Author: Susie (Page 18 of 48)

Recently, I read an article that said Wendy’s (an Ohio-based fast food company) was partnering with Google to bring customers “Wendy’s FreshAI.”  This is short for “Wendy’s Fresh Artificial Intelligence.”

The first thing that struck me was the interesting oxymoron of “fresh” with “artificial.” Then I realized there were many more ramifications to this than a funny grammatical issue.  According to the article – in the Wall Street Journal, by the way, so not some fly-by-night internet site – there will be a “chatbot” (another new word combining “chat” with “robot,” I presume) that will take verbal orders for customers who line up at drive-thru windows.  The purpose, they say, is to reduce “long wait times.”

               First of all, HA!  These geniuses have clearly never called a company and tried to get a real human on the line, saying the word “representative” over and over until you want to scream, without success.  Or pressed the number for “representative” to be told, “no such number exists.”

               Secondly, these incredibly smart folks say that there will be “a restaurant team member” who will be present to monitor the chatbot.  So, if there’s going to be a human monitoring the chatbot, why doesn’t the human just take the order?  How does this speed anything up?

               The team at Google acknowledged that they have to program this chatbot for a number of extraneous factors, including (but not limited to):  knowing the lingo (“milkshake” means “frosty” and “JBC” means “junior bacon cheeseburger”), adapting to accents, ignoring people talking in the backseat – or children screaming, vehicle noises on the street, radios, construction, and passersby talking.  Oh, yes, this seems like an easy thing to do. There won’t be any problems with that!

               Finally, what about those of us who can’t hear well and depend on lip reading?  When the chatbot records our “double cheese with a side of fries” as “double fries with a side of cheese,” just how are we to correct it?  We can’t hear them repeat it, so….I’m guessing I’ll just eat what they give me?

               Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian acknowledged that these problems are some of the hardest to combat in creating this chatbot.  And – good news – if the chatbot isn’t getting it right, the customer will “have the option” of speaking with a human.

               Why are we changing this again?  To speed things up?  I’m not seeing how it’s going to speed anything up except our frustration.  Wendy’s spokespeople stressed that there is “no plan to replace existing workers with technology.”  They just want to “enhance the customer and crew experience by taking the complexity out of the ordering process so employees can focus on serving food and building relationships.”

I’m not sure that ordering fast food at a drive-thru is “complex.”  At least, it never has been for me.  But I’m not worried about job loss for humans – I bet the existing workers will be busy with their new roles as customer complaint representatives.

               A few years ago, my phone started sending me Amber Alert notifications.  This occurs when there is a missing child and so the receiver gets notified of the day and time the child went missing, as well as any other pertinent information (like “last seen in a 2009 Honda Accord”).  Since this is an important and helpful notification, I appreciated receiving them – even at 2:00 in the morning when there was little chance I was out of my bed and anywhere I might notice anything helpful.

               But then my phone got uppity.  It has decided, all on its’ own and without my support, help, or permission, to begin notifying me of other things.

               It started with notifications that it was going to install a critical update at 3:00 a.m.  First of all, these notifications come in the form of loud beeping.  So loud, you might think your home security alarm is going off.  Secondly, this particular notification is, again, not as useful as it might be should the aforementioned update be scheduled for some time when I might actually be using my phone.  Thus, I receive a startling siren-esque beep to tell me that my phone will install the update while I sleep.  The update, I might add, is never one that is even noticeable.  It changes nothing on my phone in any way, so I’m not sure exactly why it occurs and why I need a loud notification that it’s going to occur.

               Last fall, I started getting weather alerts.  This notification also includes a loud beep.  Then you have to go to your weather application and open it up.  That’s the easy part.  From there, you have to figure out where the actual notification is located.  Sometimes there’s a bar that says “last notification 2 hours ago.”  So, why, I’m wondering, am I getting this loud noise now?  By the time I find the actual notification, it usually tells me “rain expected.”  Okay, it’s May in the Midwest.  Duh.  I really didn’t need to be jolted out of my nap to be told that. 

               Today, I received a loud weather notification just to tell me it was “expected to be sunny most of the week.” Seriously, this is out of control.

               Just last week, I received not one, but two “health alerts.”  This was new to me and made my heart rate increase a bit.  Was my phone detecting a problem?  Breathing?  Heart?  I rushed to open up my phone to have it tell me “your step average has increased in the past 23 days.”  Well, geez, okay fine, I check my steps every night and I know I’m walking more, but does this really require a “health alert?”  The second one told me I had climbed more floors in the past two weeks than normal.  Again, making my pulse and breathing dramatically increase because I’m doing “better” should not be a “health alert.”

               If my phone really wants to be helpful, it should get rid of these notifications and tell me something useful.  How about a “gasoline alert” when the tank is low?  Or “milk alert” when I’m forgetting to buy milk at the grocery.  Here’s another one – “laundry alert!”  Maybe then I wouldn’t leave the load in the washer overnight, requiring a re-wash in the morning.             

               Until the phone decides to be helpful, I’m ignoring the weather alerts and just looking out the window.  It’s always 100%  accurate, anyway!

Recently I read a story about a teacher in Georgia who won $10,000.00 by reading the fine print in her insurance contract.  Buried in the wherefores and theretos was a small line that said the first customer who emailed their name to a specific email address would be awarded $10,000.00!  She emailed the very day she signed the contract and was the first person (likely the only one!) and indeed, received her 10K!

