I can’t tell you to click on this logo, but I can tell you that clicking on it (or the bigger ad further into the issue) pays me $1.31.

I need to stop telling myself that everything will fall into place once I move because I don’t want to be disappointed when it inevitably doesn’t. Movers come this weekend. What is the etiquette? Do you also carry stuff or just hold doors?

People came to tour our current place this week. Why am I selling it to them as if I’m the realtor? Why does it matter to me that someone good moves in, and moves in soon?

I want a couple (that sleeps in the same bedroom) to rent our place so that it can stay a big 1-bed. If not, the landlord will build a wall in the middle to make the unit into the true 2-bedroom it was supposed to be, making the space feel much less spacious, bright, and special.

A few couples came to tour over the weekend. I hope they want my big table that won’t fit in the new place. One couple came along with one set of parents and a sister to tour. It was kind of iconic to see a random sweet dad looking at our books and an aloof, sunglass’d mom sitting on a bench she wouldn’t be caught dead with in her own home. I saw on StreetEasy that someone applied. Too bad they’ll be paying $400 more a month than we did.

Between work and prepping to move, I’ve been asking a lot of strangers — humans, robots, and robotic-voiced humans — for help lately. It’s been exhausting.

I have to pause this train of thought to tell you what just happened. I just sneezed, and Meera said Bless you from the other side of the room. The only problem: I turned towards her and said Bless you at the same time. I guess I’m really locked into writing…or the positive self-talk is really becoming instinctual.

Anyway, I’m not talking about real help or opening up to loved ones when you’re struggling. I don’t have a degree to talk you into trusting the people that love you. I do, however, spend hours of my time troubleshooting things I don’t understand.

Part of my job is wading through the disorganized technical muck of the millions of systems I lord over. Unfortunately, I am but a mere mortal and cannot go at it alone.

I spend a lot of time in customer service chat windows. Their first line of defense is almost always a robot. I understand that a robot can be helpful, but my problems are usually too complicated for the robot. I’m a complex girl! My goal is to get to the human ASAP.

Today, I was inspired to write this entry because of my least favorite support desk: Meta Business Suite. I know my fellow social media and advertising freakazoids get it. Like renting from a negligent landlord, Meta has designed a world in which we depend on them for so much of our livelihoods, but things break constantly and the solutions don’t come easily.

Meta’s robot was trying to help me with connecting a Facebook page with an Instagram page. After correcting it on my problem because it didn’t look at my error screenshots, it gave me some solutions to try. They did not work, so I was expecting to get to finally talk to a human.

They didn’t even give me the chance to talk to a human! How can we prevent AI from becoming our overlords if there isn’t a human in the driver’s seat?

Then again, humans don’t always help me either. I’ve been trying to get something fixed on a site for two months; the human tells me that a higher-up technical specialist will email me, they never do so I reach out again, and the cycle continues. I have another problem with a process that requires two different applications, and both app help desks tell me that the problem is with the other app. I’ve been on Meta support talking to people for upwards of five hours in one sitting and still not getting what I need.

Meera was talking to Verizon support over the weekend while trying to set up WiFi in the new place. Look how this real, human person spoke to her:

This keyboard warrior tyranny must stop. You defeat a faceless villain by unmasking it, and if we can’t see its face, we can at least hear its voice.

While we’re still talking about villains, every region has an energy company that rules over them and jacks up their bills. For New York, it’s Con Ed. I tried setting up utilities at my new place online, but Con Ed errored out and told me to call their hotline. Another thing to complain about with them.

The endless lines I should be waiting in in this city are for fad restaurants, not customer service desks. Surprisingly, Con Ed agrees. I was almost immediately connected to a human who fixed my problem and scheduled a different day for the electricity to turn off at my current apartment. I tried doing that online originally but the system dissuaded me. Not this human being, though! She was super nice and we had an easy time. I learned that her birthday is on the day that I’m turning service on. Would a person or robot type that in over a support chat? No!

I got my problem swiftly solved by a human in a better way than I could have done on my own. This is the America we want: people helping people, banding together, and seizing the means of production.

Many people have worked customer service-esque jobs. There are all kinds of ways to do customer service aside from being in a call center. A salesperson helps teach people how to use their products. If a town is like a business, a firefighter is a customer service person ready to troubleshoot firewalls.

I, too, was like a customer service person. When I worked in local news, part of being an assignment editor is being the first person that answers the phone when someone calls the newsroom. I talked to all sorts of characters that in another time would have verses dedicated to them in “Eleanor Rigby” by The Beatles. I was there to help people that needed the latest updates from the news station (and for one guy that called asking the Celtics score for almost every playoff game one year).

I also learned to talk to a lot of customer service people. A 911 dispatcher is the highest form of customer service person, and a politician’s communications secretary is the lowest. Sometimes it feels so embarrassing deep in your bones to make a phone call, but I learned to fight off my generational instincts.

To learn how to talk to a customer service person on the phone, I convinced myself that I’m not myself, a beautiful young girl working her first real job — I’m a journalist. My identity is stripped; no one on the other line really cares who I am. I am defined by my purpose, and I carry this today. When I called Con Ed, I was just a customer. I can sound stupid or take my time getting the right information to answer their question; they don’t really care who I am as long as we get to the end of the call safely.

These are skills that my generation and the ones after will avoid if we continue careening towards asynchronicity and away from real-time conversation. We must ban all other forms of help desks than the most physical we can get, which in most cases is the phone call.

Conversations over the phone end faster than ones over chat: I have no evidence for this other than my own experience. I get that it usually takes longer to talk to a human over the phone than a human over chat, but once the conversation begins, you can’t just sit idly and slowly troubleshoot. You have the immediacy of another person on the line. If it’s over a video call, even better because you can share your screen and work in real time. And companies with long call wait times can just use AI support operators to weed people out before they can get to the humans.

Keeps us kinder: On both sides, we want to treat others the way we want to be treated as we reach a solution. Service reps and customers deserve diginity. Nevermind all the stereotypes of people screaming over the phone at a support technician! Society clearly wants to be kinder and loves love! Look out, world! I’m sure that everyone will be excited to make a new friend, especially the lonely older folks speaking to a support clerk from another country with an accent! It works for them on 90 Day Fiancé, so it must work here!

Say it, forget it. Write it, regret it: This is a legendary quote from Dorinda Medley of The Real Housewives of New York. Although customer service calls are probably recorded and notes are taken at certain times, maybe the overworked and underpaid reps can get a little relief by making false promises to callers only to not be held accountable for the words they say.

As real Americans, we need to get things done ourselves. We don’t need handouts! Customer service, no matter the medium, dehumanizes us — and that was happening before the robots joined us.

Here’s a great podcast episode about how bad customer service is a feature, not a bug:

Customer service actually reflects a deep American value: how we need to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and work hard to get what we deserve. Just kidding, it reflects the actually American value of knowing the right people to get far. If you or someone you know works with or sleeps with a high-level Meta support technician, introduce me. In exchange, I just met a really nice Taurus working at Con Ed.

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