline and stretching myself to my limits every day to meet it, this morning I took the time to lodge a grievance with the mail-order pharmacy service.  Will it do any good? I doubt it. But I will never give up. I’m human.

God is still good.

Peggy Webb