This morning an email showed up from the bank.
It said a purchase over five dollars had posted to my store card. Then it asked me a simple question. Did you make this purchase?
I didn’t. So I did what any reasonable person would do. I hit reply and said so. No, I did not. Tell me more.
Then I read the fine print at the bottom. “This is an unmonitored email box. Please do not reply to this email.”
They asked me a question. Then they told me I wasn’t allowed to answer it.
Buried in that same email was the real number. Not five dollars. Four hundred fifty-seven dollars and forty-nine cents. An online order. Placed that morning. Not by me.
The bank had a reason for that empty mailbox. Email is easy to fake. If a crook could answer as you, he could change your address or order a new card. So the bank won’t act on an email. I understand that. I’ll give them that much.
But understanding the reason doesn’t make it any less backward. They built a machine that can ring the alarm and can’t hear you answer it.
That email isn’t special. It’s just today’s version of what we deal with every day.
There are two of us in this house. Two seniors. We stay home most days. You’d think that would make life simple. It doesn’t. Every single day something has to be dealt with. Something that should have been done right the first time.
A package needs to go back. That’s a chore. A bill comes in wrong. That’s a chore. A service gets cut off or never shows up. That’s a chore. A phone call to fix any of it eats the whole morning.
Nothing today is easy. Not one thing.
You call the number. A recording answers. It asks you to say what you need. You say it. It doesn’t understand. You say it again, slower. It sends you to the wrong place. You press zero. It hangs up on you.
When you finally reach a living person, you’d think the hard part was over. It isn’t.
You explain a simple thing. Plain words. A simple bit of math. This plus this does not equal that. And they answer you with a script. Word for word. Like they didn’t hear one thing you said. Like you were talking to the wall and the wall talked back.
It’s amazing how hard it has become to explain a simple task to another human being.
I don’t blame every person on the other end of that phone. A lot of them are tired. A lot of them are told to stick to the script or lose their job. Some of them care and can’t do a thing about it.
But somewhere up the line, somebody decided this was good enough. Somebody decided our time was cheap. Somebody decided a recording was cheaper than a person who listens. And somebody decided that if we get tired and give up, that’s a win for them.
That’s the part that sticks in my craw.
And it’s getting worse, not better. More of these systems are run by machines now. Chatbots. Automated agents. Programs that act in your name and answer your questions. Some of them are handy. But a machine built to talk and not to listen is just a fancier version of that empty mailbox.
So here’s what I’ve learned. Every one of these systems has a back door. You have to know where it is.
For a credit card, the real door is the number on the back of the card. Not the number in the email. Not the link they send you. The one on the card in your wallet. That’s the one you know is real.
If the phone is hard for you, and for a lot of us it is, dial 711. That’s a relay service. It’s free. An operator types out what the other side says, so you can read it. Banks handle those calls every day. Most folks have never heard of it.
You can also log in yourself. Type in the web address with your own hands. Don’t click their link. Go in the front door you know.
None of that should be our job. But right now it is. If you don’t know where the real door is, you’re stuck at the wall with the recording.
I want you to hear me on this. You’re not slow. You’re not behind the times. You’re not the problem. When you explain something simple and get a recording back, the failure is on their end. Not yours.
So keep asking. Keep pushing. Write it down. Get names. Get dates. Ask for a supervisor. Ask again. The squeaky wheel still gets the grease, even in a world full of machines.
And look out for each other. If you know the back door, tell your neighbor. Tell the older couple down the street. Tell the young mom who’s too worn out to fight with a phone tree. That’s how we get through this. Together.
“Call Back When I’m Ready To Listen”
A system that can ask you a question but can’t hear your answer isn’t serving you.
You’re serving it.
And I, for one, am done serving the machine or the people to lazy to listen.
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This post was drafted with AI governed assistance and reviewed and directed by Michael S. Faust Sr. before publication.
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