Hello? Where Is Everybody?

The shopping centre we find ourselves in also has an IKEA nearby. My daughter & I pop in to walk through the isles that house the teddy bears. She picks out a giraffe that now lives by the name Giraffa or just Raffa. For once, we don’t really need anything else in this lovely Swedish store so we head downstairs to find the checkout registers. Instead of encountering a friendly face that helps with the payment process, we’re greeted with closed registers resulting in too long lines. The only open ones are self-scanners. There goes the possibility for some lightweight banter.

Our fridge is empty. We bike to the nearest supermarket for some quick midweek resupplies. No long queues this time, but just as little employees waiting for us at the checkout: only the occasional self-scan verification makes chitchat possible. I see that they closed yet another “human checkout lane”. The System Works.

On one of the campuses where I teach, as part of an experiment, a small physical Amazon store has been opened. This is one of those weird zero personnel stores where everything operates through cameras and image recognition. It feels creepy to even be there. It was also ridiculously expensive and the experiment has been put on hold, but during my trip to the USA I encountered more of these… things? Supply factories? Stores? I don’t know what to call them.

My ISP is giving me a headache by wrongly configuring something in the remote-controlled router. This wasn’t the first time it happened, but this time, I can’t seem to fix it myself. So I dial the free support number, only to be greeted with too many robot-controlled menu options. Press 1 for Dutch. Press 2 for other requests. Press 3 if you really really need to really talk to a human—are you sure? Press 6 to confirm. Press 7 to confirm. Please wait 20 more minutes.

After ten minutes, I disconnect in frustration and turn to the internet. There’s a FAQ page, a support page pointing to the FAQ page, and of course a lovely genAI-controlled chatbot. After “reasoning” (ha!) with the bot for a few minutes, it suggests to call the number I already called 30 minutes ago. I try to look for an email address but can’t find one. My fuck this, I’ll solve it myself attitude ultimately fixed the problem at the cost of a portion of my social self.

I mentor a couple of students working their way through various internships in the IT industry. As the point of contact for the school, I head over there three times: an initial conversation to set the stage, a quick check-in to validate if everything is still going well, and a more formal evaluation meeting to hand out grades together with the employer. I look up where I need to be, bike over there, find the correct building but not the correct floor. I missed the info desk at the entrance—oh wait, it’s just… not there. There’s also no information on the elevator as to which company operates on which floor.

I eventually find the info I need in a hallway and arrive at the reception desk of the company. Again, nobody home. I can see people clutched behind their laptop in adjacent rooms through the windows. I resist the urge to wave and look around. The glass door towards the company’s hallway is locked. There’s an iPad bolted on the reception desk where I have to register myself. The form demands my email address (I provide my work one as they have it anyway) and a telephone number (Yeah right! What about 123456789?). It states my contact will pick me up soon. I wait. I again resist the urge to wave.

After 10 minutes, the person picks me up and walks me towards the meeting room. I mention the awkward impersonal registration process; he assures it works perfectly. As a software professional myself, knowing the many points of failure, I don’t believe him. He admits to being a bit later because the system works with Slack messages but he was monitoring the wrong channel. I wished I did wave.

This depersonalising of receptions to “optimise” employee efficiency leaves a very bad taste in the mouth of the visitors. I biked home confused and still feel a little sad when thinking about it. How hard can it be to put a human there to, you know, greet the visitor with, you know a smile instead of an iPad that demands personal data that’s not relevant to the visit? In the form, I had to select my contact person (that gets notified with a Slack message) which is a simple <select/> that revealed every employee’s first name and last name. Oops?

On top of that, the “the person is notified, sit back and relax!” wasn’t relaxing at all: I know how async backend messages work: the frontend shows “relax dude!” but the backend says 500 and your message never reaches the contact person. Just raise that hand. Wave. If a receptionist calls someone, I can hear them making the call and I know I can relax: the message has been passed. Smile.

Hello? Where is everybody? This evolution depresses me. I want to see real (not generated) faces and talk to someone real (not generated). The rise of these annoying CAN I HELP YOU WITH ANYTHING?? chatbots on corporate websites replacing a simple contact form only adds to the irritation. I can certainly relate to the increased amount of spam received through these forms, but I pay you every month enough to keep the lights on. The least I expect in return is a humane customer service experience.