CEOs are not good at reassuring employees about how AI won’t ruin their way of life. We’ve established that, over and over.

Next up, Lowe’s CEO Marvin Ellison, who said at a conference this week that the retailer isn’t looking to use AI to reduce its workforce, but rather, to make every employee into a bionic revenue-generating mo-chine. “Can we now free a merchant up who’s spending 50% of their time building spreadsheets, responding to emails, communicating with suppliers?” Ellison asked rhetorically. “If AI can take that task away, can you now take 50% of that merchant’s time, and they can focus on sales-driving initiatives? That’s what we’re trying to understand.”

Let’s start with “merchant”—a term execs at big retailers use to cheaply and flaccidly glorify their store workers as being part of a rich ancient tradition evoking the Maritime Silk Road, but amounting to a hill of shit. Imagine asking a woman in a bar what she does for a living and her saying, “Oh, I’m a merchant at Home Depot.” If she wouldn’t call herself a merchant with a straight face, how can you call her a merchant with a straight face? (I’ve never heard someone tell me he’s an “associate at Walmart,” either.)

NEXT!

Onto Marvin Ellison’s hypothetical “merchant”: Knowing what I know about the sort of folks who work at Lowe’s, where I shop all the time, I can tell you: If “they” were the type of hard-charger who wanted to focus 100% of the time on sale-driving initiatives, they would work on sales commission, somewhere else, where coffee is for closers.

In truth, however, “they” like building spreadsheets, responding to emails and communicating with suppliers. In fact, if you asked them their favorite part of their job, they would probably actually say, “Building spreadsheets, responding to emails and communicating with suppliers.” And they might even add that their job would be just about perfect, if they didn’t have to spend part of it “on these fucking sale-driving initiatives.”

NEXT!

Rather than using AI to turn employees into human revenue pigs—it might be more humane just to replace them with revenue-snuffling robots, and give them back their days.

I’ve written here before about the difference between folks outside the city and folks inside.

Folks outside think folks inside should welcome the National Guard, and they can’t imagine we why we don’t.

Well here’s a little thing that happened last night that begins to explain our mentality, I think.

A pal has bought a membership at a cool new indoor virtual golf facility in kind of a grinder part of town—basically, under the Lake Street El tracks, near Ashland Avenue.

He asked me if I wanted to play last night and I arrived a little before 5:00 with bells on—and also carrying a four-pack of IPAs and my golf clubs on my back. I’d parked on a filthy patch of snow and was feeling self-conscious with the stupid clubs, and eager to get inside the facility.

Across the street but coming toward me, I heard a woman crying, and yelling. “Give me my phone! Give me my phone!”

Per three decades of urban training, I quickly tried every filter to make this not my problem:

Maybe the woman is joking. No, this woman wasn’t joking.

Maybe the woman can handle herself. No, this woman wasn’t even a woman, but a teenage girl.

Maybe the yeller is the problem—drunk or crazy or otherwise in the wrong. No, this girl was walking alongside a taller, maybe older boy, who was clearly stalking off with her phone.

Maybe the situation is too dangerous to get involved in. I smelled that it wasn’t.

Maybe the teenage girl doesn’t really want help. “Someone help me! Please!”

I put the beer down and leaned my fucking golf clubs against an El support column and started keeping up with the embattled pair.

“Hey! HEY!” I heard myself yelling, across the street, over traffic and over a distant police siren, all underneath the grimy El tracks.

I’d hope to startle him with the power of my voice, scare him into dropping the phone, but he kept on walking, and she kept on walking beside and beseeching.

“I’m calling 911 right now!” I bellowed, while dialing.

“Sir, what’s your emergency?”

The police siren was getting louder, and I lied to the phone thief, “Here they come! They’re coming for you!”

“Sir,” the dispatcher said on the phone, “what’s your emergency?”

At this point, the guy threw down the phone and stomped on it. I heard the crunch above all the racket. The guy kept stalking west.

“One second,” I told the dispatcher. “I’m in the middle of something here.”

“I don’t know what that means, sir.”

“Just hold on a second, okay?”

I hadn’t decided whether I was going to chase the guy down, see if the girl was okay, both of the above or none of the above and the police siren was becoming deafening.

“I don’t know what that means, sir,” the dispatcher repeated, so I hung up. (Do they not prepare these folks to talk to people who are in chaotic situations?)

Now the girl was coming across the street, tentatively, toward me—me, and another woman who had come upon the fracas and realized something needed to be done. The girl was so upset I thought I’d better make sure she didn’t walk into traffic, so I went out and sort of guided her across the street, while I asked her, “Was that just some asshole who stole your phone?”

“He’s my boyfriend,” she said with embarrassment. “He broke my phone!”

In a fatherly tone, I assured her the phone didn’t matter at all, that it could be replaced. I asked her if she was all right, and whether he’d hit her. She said no. In an avuncular tone, I told her to “watch out for that guy.” And she would have gotten a longer and less understated lecture if the woman who was now with us, hadn’t offered to walk her back to get some stuff she said she’d left a block or so east.

All of the this took place in about three minutes, maybe less.

And then as the police siren faded away, I went back and picked up my golf clubs and my beer, and trudged through the snow and into the indoor golf place, where my buddy and I played 54 virtual holes. When I came home, it was an hour before remembered to tell my wife the yarn.

“Wow,” she said. “Nice going.”

“Yeah.”

We live in a city. There are assholes here, who do asshole things. But we take care of each other, too. And we don’t think much of it.

I’m kind of amazed at how little we think of it.

So amazed that I thought I’d write this down, because it kind of was remarkable, wasn’t it?