Railing Against the Robots.

I used the last cheque in my cheque book yesterday, and then went to pick up the new one from the drawer in which I always keep it. It wasn’t there. ‘Oh dear,’ I thought, ‘the bank mustn’t have sent me one. Better give them a ring.’ So rang them I did, and this is the early part of the conversation:

Thank you for calling Santander. I can see that you’re calling from a phone which is registered with us.

(Thinks: No you can’t. You’re a robot. What you should be saying is ‘our equipment indicates that you are calling…’)

But let’s not be pedantic. The voice of Ms Metal continued:

Now say ‘At Santander my voice is my password.’

(‘Ah,’ I thought, ‘voice recognition software. I wonder whether it will work. Let’s give it a go.’)

‘My voice is my password.’

Please say ‘At Santander my voice is my password.’

(Now who’s being pedantic? OK, OK. Resistance is useless…)

‘At Santander my voice is my password.’

Now tell me what you are calling about today.

‘I have not received my new cheque book.’

Could you try again and be more specific.

(In what way is my statement lacking in the matter of specifics? But OK, OK again, let’s try a positive instruction.)

‘Please send me a new cheque book.’

I see, so you want to know the balance on your account. The balance on your account is…

(This is becoming worse than silly. How can even the most dumbass algorithm or bloody robot translate ‘Please send a new cheque book’ as ‘I want to know the balance on my account’?)

I won’t go on, except to say that it got worse before it got better. Eventually I managed to speak to someone who took a few details and undertook to send me a new cheque book. It took half an hour of hair-tearing to get there.

Here’s what used to happen until a few short years ago:

You dialled the number and a voice answered with ‘For security purposes, please enter your 16-digit card number or security code if you have one.’ You entered it, and then an adviser picked up the phone. He or she asked a couple more security questions and then dealt with the enquiry. In the case of simply needing a new cheque book, the whole business was sorted in five minutes at most. So here’s my point:

I am not, as some might imagine, falling prey to unthinking reactionism in bemoaning the move to automation. I am perfectly happy with, and welcoming of, many of the technological enhancements to life over the past hundred years (telephones, fridges, automatic washing machines, sliced bread…) Perfectly content and even grateful because most of them benefited the generality of people. They made life easier.

But the current drive towards automation in nearly all maters pertaining to communication is not benefitting the generality of people. All too often it’s confusing, frustrating, time-consuming, and often dysfunctional. What it’s doing is increasing the generality of stress, and thereby contributing to mental health issues which appear to be reaching near-epidemic proportions. And we all know – or should do – that most of it is not intended to benefit the generality of people anyway. It’s there because it enables the users – banks and the corporate world mostly – to employ fewer people and thus make even bigger profits. It’s a demon given genesis by a greedy capitalist system becoming ever greedier. That’s why I’m not at all happy with it.

There's nothing any of us can do about it, of course. We're living in a machine age in which real people are becoming increasingly redundant and all the big money-making organisations are leading the way together. This problem has become one of the great talking points of the age, second only to the weather and growing by the year. Everybody has their own stock of stories to tell, stories of the frustrating inanities so routinely evident in a system to which we are all shackled. And don't we just love the ubiquitous fall-back: Did you know that you can find answers to most questions on our website? Go to wwwdot... No, no, no! When we have a problem we want to talk to somebody. It's how humans have always functioned best and how we want to continue functioning. But the system says 'no', and resistance really is useless.

And on that note I rest my case because it’s time to do my weekly blood pressure test. I can hear the little device trembling in the cupboard…