Unfinished Kris

We’re not talking to each other anymore; our AIs are doing all the talking.

At least in the corporate world, which is unfortunately where I spend too much of my life, every one’s first instinct is to “see what AI says”. I see so much writing now that absolutely reeks of Copilot or ChatGPT. There are certain punctuation marks and phrases that show up frequently that wave the AI flag.

I had a situation with a co-worker last week that involved his going over my head to try to get his way. This is a co-worker I have to continue working closely with for at least the next few months, so I needed to address it with him in a way that could allow us to keep working together.

While my base instinct was to tell him that he’s an untrustworthy rat who had a tantrum because he didn’t get his way, the part of me that likes having my bills paid knew that wasn’t the best course of action.

So I crafted a nice, adult note that expressed my disappointment that we couldn’t work the issue out without an escalation to the higher-ups, but also my understanding that we needed to keep working together and my hope that we could move forward to the next issue to solve. :::huffs on and buffs nails on shoulder::: I’m SO adult.

I have learned, however, through my many years of being a female human, that I can occasionally be blinded by my own emotions to the inevitable snark that creeps in when I “go high”. Years ago I began utilizing a step when editing potentially pointed work emails that I dubbed “bitch-proofing”. It’s a different step than spell-check but equally important. It included asking a work friend to sniff out any hints of rage that should be softened to mild irritation. This was usually an effort to avoid showing any undertones of “go f*ck yourself” in an email to an unnecessarily rude customer… or the boss.

On this day, after crafting my oh-so-adult note to my rat of a co-worker, I decided to see how AI would do at bitch-proofing. So, I ran it through my convenient AI platform and it spit out a slightly better (aka slightly less emotion-laden) version. I liked it. I tweaked it a bit to make it sound more like me (MUCH less formal) and sent it off to the rat.

The wall of text I got back in response was so clearly written by AI, I couldn’t help but laugh. Obviously, the rat didn’t run it through in an effort to bitch-proof, but in an effort to make it semi-coherent. It sounded nothing like him, other than the sentiment that my way was bad and stupid, and his way was brilliant and perfect.

And I bet he was as proud of his AI’s message as I was of mine.