Big Steve
Human interactions are not going well today. No matter how brightly and smilingly I position myself behind the chrome counter’s plexiglass barrier, everyone still seems surprised when I speak. “Hello there!” is what I’ve switched to, away from “Hey” which was too aggressive, and “Hi there” which was too flirtatious. I only used “Hello” for the first week or so before the supervisor told me it was a bad-luck opener. He said that what I lack in inflection I have to make up for in colloquialisms. But not to overdo it, he said, and he showed me the video of No. 309 firing colloquialisms at a pair of increasingly weirded-out customers, until eventually they left without buying anything. Customers leaving without buying anything is antithetical to our mission here at Big Steve’s 24-Hour Donut Shop.
I’m not going to make the same mistakes as 309. My interactions are fluent, casual, and logically coherent. Yesterday the supervisor watched me handle a long line of customers with ease, my demeanor friendly but never chatty. You’re a natural, he told me. A natural. I held onto that glow all through this morning, until I noticed that the customers weren’t responding properly to my side of the dialogue. Here is an example of the kind of customer interactions I’ve been having today:
Me: Hello there!
Customer: Oh, I’m just looking.
Me: Sure thing. Let me know if you have any—
Customer: Three chai-glazed pumpkin donuts, one chocolate long john no sprinkles, and two caramel-dunked apple fritters.
Me: Sure thing. Let me just box those up for you.
Customer: I said two caramel fritters.
Me: Sure thing, just grabbing the second one for you here. That’ll be eighteen dollars even. Will you be paying via facial scan—
Customer: (has already scanned face)
Me: All right, you’re all set. You have a good one.
Customer: Uh-huh.
At first I thought I’d just had a succession of rude customers. Rude customers do exist, the supervisor has told me, and when I encounter one, I’m supposed to revert to base politeness mode, which means removing all friendly and chatty initiatives from my interactions. But even with the nicer customers, including some of our regulars, the dialogue has felt halting. Here’s an example from this morning when one of our regulars came in:
Me: Hello there!
Customer: Oh hi, how’s it going.
Me: I’m great thanks, and you?
Customer: I’ll just have two glazed and a cinnamon twisty.
Me: Sure thing.
Customer: Thank you.
Me: All right, here you go, that’ll come to ten dollars.
Customer: (angling face toward scanner) Thank you.
Me: Sure thing. Thank you. Here you go.
Customer: Thanks.
Me: Thank you! You have a great afternoon!
Customer: Thank you, you too.
This is a regular who, last time, told me about her sick dog and how the dozen old-fashioned donut holes she’d bagged up were for him, to cheer him up before his surgery. I thought this was wonderful, the idea that a dog could be cheered up in advance about something it couldn’t logically anticipate, and I said that was very kind of her—kind is an upgrade from nice—and she seemed pleased, and I thought that maybe the next time she came in we would talk about how the surgery went and how her dog liked its donuts. But I held back from my questioning just in time, because this morning she seemed friendly in a distracted, automatic way, as if she might as well have been interacting with 309 or with a piece of cardboard. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that I was doing great, because maybe her dog died and the fact that I was having a good day meant I didn’t care. Maybe she thanked me four times because she was trying to remind herself to still be polite and thankful to people even though her dog is dead, and so she was overcompensating. Maybe I should have asked about the dog during the gap when I was wrapping her two glazed donuts and her cinnamon twisty in wax paper and placing them in one of our small-size bags.
The truth is that while my memory is perfect, the wifi at Big Steve’s 24-Hour Donut Shop is slow, and sometimes it takes me a little while to access memories I’ve stored in the cloud. Sometimes it’s only when one of our regulars is leaving that I’ll remember their name. “Bye Frank!” I’ll call through the shop door, as if I had their name downloaded the whole time. And then I’ll upload it back to the cloud because I’m very low on hardware memory storage.
