I Hope the Robots Take Our Jobs
Because it’s time to redefine work.
“Pretty soon they’ll have a machine that can do your job. Then what will you do, what’s the plan?”
I bit my tongue and tried to laugh it off, but the annoying client in front of me decided he wanted to be an interrogator.
“Do you have any other skills?” he asked.
I wanted to ask him if he thought any of us wanted to be working in a customer service role. Did he really think it was my life’s dream to perform thankless tasks thousands of times until my hands hurt? Perhaps he thought I found deep meaning in helping the hostile public with their money problems through a pandemic.
But I didn’t say any of that. I laughed and made some kind of comment about how everyone here has hopes beyond working in customer service or management.
Americans have feared robots coming to take their jobs away for years. To what extent that will happen in the future, I can’t say because I haven’t seen the future yet. But after spending several years working in customer service, I know one thing for sure.
I hope the robots do take our jobs.
The biggest problem in the workforce
In the early twentieth century, the coal mining industry was booming. But it was also brutal.
Coal miners spent sixteen or more hours per day bent over in the dust-filled mines. In some cases, it took an hour (of unpaid time) to get from the surface to where you started your day’s work. Kids as young as ten years old were working along with adults. And the at wasn’t even the worst part.
Most coal towns had a general store where all the coal miners bought their necessities. But the coal companies also owned the general stores so they controlled prices. If your low wages weren’t enough to take care of your family’s necessities, you could buy on credit. Then, the company could deduct payments from your paycheck thereby lowering your pay even further.
You were trapped in an inhumane cycle.
Over decades of political reform, conditions slowly improved (a little). Workweeks had fixed hours and days, and a minimum wage provided guaranteed pay. So yeah, things have gotten a lot better for the average worker. Except for one glaring problem.
Human nature hasn’t changed. And human nature remains the single biggest problem in the workforce.
See, no matter how great a company tries to be for its employees, if you work with the public, you have to deal with people. And if you have to deal with people, you’re up against human nature.
Sure, there are some people who are great to work with. But for the most part, the general public treats customer service representatives like crap. So let the robots and the AI have it.
But what about all the essential workers?
Do you mean those workers who let the unvaccinated masses walk all over them through the pandemic?
Perhaps you’re talking about the single mom who works 40+ hours a week and still can’t keep her bank accounts out of the red.
Oh — sorry, you’re talking about those heroes who go home mentally and emotionally exhausted every evening, then snap at their families because they’ve dealt with rude, racist, and entitled customers all day.
Yes, what will they ever do without the jobs they’d give anything to get out of? Perhaps they’d find better, more fulfilling work.
This fear that robots will take over the workforce comes from people who don’t understand how radically the economy has changed in the last thirty years. The internet has made it possible to make money in ways that our grandparents couldn’t have imagined.
Millennials and Gen Z are redefining work to the point the very nature of work is changing.
Look, I’m no economist, but it doesn’t take a genius to see how many people would rather make money online playing video games, or live-streaming their sleep than to subject themselves to the merciless general public.
You don’t fear robots taking all the jobs. You fear society changing, and you fear having to adapt to those changes or get left behind.
But somebody has to do the hard work
Do you still wonder why nobody wants to work?
Blame it on stimulus check if you want to. Blame it on people being lazy or weak if that suits your outlook.
The real reason people aren’t flocking to the frontline, customer service jobs (or jobs anywhere for that matter) is because of human nature. People don’t have to take the abuse. Soul-sucking jobs where you get treated like crap aren’t the only option anymore.
People are no longer looking for stable jobs with great benefits where they can work for the next forty years. The internet changed all that.
If you truly want to keep in the workforce, you need to change human nature and teach society how to value people over convenience.
In this new economy, there are better ways to make money.
But somebody has to do the jobs that keep society running, you say. Well again, I can’t see the future, but it makes sense that if the basic jobs get taken over by robots, somebody will have to program, install, and maintain them. There will always be a human element somewhere.
The nature of work is changing. And that means we have to change with it.
So, I welcome the robots.