               It was a heartwarming story, though it did make me consider fine print.  Usually, fine print buries the rather mundane and sometimes alarming facts about the contract or product.  Case in point, are the many fine advertisements on television these days for pharmaceuticals that are designed to cure everything from itchy skin to heart conditions.  The ads always show happy, peppy, engaged people doing happy, peppy, engaged activities – gardening, painting, dancing, enjoying amusement parks, and (my personal favorite) taking baths in bathtubs in fields with no discernible source of water.

               But watch carefully and tiny little words appear for a nanosecond across the bottom of the screen.  If you happen to be able to pause your television, you can find out (if you get up, walk across the room, and squint) that this medication might cause dizziness, headaches, confusion, boils, hemorrhoids, suicidal thoughts, sudden bursts of anger, diarrhea, constipation, nausea, and infections, sometimes, fatal.            

               Seriously?  I believe I’ll just itch, thank you very much.

               You have to read coupons and print ads pretty carefully, too.  I love those ads that proclaim in big, bold lettering – big enough for me to read without glasses – that ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING IN THE STORE IS 40% OFF!  But at the bottom, in print I need my jigsaw puzzle magnifying glass to read, is the

 information about how this doesn’t cover perfumes, jewelry, housewares, or name brand clothing.  So it’s not absolutely everything, but other than that, the ad is completely accurate!

               There’s a commercial for a quick loan company that shows happy people getting thousands of dollars on the same day they applied!  Big letters say you can get up to $5000!  What a deal.  The fine print that flashes quickly on the screen does mention that this load comes with an incredible 99.25% interest rate.  In other words, you’ll have to pay back about twice what you get within a year.  Wow, that’s some fine print!

               My own fine print problem came in a box of pasta.  I was looking for an alternative to pasta that might have less wheat or processed flour.  We had tried chickpea macaroni and it was pretty good.  So I found a box of black bean spaghetti and was pretty tickled.  We like black beans.  The wording on the box seemed crystal clear.

               I cooked the pasta and made some meatballs and we sat down to a wonderful dinner.  Well, the meatballs were wonderful.  The pasta – not so much.  I powered through and ate my serving, but my husband pushed his to the side and proclaimed them “worms.”  They were, in fact, pretty nasty, and tasted nothing like either spaghetti or black beans.

               Plucking the box out of the trash, I turned it over to read the ingredients.  Not a black bean in the list (the tiny list).  However, it was comprised of primarily black SOYbean!  Fine print got me, because I didn’t read it. 
               Please, please, read the fine print!

As I’ve mentioned a few times, I tend to be a weird magnet for both people and situations.  Normally, I don’t mind this as I meet many interesting people this way.  But occasionally, it’s a tad embarrassing.  This is never more true than at sporting events.

          I realized this very early on with my (now) husband.  When we were dating, he took me to about 50 basketball games one winter-spring.  He was following a local high school team, which went all the way to the state championships and of course, we were watching college ball on television.  By the time April arrived, I was pretty much an expert at all things basketball.

          Then he took me to the Ohio State spring football game.  It was packed.  Early on in the game, the referee blew his whistle and made a circular motion with his hands.  I stood up and yelled, outraged and loudly, “Travelling??!!!”

          Two things happened simultaneously:  about 100 people turned to look at the ditzy blonde yelling the wrong call at the ref.  My husband (then boyfriend) turned to chat with the guy next to him – a perfect stranger, I might add – so that those 100 people had no idea he was with the ditzy blonde.

          Years later, there was a game at which we were challenged twice (before the game started) about our seats.  We were correct of course, because my husband always knows exactly where his seats are.  This game was also packed and my husband was next to a large – very large – stranger, whom we called “Bubba.”  My husband had nowhere to put his right arm.  He could either put it straight out in front of him or drape it around Bubba’s shoulders.  That ended up helping us when four folks arrived late – plowing through people without waiting for a break in the game – blocking our view and then standing around looking at seat numbers.  My frustrated husband said, “People, get here on time” at which one of the women began to frantically whisper to her husband. Her hubby obligingly turned to look, but when he saw my husband (who’s about 6’1” and no slouch) with his arm around Bubba the Tank, he wisely sat.

          I won’t tell the long and hilarious story of the time we went to a game and lost our car keys.  And there were two different times that tornados and severe thunderstorms drenched us at football games. Let’s just say 100,000 people do not evacuate a stadium quickly.

          These kinds of adventures have led me to expect bizarre things to happen to us at sporting events.  But they did not prepare me for our most recent baseball game.  Naturally, I had to use the bathroom in the ninth inning.  Most folks had either (a) left already, or (b) were staying to the very end and not leaving their seats.  I entered the restroom to find it completely empty – that’s strange!  I had my choice of 20 stalls, so I quickly completed my business.

          The stalls had one of those little round locks, with a tiny bar about one inch long by ¼” wide to grip and turn.  It did not surprise me to find that I had chosen the stall with the lock that wasn’t working well.

          I tried to turn it, but nothing happened.  I yanked on the door, but it didn’t budge.  After several rounds of this, I was beginning to get concerned.  I didn’t want to crawl on the bathroom floor under the door, but checking out the space, I had a bigger worry.  If I was eyeballing the space correctly, I was very likely to get stuck.  So…did I want to be stuck on the bathroom floor on my stomach or on my back?  My thought was – not at all!

          I kept turning and yanking and just as I thought I’d have to wait until the end of the game, when surely my husband would notice I hadn’t returned, the door popped open.

          Weird.  But then, I’m a magnet.