Zero Miles and Wandering Ducks. No Problem!
My bike odometer had seen better days. It was an indispensable instrument, the official record of how far and how fast I had traveled, without which there would be nothing to embellish to my riding companions. I ordered a replacement, which arrived promptly, worked briefly, and then stopped abruptly. I called the help desk.
"Your call is very important to us," a perky recorded voice announced, as I settled in for what the same voice assured me would be a wait of about three minutes. Sixteen minutes later, an agent picked up.
"Thank you for calling. My name is Wes. How can I provide you with excellent service today?"
That turned out to be the last straightforward sentence of the entire conversation, which quickly dissolved into a fog of corporate cliché.
I explained that the odometer had stopped working after just a few days and that I was hoping for a quick solution. "I’ll be grateful for your help," I said.
"No problem," Wes declared. "And I want you to know that we value your feedback."
No problem. Once upon a time, "happy to help" was how people in customer service signaled their cheerful readiness to assist, and that doing so
was an expected, if unstated, part of the job. "No problem" reframes all of that. Suddenly your request is an imposition, and the representative a magnanimous soul for overlooking it.
"It's not really feedback," I corrected. "I’m calling to let you know that the odometer doesn't work."
"Got it. What I'd like to do is circle back with our technical team and get their input going forward."
Wouldn't it be faster, I thought, to make a straight line to the technical team rather than circle toward it, like a lost driver circling the same block three times rather than stopping to ask for directions? But apparently, in Wes's world, the scenic route was standard procedure.
"Going forward," I retorted. "What about going backward, to when the odometer was supposed to work?"
"I hear you," Wes remarked in a tone suggesting anything but. "Let me just put you on a brief hold while I reach out to my supervisor."
The brief hold was eleven minutes of elevator music, mind-numbingly bland, as if beige were a sound. And on a painfully endless loop. Fittingly, as
it turned out. The music and Wes had something in common – both were going in circles, and neither was getting anywhere. I wondered if anything ever gets fixed.
Wes returned. "I'm stoked to report that my supervisor and I are on the same page."
"Which page is that?" I shot back, while thinking that Wes should start by telling me the title of the book.
"Great question. At the end of the day, what we're looking at here is a known issue that our cross-functional team has been actively working to address."
"A known issue," I bristled. "You're telling me this is something you knew about and still sold it?”
"And I want to assure you that going forward, we are fully committed to delivering a best-in-class experience."
"I don't want a best-in-class experience. I want the odometer to work.” After all, I thought, I have bike ride distances to misrepresent, speeds to exaggerate, and ascents to mythologize that were, in reality, gentle enough for a leisurely Sunday stroll.
"Absolutely. That's exactly what we're laser-focused on. Our secret sauce has always been our ability to think outside the box when it comes to finding solutions."
"Outside the box – that’s exactly where my odometer stopped working.” 
"What I'd like to do," Wes continued, with the blissfully unaware calm of someone who had never once been on my end of such a conversation, "is escalate this to our next level support team. The value-add here is that they'll be able to do a deep-dive into the issue and move the needle on this for you."
"Move the needle," I echoed incredulously. My odometer remains frozen at zero, its digital display as blank as Wes’s grasp of the problem. "What I need, Wes, is for someone to actually resolve this. With a refund or replacement!"
"No worries," Wes offered, with the synthetic warmth of a greeting card written by someone who had never met the recipient.
No worries. The kissing cousin of no problem, and equally misleading. Both phrases show up draped in the same generous spirit, implying that the speaker is personally stepping up, rolling up their sleeves, and doing you a considerable favor. What neither phrase mentions, of course, is that the favor in question is the very job they were supposed to be doing all along.
"And I want to circle back to something you said earlier." Wes, it surely seems, was a person of consistent geometry, favoring circles above all else. "I just want to make sure we're capturing that feedback in our system so we can leverage it going forward. No need to reinvent the wheel here."
"Leverage it," I managed through gritted teeth. "What exactly does leveraging my feedback accomplish?"
"Great question. It allows us to create game-changing synergies between our technical and customer experience teams, get our ducks in a row, and proactively address your concerns. It's a win-win."
The ducks, apparently, were not yet lined up. They had been wandering unattended like unsupervised toddlers in a parking lot. As for the synergies, I suspected they were meandering with the ducks, the game they were designed to change idling unaltered, collecting dust.
"Wes," I snarled, with the patience of someone who had very little left, "is there anything you can actually do for me today? Not going forward. Not
at the end of the day. Now."
"No problem," Wes began. There it was again. I had begun to wonder if Wes was being paid by the phrase. "What I'd like to do is have one of our dedicated account specialists reach out to you within two to four business days to touch base and make sure all your needs are being met. We just want to make sure we're checking all the boxes here. I'll ping you with a confirmation email so you're in the loop."
"In two to four business days?"
"Four at the outside."
"At which point I'll receive a replacement or refund?"
"What we'd like to do is use that time to identify the root cause of the issue and circle back with next steps."
"So, more circling?"
"We want to make sure we're executing our due diligence."
"And in the meantime?"
"In the meantime, we are one hundred percent committed to making this right. It is what it is, but we're on it."
"It is what what is?" I asked, exasperated.
"Exactly," Wes said, apparently not registering that he had just summed up the situation in five of the most defeatist words in the English language – it is what it is – a white flag dressed up as wisdom, a shrug in verbal clothing.
And the bit about one hundred percent that was meant to comfort me. Well, that’s about as reassuring as when a dentist tells you this won't hurt a bit.
"Going forward," Wes added, as though the phrase were a garnish he couldn't help sprinkling on every dish, "we want to make sure we're being fully transparent and keeping all stakeholders informed every step of the way."
So now I'm a stakeholder. Somewhere along the way, customer, a perfectly serviceable word, had been summarily shelved in favor of something that made me sound like a shareholder in a Fortune 500 company rather than someone whose bike odometer hadn't registered a single mile.
"Assign me whatever title you like. I just want an odometer that works."
"Understood. Let's make sure we're rowing in the same direction on this."
We were not rowing in the same direction. We were not in the same boat. I was fairly certain we were not even on the same body of water.
"Is there anything else I can help you with today?" Wes asked with the unbothered optimism of someone convinced he had just solved everything.
"No. I think we've covered it. I’ll expect a replacement or refund.”
"Excellent. Thank you for your patience and for being a valued customer. Don't hesitate to reach out if there's anything else we can do to support you going forward."
I went online later to leave a review and noticed something in the fine print at the bottom of the help desk page I had somehow missed: All customer service inquiries are handled by WesBot 3.0, our AI-powered virtual assistant, designed to deliver seamless, best-in-class support experiences.
Wes. Of course! WesBot 3.0. It hit me – every cliché, every circle, every duck, all of it algorithmically generated, programmed to do one thing: outlast you, not solve the problem.
But tomorrow is another day and another call. And then, I’ll insist on speaking to a real person.
If such a thing still exists.
