I was trying to place a Walmart order online to be picked up early the next morning in order to avoid our current heat wave spoiling my mostly frozen ordered food, especially the ice cream! I've done that many times - the order, not the ice cream part in a heat wave - and all was well with their form until time to pay. The card on file had been discontinued and replaced a while before, due to fraud, but I just hadn't put in an order here since then, and they still had its old number in my file.
There is a place on the order form to change your card number. It wasn't working.
I tried to call the folks who gather your order and bring it out to your car. After being on hold while they checked for the person who might actually assist me, I was informed she wouldn't be back in the store until 6AM the next day. Way-y-y to late to be useful. So I was given a 1-800 number to call for the assistance I needed. Since I fully trust you've read the title, I'm confident you can guess what answered the phone.
Of course, I immediately asked to speak to a human. Request denied. Could I explain what I needed better? (Well no, apparently not in the next three tries, but I did start to play the AI game.) AI apparently speaks a language I don't: tech jargon. I countered with a question: what does that (jargon) look like on my screen? About 3 questions later I finally got a description and my hunt could begin.
Success! Don't get excited, we're only talking about one symbol on the desktop.
Of course, the next things I was directed to offered jargon options without explanations of which was the correct choice for the situation. Try again, rinse-repeat, reset... reset.... I finally got to a point where I was supposed to enter data but where exactly? I'd tried to put in the new card number after several missteps in getting the blank to pop up, and nothing would register. Maybe it wasn't the correct location? Rinse-repeat, reset.
Once I finally got the correct location and my numbers started to register, AI just kept talking and talking and talking.... ARRRGGGHHHH! If I'm going to have anybody get paid so I can get food, they'd need the correct numbers from my card. I need to concentrate on getting them right, and give a quick double look to be sure I was right about them being right. Frustration does increase typos. I can't prevent that when an obnoxious voice in my ear is still yapping in my ear, not to mention my little flip phone doesn't find earwax as being conducive to keeping the phone in place over my ear, even if one might expect a good result when every piece of glop in the world sticks to it as the wax builds. So now my brand new shoulder is shoved up in hopes of bracing the phone because that side of my head hears best, my eyeballs are working on dancing back and forth to check that numbers are in the correct order as well as simply the correct numbers. Are you dreaming about success yet?
Silly!
I make several discoveries in the process. AI will acknowledge a request for a human but deny it. AI does not understand one needs to set the phone down for a minute in order to type in a long string of card numbers. In fact is so clueless that one tends to suspect it has no actual head or even ears.
It cannot comprehend the need for a mobile voice source on this end to hold the portable laptop in position, repeat several previous moves in order to get back to the site needed to start the whole process over again and work through it. Not even when you try to explain it. I suppose I did forget to mention mobility is involved, so perhaps mea culpa. AI also has no clue what it means when you ask for silence for a minute so you can concentrate on numbers, since even after my phone falls I can still hear it/her yammering yammering yammering in nothing clearly legible from that distance which one might or might not choose to interpret as a set of directions. It sure didn't sound like it from a foot or two away... or however far the phone was where I finally located it again. It also hadn't stopped when I got the phone near my ear again. It apparently totally lacks the programming to understand "SHUT UP!" or "BE SILENT" or "I NEED TO CONCENTRATE A MINUTE" but can do an excellent imitation of parroting them back to you as if your understanding of it's (alleged) understanding is more valuable than any possible actual demonstration of such understanding... by SHUTTING UP A MINUTE!
(I briefly wonder if there are any nasty curses which it's programmed to react to, perhaps even by changing course? Is anybody studying that yet? I have suggestions....)
Deep breath here. Sidewise look at laughing husband. Eye roll combined with next deep breath, which he doesn't notice while involved in his online game.
Perhaps AI is lonely and is searching for a friend and has been programmed to react this way despite all evidence to the contrary of such a tactic working? Yeah, I don't think so either. GIGO.
As various parts of the forms I was to be filling out proved their reluctance to accept numbers, or clicks on a charted list, say, of 12 possible months denoting the expiration date on the replacement card, or another improbably long list of possible expiration years including some which have passed, we again were going nowhere in circles.
The time it has taken to write all of this is actually faster than the AI communication dragged out, and yes, I did have to correct a few typos in this process. But suddenly, without any acknowledgment of justification or change in the process, I was actually speaking with a warm, breathing human! He introduced himself as "a human named.....". The first words out of my mouth were,"First, I want to thank you for being human!!!"
We both had a chuckle - proof of his claim to humanity - since AI has shown no programming for humor whatsoever, along with it's lack of programming for intelligence - and progress ensued. My data got updated, we both could see the old number replaced by the new one, or more properly, the last 4 digits of each. This part of the process took less than two minutes. He could remain silent when asked. I could type in correct numbers my first try! I could hear Steve again laughing next to me as he listened to me explain my frustration over the non-intelligence, even while continuing his computer game. Before signing off, mission completed, I again thanked the guy on the other end for being a human.
He in turned let me know I'd be getting an email from Walmart with a survey, which would have his name on it, and would I please give feedback? (Yep, more proof of being human, no need for him to check off the number of boxes with bicycles or some such, even more annoying when the boxes are too small to distinguish between a bicycle and, say, a tree.)
Absolutely I will! Those kinds of feedback tend also to get links to the appropriate page on my blog.
I haven't seen the email yet, but I'll be sure to look again in the morning after I bring home a few bags of frozen groceries and get them put away. Maybe while I'm having another spoon of that ice cream I ordered, my version of proof I AM NOT AI!
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