By Dorothy Rosby
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.