Hearing Voices

Two family members and I were discussing our interactions with virtual receptionists, automated attendants and all manner of other nonhuman voices we have in our lives these days. One said it doesn’t matter how you talk to them. You won’t hurt their feelings.

The other said that if you’re a respectful person, you’ll be respectful whether you’re talking to a friend, a virtual receptionist or your azaleas. It’s a matter of habit. On the other hand, if you swear at poor defenseless recordings you probably have it in you to swear at anybody.

I’m not sure who’s right, but I decided it’s best to live by the latter theory. Nowadays artificial voices sound so real that it’s easy to get confused. I’d hate to tell what I think is a robo caller that it’s a few gigs short of a full computer and find out it’s a real person.

Besides, I read that even calls with automated attendants are sometimes recorded for quality assurance purposes. I don’t want any temper tantrum of mine to be the entertainment at some company’s Christmas party.

But the discussion gave me something to think about. If we practice speaking politely to automated attendants and other talking devices we come across, we’ll be in shape to speak politely to real people—even if they’re as dumb as dirt when it comes to politics and other issues of the day. All sorts of gizmos including fitness devices, alarm clocks, vehicles and even gas pumps talk to us these days. Think of the practice we could get. And if we did mess up and mouth off to Alexa, there’d be no harm done.

With that in mind, I picked up my phone and said, “Hi Siri! Could you please tell me what the square root of 72 is?” She said, “Approximately 8.4852.” Instead of just going on with my business like I normally would, I thanked her. And she said, “You’re welcome.” She’s so nice when you treat her right.

Of course, I didn’t need to know the square root of 72. Suddenly I felt bad for always asking her silly questions like, “Does the early bird really get the worm?” and “And “How much wood can a woodchuck chuck?” I apologized and Siri said, “It’s all good.” She’s so sweet.

Later that day I thanked the Google maps lady in my car for not saying “recalculating” all the time like my old GPS did. She didn’t say so, but I think she appreciated that I’d noticed.

The next time I had the chance, I went to a self-checkout register. I prefer human clerks unless I’m buying something embarrassing like the sharing size of M&Ms. It’s probably a guilty conscience, but I always feel like the clerk knows I don’t intend to share.

I wasn’t buying M&Ms but I wanted to practice being respectful to the voice. On those rare occasions I’ve used self-checkout, I’ve found the voices to be helpful, but I’ve never once thanked them for it. I decided to make sure I did this time.

I followed the voice’s step-by-step instructions including pressing the button that said, “use my own bag.” Then I placed it in the bagging area and tried to scan my first item. The voice said, “There is an unknown item in the bagging area.”

I said gently, “That’s my bag, dear. You remember.”

The voice said, “Please remove the item from the bagging area.”

I repeated, not quite as gently, “It’s my bag.” But she still wouldn’t let me scan my first item.

“Now you’re just being unreasonable,” I said irritably.

I stuffed my bag into my purse and tried again. This time the voice let me scan my groceries. I was annoyed, but to my credit, I still thanked her when she reminded me to take my receipt. I believe what I said was, “Thanks for nothing.”

Dorothy Rosby is an author and humor columnist whose work appears regularly in publications in the West and Midwest. You can subscribe to her blog at www.dorothyrosby.com or contact at www.dorothyrosby.com/contact.