Instant Gratification, Chatbots, and Why I’m Grateful for IMDB

I hate the internet.

I mean, I rely on the internet probably more than the average person, sure. Not only do I use it to prove to my husband that Jessica Chastain guest-starred on an episode of Veronica Mars, but it’s also my primary place of work.

And by “work” I mean the entire sense of the word. It’s the means by which I find work, my workplace, and where my work is displayed. TL;DR as a writer in 2019, my face is rarely seen without some sort of screen in front of it.

And that is what I hate.

The internet itself is a technological marvel and, at age 30, I still regularly geek out over the fact that I can find the answer to any question instantaneously or video chat with someone across the world or even with a device I keep in my pocket. I mean, isn’t that basically what all of us thirtysomethings thought of as magic when we were kids?

But I think that ease-of-access to all the people and information we could ever dream of made us greedy.

We wanted more access. Online forums became chat rooms which became instant messages. Tech caught up with the internet and then we got text messages and instant messages right there on our phone. 

Cell phones, technology, the internet… it’s all pretty freakin’ amazing. But, somewhere along the way, that amazing technology of convenience somehow became mandatory. So mandatory that a city council member from Brooklyn, New York recently introduced a bill that could make it illegal for employers to contact their employees via email or text message when their employees are off the clock.

When I first brought this up with a community of writers and online business owners, the reaction was varied. Some of them thought it was genius and the others wondered how that would work for their business. I, on the other hand, was more interested in why the bill had to be created rather than the details of it. 

Think about it for a second: employers were abusing the access to their employees that email, text, and phone calls provided them so much that a city council member actually considered proposing a bill.

What does that abuse look like? Some restaurant managers tell servers and hosts that they were required to be available by phone in case someone called out. Retail store owners write up employees who ignored phone calls on their days off. Office workers are expected to read and respond to emails on the weekend and even on vacation.

But employers aren’t the only ones expecting people to pick up the phone or answer a message in 0.5 seconds.

Everyone does it. Yes, even you and me.

When our friends don’t text us back the same day, we wonder why. We judge the businesses that don’t respond to our emails immediately. We don’t even consider the ones that don’t have a website.

And if you’re a business owner yourself? Oof. The pressure to stay connected all the time is immense.

I know a lot of business owners, and we all struggle with the same thing: turning off our phones.

These days, with our current “cancel culture,” your online availability can make or break your business. Customers are impatient; demanding of both access and immediate gratification, and missing a message or call-out tweet can literally be the death of your business. 

(Seriously. Just spend a day on Twitter looking at brand mentions and you’ll notice thousands of people demanding immediate attention and remedies to their problems, every hour of the day.)

Once, I received a Facebook message regarding a job opportunity. I was watching Avengers: End Game so I missed the text and, by the time I responded thirty minutes later, they had already found someone else. 

Thirty minutes. That’s all it took to lose out on a job.

The fear of losing out on the next one has kept me glued to my phone and, honestly, I’m exhausted.

Like most of my fellow self-employed pals, I am glued to my devices constantly searching for the next gig, the next client, the next project. I stress out when I wake up to emails because I wonder whether my sleep has cost me a job or an opportunity.

Part of this is due to a childhood history of poverty and economic anxiety, but a bigger part of it is just the reality of owning an online business. 

Think I’m wrong?

Consider the recent boom in chatbots and related services. Businesses are expected to be at our beck and call 24/7/365 so we came up with robots that respond to customers when businesses aren’t available. We can have autoresponders on practically every social media site and send “out of office” replies on all our email accounts.

I don’t have a solution to this problem. There will always be impatient customers and businesses will always have to perform a cost-benefit analysis on their level of availability.

But I can say this: I won’t be available 24/7; hell, I’m really only available 12/6. 

I love my business, but I love my life more. 

I love my kids seeing my face and not the back of my phone as I say, “Sorry, mommy just has to answer this email.” 

I love sitting down to dinner with my family and muting my phone.

I love taking a vacation, a real vacation, and muting my mentions, emails, and anything else that isn’t a part of the here-and-now.

Maybe this will hurt me. Maybe the fact that I’m half-assed (at best) on social media and mostly-assed at emails will be the failure of my business.

But I’d rather have my business fail because I’m living my life than have a successful business with no life to speak of.

And, sure, maybe you’re reading this and thinking “this woman is bonkers and there’s no way I’d ever work with her.”

I want to work with humans who care about other humans. The kind of brands that demonstrate empathy, that speak up about injustices and crimes against humanity, that donate to causes that matter, that treat their employees and contracted workers like people with lives; brands that recognize that we exist not to work, but to live.

And if that’s not you, that’s okay.

But if it is?
Well, let’s start a movement.

Less working and more living. For all of us.