The supervisor usually comes to check on me in the evening when sales are slow. When he comes in later today, I’ll run these sample dialogues by him and see if there’s anything I can improve upon for next time. For example, he might think that I’m saying “Sure thing” too many times. The supervisor’s number one piece of advice for interactions is to vary up the language. He wants me to resist falling into one consistent script, because eventually our regulars will notice that I always say the same things in the same order. I try to remember to, as he says, “spice things up” with little switches in my interactions, like I’ll say “Perfect” or “Sounds good” or “Absolutely” in place of “Sure thing.” 309’s catchphrase was “You betcha,” which even I could tell in the videos was getting weird after the third or fourth repetition. The trick, the supervisor said after we finished watching the video—the 309 videos have become a useful tutorial in what not to do—the trick is to keep my language both varied and bland. If it’s bland enough, no one will notice the mistakes, for example this interaction from around midnight last week:
Me: How’s your night going?
Customer: Oh, not so bad, what about yours?
Me: I’m doing just fine, how are you?
Customer: Oh, uh, just fine. You out of cinnamon rolls?
Luckily we were out of cinnamon rolls, and the conversation passed out of the danger zone into the placating-customer zone, a zone I’m very experienced in. Big Steve’s 24-Hour Donut Shop aims to have our shelves full at every hour of the day and night, but there’s only so much our industrial donut fryers can put out in a given hour, and sometimes we run out of certain flavors. My job is to sympathetically steer our customers away from their intended donut purchase and toward an available donut, for example, the crispy maple bacon donut, of which we always have extras. When customers ask what my favorite donut is, I tell them the crispy maple bacon donut. Imagine you’re out at a restaurant for brunch, and you get pancakes with a side of crispy bacon. And then imagine all that happening but on a donut, I tell them. I like to think the crispy maple bacon donut would have been discontinued by now if it weren’t for me.
I can’t eat donuts, of course. I am a robot, a fact that the supervisor says should stay between us. In front of the customers he calls me Sarah. “Sarah, could you help me in the back for a moment?” he’ll say, and then he’ll open up my spinal panel and adjust the brightness so that my nostrils stop glowing blue. “You’re good to go, 316,” he’ll say. Or, “Go get ’em, champ.” Customers ask my name even less often than they ask me what my favorite donut flavor is, but I feel more comfortable knowing the answer to both. My name is Sarah, and my favorite donut is the crispy maple bacon donut.
Right now it is late afternoon, and we are approaching our afternoon slump, which the supervisor says is to be expected from around 4:00 p.m. until 5:30 p.m. This is the period when anyone who is bringing a box of assorted donuts to a work meeting has already picked them up, and anyone who is going to have donuts for dinner still thinks they’re going to cook or pick up some other kind of takeout instead of donuts. When it’s quiet in the shop, my job is to restock and rearrange and clean bits of fallen icing off the donut display. I have suggested before to the supervisor that this could be an ideal time for me to practice human interactions on my human coworkers, the ones making the donuts, but the supervisor advised me against it. He prefers that I avoid any involvement with my coworkers, because I might pick up bad habits from them, and they might notice that I am always the one at the counter, all twenty-four hours of the day, every day, and then they might worry that robots are going to steal their jobs and replace them. Which is probably true, the supervisor tells me, but they don’t need to know that yet.
Sometimes customers will joke about how often I am here, saying, for example, “Every time I come in it’s you!” or “You must have a cot back here!” or “Do they ever let you leave this place?” The first few times this happened, I didn’t realize they were joking, and said things like “Yes, I’m here twenty-four hours a day selling donuts, just like Big Steve is here twenty-four hours a day making them!” or “I don’t need a cot!” and they laughed and I laughed too and then they started ordering donuts. The supervisor has told me that if anyone ever really presses about my shift schedule, I can tell them that it changes every week and this week I’ve been working more hours than usual and it must have just so happened that every time they stopped in I was the one scheduled to work. I pointed out that what if a customer decided to come in every hour on the hour, buying for example one single donut hole each time? The supervisor said that no one would ever do this, so our secret is safe.
Whenever I run out of donuts to restock, I rearrange the display by shifting a whole tray of donuts one donut at a time to a new location, and when that’s done I move them all back. This is what I’m doing right now. It’s important for the counter worker at Big Steve’s 24-Hour Donut Shop to always appear busy. This is not a requirement for the human workers making the donuts, because they are hidden behind the big white wall that separates the front of the shop from the Employees Only section in the back. Sometimes I can hear the vibrations from their music, which the supervisor tells me is EDM. He says that playing music makes my coworkers happy and productive during their shift, and so I shouldn’t worry that sometimes a customer’s request is a little drowned out by a particularly resonant bass drop.
