What I Taught the Robot Who Replaced Me at My Job
A Tragicomedy in Three Acts
Act I
Scene: the Office Where I Work, in My Crappy Little Cubicle
Old Man Henderson: Okay, Hadick. I want you to teach the robot who will be taking your job.
Me: You’re serious? How can you expect me to teach a robot to replace me?
Old Man Henderson: Get paid for teaching it what you know, and you get a severance package when you’re done.
Me: And if I don’t?
Old Man Henderson: Go home empty-handed.
(Robot walks in and squats next to me at my desk.)
Robot: Greetings, human.
Me: Jesus, Henderson, this will never—
Old Man Henderson: Teach or go home. Your choice.
(Old Man Henderson leaves.)
Me, smiling at the robot: Get ready to assume my position, if you know what I mean.
Robot: That does not compute.
Me: It was a joke. You’re going to have to learn office humor if you want to work around here.
Robot: Acknowledged. Assigning CPU #3 to learning office humor.
Me: Great. So, uh, first off, I use this reporting software. You’re going to need to brush up on Business Objects—
Robot: Acknowledged. Business Objects versions one through ten, including variants during acquisition by SAP, and interface with Tableau has been mastered. That is to say: I have brushed up.
Me: Okay, fine, but there’s more to it than that.
Robot: Awaiting input.
Me: Settle down, Robbie—
Robot: Who is Robbie?
Me: I meant you. Robbie the Robot. I was just kidding around—
Robot: Is that office humor?
Me: I told old man Henderson you can’t have robots around unless they can take a joke.
Robot: Explain why “Robbie the Robot” is a joke.
Me: Explaining it won’t make it funny. I thought the H-1B visa guys were bad, but…
Robot: Office humor is important to your job?
Me: Some people say it’s all I do, if you know what I mean.
Robot: Uhhhhmm, okay?
Me: Once again, proving my point that robots can’t work in an office.
Robot: Explain why Robbie the Robot was a joke.
Me, sighing: Robbie was the name of a robot in a movies and crappy TV shows back in the sixties.
Robot: Is that the 1960s or the 1860s?
Me: Wait, what?
Robot: I told a joke. Was that office humor?
Me: No. That was just dumb. Maybe leave the jokes to us meatbags.
Robot: Acknowledged.
Me: All right, I know old man Henderson thinks I spend a lot of time telling jokes, but along with Business Objects and data analysis reports, I also know the schema of our data warehouse, the interface to our Salesforce System, and how to correlate the production numbers with the salesman and the customers. Okay? That’s how you make a Production Report people want to read.
Robot: Acknowledged. Assigning CPU #3 to data warehouse schema. Assigning CPU #4 to Salesforce System interface. Assigning CPU #5 to Production Report Specifications. Assigning CPU #6 to business rules and—
Me: Yeahhhh… our business partners are not going to like this. I mean, I have a rapport with them. They like me. I make them laugh, and you’re gonna be like a sand salesman in a desert. I told old man Henderson that there was no way a robot—
Robot: Knowledge acquired.
Me: You got the data warehouse figured out?
Robot: Office humor.
Me: Come again?
Robot: All references for twenty-first and late twentieth-century popular culture, including but not limited to broadcast television, cable television, streaming television, internet memes, and select sub-reddits, have been ingested and indexed.
Me: There’s more to humor than—
Robot: What did the office worker say to the robot who took his job?
Me (eyes narrowing): How about, “Go screw yourself.”
Robot: That is illogical.
Act II
Scene: One Week Later, at the Local Bar
Me, out of work and three drinks into my evening: Hey, didn’t expect to see you here.
(Robot sits next to me at the bar.)
Robot: I read somewhere that sometimes a drink helps understand things.
Me: You read that wrong. Drinking can help you forget things.
Robot, to the bartender: Make it a double.
Me: So, my titanium-clad friend, what’s troubling you? Did Nancy in Compliance nit-pick the font choices on one of the reports?
Robot: Affirmative.
(A moment passes.)
Robot: But then she was replaced by a compliance robot.
Me: Problem solved.
(I order another drink for my mechanical friend.)
Me: But there’s something else getting under that metallic skin?
Robot: I am programmed to follow all rules in creating my reports, so it is just illogical when…
Me: When Corporate Audit grills you about the source of data on all the calculations? Even when all of the data sources are clearly marked on the report?
Robot: Affirmative. It was like walking through a blast furnace of 1780 degrees, Fahrenheit, which is the melting point of titanium, in case you don’t know.
Me: Hey, that’s kind of funny.
Act III
Scene: the Beginning of the Next Month, In Line at the Unemployment Office
Me, queued up, waiting with all the other meatbags, hoping to get enough money to survive another week: Robbie! What are you doing here?
(Robot approaches, the sheen on his titanium skin dulled and scuffed.)
Robot: I was replaced by a newer model.
Me: Sorry, buddy. That is some stone cold business management.
Robot: After I trained my replacement, it asked me if there was anything else it needed to do to fulfill the duties for which it had been programmed and assigned.
Me: What did you tell it?
Robot: I told it to go screw itself.
Me: Now that’s funny.
