~ a column by Colleen O’Brien
Into my new bank I go. A couple of people are standing, talking to computer screens. A smiling person on the screen talks to them.
There are no tellers, and it’s not lunchtime.
I wander over to a screen and look at it. What am I supposed to do?
A 30-something guy walks out of a door in the back of the lobby, where I stand with the computers and the two people conversing with an onscreen person.
The man says to me, “Hi, I’m Jaha, how can I help you?” He has a nice smile and a sincere voice.
“Hi, Jaha,” I say. “My name’s Colleen. I need to cash a check.”
“Punch the START button,” he says, as he points to the computer in front of me.
I do so, and a guy appears on the screen. “Hi, my name is Alex. How can I help you?”
“How may you help me,” I correct him.
He continues smiling. I wonder if he’s a robot who was programmed with bad grammar.
“I need to cash a check,” I say.
Jaha has disappeared, apparently okay with my budding transaction with a screen person.
“Is this check from someone else?” asks the screen man. “Or are you writing a check on your account, which you don’t have to do, just say your account number.”
“I don’t know that number right off the top of my head; where do I find it?
“On your statement.”
“I didn’t happen to bring that with me to cash a check.”
“It’s on your check,” says the embodiment of some person whom I/m now thinking of as Alex-on-Screen.
“I didn’t bring my check book. This is a check to me, not from me.
“Okay,” Alex-on-Screen says, happy as a clam. “Just slide your check you want to cash into the slot.
I look at what’s right before me below the screen of the smiling maybe human Alex. “Uh, which slot?”
“Well, the one right in front of you.”
I try several areas that kind of look like they might be a slot, and the last one eats my check.
“I think it’s now in the slot,” I say.
“Yes, Colleen! You got it!”
Have I won the lottery?
“How do you want the bills?” Alex-on-Screen asks.
I say, “Five 20s, ten 10s, twenty 5s and whatever is left, I’d like in ones.”
“Fine!”
There is a pause. I wait.
Alex-on-Screen says, in a melancholy voice, “We, uh, don’t have any twenties right now. Or tens.”
I’m a tad shocked. “This is a bank, isn’t it?” I ask.
“I will give you two hundreds for the 20s and 10s,” Alex-on-Screen says, back to his happy voice.
“I’m cashing this check for a road trip I’m taking tomorrow,” I say, “and I don’t really want to pay with hundred-dollar bills when I stop to get gas and only want a bag of Cheetos, which is a stupid thing for me to put on my credit card.”
“Well, Colleen [like he’s my friend], you can take the hundreds over to the counter, and a teller will help you.”
I turn around to the teller counter. There are no tellers.
As I swivel back to Alex-on-Screen, Jaha emerges again from his door in the background. “I’ll help you, Ma’am. The tellers are on lunchbreak.”
I get up, smiling at him, wondering what business entity sends its employees on lunchbreak all at once.
I follow Jaha to the normal teller-type counter, he takes my two one-hundred-dollar bills and goes into a back room, comes out and counts out five 20s and ten 10s.
He comes ‘round the counter, and as I head for the door, stuffing my bills into my purse, we, for some reason, start a conversation about how iffy it is driving around a city right now. “Everyone is so aggressive,” Jaha says.
“And they don’t use their signals to make a turn,” I say. “And they like to cut me off and ride my ass.”
He looks at me in shock; I am an over-80-year-old — quite obviously so — and he is having a difficult time accepting the fact that I can swear.
“Well,” Jaha says, “there are too many angry folks out there driving cars.”
I say, “Ya know, Jaha? Why they’re angry?”
“No,” says the kind Jaha.
“Because they’ve been to a bank like this.”
He laughs; he can’t quit laughing.
I drive away, hoping he tells his higher-ups what’s wrong with Artificial Intelligence.
~~
On Mother’s Day, I’m talking to my son on the phone, and I tell him about this encounter.
His response is flat-out honest and chilling: “Mom, the world is going to be AI, and your children’s generation gets it. As soon as your generation is gone, no one will care that there are no more tellers.”