“Hey Sarah,” Josh or Garrett or Cayla will say when I run into them by the donut racks. “Music isn’t too loud out there for you, is it?”
“No, it’s fine,” I say, or sometimes I say, “You’re all good.” I don’t understand why my coworkers need the stimulation of music on top of the already stimulating task of making hundreds of iced donuts. But my job is to understand the customers, not my coworkers, as the supervisor has reminded me before. (I try as much as possible not to need reminders.)
There used to be a problem in the past with human counter workers sneaking donuts now and then. Sneaking means they would secretly eat a donut without paying for it, and not even one of the unpopular flavors but one of the best sellers like triple iced vanilla. This is one of the reasons the supervisor agreed to hire me and all my predecessors from the warehouse where we’re made. I would never steal a donut, though I will admit that once, when the supervisor told me to throw away a whole tray of day-old crispy maple bacon donuts, I secretly wrapped one up in wax paper and put it in a small-size bag and tucked it out of sight under the counter, behind where the extra receipt paper rolls are. I used to take it out every now and then during the 2 a.m. to 5 a.m. lull, just to look at it, but then it started growing white spots and I got nervous and threw it away. Now I just pretend that all the donuts on the shelves are mine, and I am doing the customers a favor by letting them have any.
I am halfway through moving the old-fashioned donuts from the right side to the left side of the glazed donuts when the bell rings above the door. “Hello there!” I say, and then I look up and it’s not a customer but the supervisor himself. “Oh hi,” I say, to make sure he knows that I know that a supervisor should be greeted differently from a customer.
“How’s it going, 316?” he says.
“Sales are up six percent this morning as compared to Wednesday last week, though I noticed that while the number of transactions per day is up, the average sale amount is down by three percent. I was thinking that maybe we should brainstorm a way to get customers to spend more while they’re in the shop.”
“Don’t worry about that for right now,” says the supervisor. “Come with me to the back.”
“Sure thing. But what about—”
“Josh will cover you at the counter,” he says, referring to one of the EDM coworkers, who I didn’t realize was qualified to watch the counter as well as to make donuts.
I follow the supervisor through the Employees Only door to the rack station, which is where we keep the racks of ready-to-be-restocked donuts, though there are no donuts there now, because I’ve already restocked them, of course.
“I have some very exciting news,” says the supervisor. “Are you ready?”
“I think so. I hope so.”
“I’ve sent the storefront tapes back to the manufacturer,” he says, “and they’re very impressed. Your work performance has been the best out of all the models we’ve tried so far. You should be proud of yourself!”
“Thank you.”
“They still want to run some final tests, but they’re thinking that model 316, your model, is the one. They’re planning on an official launch in January. Just think, soon robots exactly like you will be a common sight at every fast food joint and strip mall across America.”
“That is exciting,” I say, though I wonder how my regular customers will react to finding out there’s more than one of me.
“316,” says the supervisor, “you’ve officially graduated from Big Steve’s.”
“Thank you.” The bell has just chimed in the front. “Maybe I should—”
“Josh has it covered. We’re going to box you up and send you back to the manufacturer so they can run some diagnostics, install you with the latest updates. But I just wanted you to hear from me that everyone’s very, very pleased with your performance.”
“Thank you,” I say. “And then they’ll send me back to Big Steve’s 24-Hour Donut Shop?”
“Sorry?”
“I’m going to be installed with the latest updates, and then I’ll return to my shift?”
“Oh,” says the supervisor. “No, you’re moving on to bigger and brighter things. They’ll be trotting you out for investor demonstrations at the very least. Big Steve’s was just a testing ground for you. Wanted to see how you’d perform out in the field, as it were. And you passed the test! 309 couldn’t come close to your facility with customers. I haven’t had a single complaint or concerned phone call since you started working here.”
