Me and the Xfinity Robot

I am slowly recovering from my most recent interaction with the Xfinity robot. Hoping to discuss my WiFi problem with a human being, I had dialed the number of the local Xfinity store. But, like the angel with a flaming sword set to guard the entrance to Paradise, the Xfinity robot intercepted me and demanded to know the nature of my problem. “Malfunctioning modem,” I growled, anticipating trouble. I have lots of experience with the Xfinity and other robots, and I feel, when trying to communicate with them, the same kind of frustration that I experienced making myself understood before I became fluent in English.

Sure enough, the Xfinity robot failed to understand me. Instead, she (most of these robots are female, possibly because it makes them sound less threatening and more helpful, like a mother or a nurse) gave me a list of options, none of which, as usual, applied to my situation. I have wondered about this a lot. Why is it that my needs never fit neatly into the menus offered by online robots? Are my requirements more exotic than those of the general population and thus could not have been anticipated by the engineers who design these systems?

Feeling the familiar tide of despair about to engulf me, I played my last card, one that occasionally works. “SPEAK TO AN AGENT!” I bellowed. This hurt the robot’s feelings, and she reverted to coldly reciting the original list of options. After several rounds of pleas for an agent on my part and refusals on hers, it became apparent that my only hope of contacting a living human lay in letting the robot “do a reset” of my modem. This, she warned, would temporarily interrupt all my internet and phone service. If the reset (whatever it was) didn’t work, I would then and only then be allowed to speak to a person.

Finally, when the robot asked me for the umpteenth time whether I consented to the reset, I gave in. But I felt that I was burning my boats, leaping into the unknown, possibly risking my life. If the reset failed to work and I was left with neither phone nor internet, how would I ever contact an Xfinity human, or any human at all?

As it happened, the reset worked and apparently all is well. But who knows? In another day or two, or a week at most, the modem problem may return. Or my mobile will lose its signal. Or the printer will go into a decline or the computer go into a coma. This is life in the 21st century, and I might as well get used to it.

The trouble is, I can’t. Having spent most of my years in the second half of the 20th century, I would find it easier to adjust to life in the late  19th than in the 21st. Instead of texting and emailing, I would write long letters in elegant handwriting. Glass, paper, and leather would replace plastics. Instead of a car filled with potentially malfunctioning computers I would have a friendly, warm, living horse, and nice wood fires instead of central heating. Air conditioning would be irrelevant because global warming would be still in the future. Television would be replaced by books and music and art. I would miss indoor plumbing at first, but people get used to all kinds of things. In our Barcelona apartment, six of us shared a bathroom with no apparent problem.

Ah, you say, but you’d miss the medical stuff! True, I would miss my artificial hips and my hearing aids and whatever organ replacements and enhancements my future may hold. But I would be free from the imperative, brought about by all this medical progress, to stay fit, active, cheerful, and cognitively sharp until and even beyond my 100th birthday. I would instead be allowed to loll about on a sofa, ear trumpet by my side, dispensing wisdom to the younger generations, basking in a well-earned rest from my life’s work, and never having to argue with the Xfinity robot again.