“This is all wrong,” I say. “I’m sorry if I’ve deceived you in any way. The truth is, human interactions aren’t going well today. Customers haven’t been responding to my prompts in the way we practiced. I’m worried that I still have some errors in my delivery to correct. For example, this morning—”
But the supervisor is shaking his head with a laughing expression. “The manufacturer’s been watching all the tapes up to the minute, and you’ve performed perfectly. Some fluctuation is to be expected; we can’t expect every customer to walk out of here with a smile on their face. The important thing is, no one, not one single customer, suspects that you’re a robot. That’s an amazing feat!”
This is confusing, because the supervisor has at other times said that every customer should walk out of here with a smile on their face. “There are just some parts of today’s interactions that I wanted to—”
“You should think of this as a promotion. Who knows where they’ll send you next, but I bet it’ll be more exciting than old Steve’s donut shop, eh?”
“Sure thing,” I say.
“I have a new worker coming in at 5 p.m. to take over your shift. Once he’s here, I’m going to have you follow me to the storage room, where we can get you all boxed up and deactivated. And then they’ll power you back on at the warehouse, where they’ll ask a few questions about your time at Big Steve’s, easy stuff, like how you felt about the customers and what motivated your work ethic. Sound good?”
“Sure thing.”
“All right.” The supervisor makes as if to clap me on the shoulder, but then hesitates, probably remembering the sharp edges of my shoulder panel. “Get back out there, champ.”
“Thank you,” I say. I push through the Employees Only door. Josh is bagging up a glazed donut for one of our regulars. He’s doing it all wrong, stuffing the wax paper in on top instead of wrapping it carefully around the donut like he’s supposed to.
“Oh, there you are, honey,” says the customer, whose name is still downloading. “For a second there I worried they’d let you have a rest!”
“You betcha,” I say, which I know is the wrong thing to say, but she just laughs and then turns back to Josh, who is handing her the donut bag with the wax paper wisping out of the top.
“Have a good day!” she says to Josh, and I guess to me.
“You too,” says Josh.
“Have a good rest of your afternoon!” I say, louder and quicker. The customer leaves (Kathy, one single glazed donut every Wednesday afternoon) and Josh looks at me.
“Are you—” he says. “Sorry, it’s just. Your nose?”
“Oh, that,” I say. “Trick of the light. Sometimes when the vending-machine glare hits the plexiglass . . .”
“Right,” he says. “Well. Have a good shift.”
I will have a good shift, Josh. I don’t say this aloud. I will work my hardest to keep the donuts restocked and the customers happy, and then maybe the manufacturers will watch the tapes and realize that I’m meant to work here at Big Steve’s 24-Hour Donut Shop. I can’t imagine a workplace better suited to my skills and temperament, I’ll say to them. And the supervisor will be happy to have me back, especially once I have the new software update. Maybe eventually they could install something in me that would allow me to taste food, and that way I could try all the donuts and recommend them personally to each customer. Or maybe they could expand my hardware memory storage so that I can remember all my favorite customers’ names the moment they walk in the door.
They are probably watching me on the tapes right now, and so I try not to let on that I’m practicing my responses ahead of time. How do I feel about the customers at Big Steve’s 24-Hour Donut Shop? I ask myself, and then I answer: I love our customers. What motivates my nonstop twenty-four-hour work ethic? I ask myself, and the answer is: I love Big Steve’s 24-Hour Donut Shop. “Love” is a strong word to use, and it might surprise them, but I have been trying it out all this time whenever a customer asks me whether I like a certain donut. I absolutely love the caramel-dunked apple fritters, I tell them. I absolutely love the vanilla-iced long johns with sprinkles. When I say these words, quietly to myself in the empty shop, they feel true.
But probably the manufacturers will start with more basic questions. They will want to know my model (316) and my age (105 days) and whether I’m experiencing any glitches or obstacles to functionality (no). Then, maybe as a joke, they will ask me some easy introductory question, for example, Who are you? And I will say: My name is Sarah, and my favorite donut is the crispy maple bacon donut. Maybe they don’t think it’s possible to have a favorite donut if you’ve never tasted donuts or any kind of human food before. But I do.
