I’ve written before about Todd, the Service Manager at Coggins Toyota in Bennington, where I bought my excellent hybrid car, a 2020 Toyota Rav 4, which I bring faithfully for service even though the dealer is 40 minutes away.

It’s a trust and peace of mind thing.

I plan to keep this car until one of us falls apart, as is sure to happen.

The car fits me like a glove. And it gets 51 miles to the gallon.

Today, Todd shocked me when he told me that I needed to spend $1,000 to keep my care running safely. It was up to me, he said.

I thanked him for it.

Todd is a lovely and honest person to deal with all on his own, but his meaning to me is more significant than that.

He has helped me understand how to navigate the cold and impersonal heart of the Corporate World, from which there is no simple escape. It’s a simple formula: find a human and hang on for dear life.

This requires a leader or big boss who understands that treating customers with respect and making humans available can make a company very profitable. Just think of Steve Jobs.

The modern American corporation cares only about two things – making more and more money and separating the customer, a/k/a, the humans, from the people they need to deal with and replacing them with confusing and cold-blooded software.

A CEO who makes less money than the year before is a short-timer by definition. The pressure to raise profits is enormous and never-ending.

This is short-sighted. Just look at what happened to our country once people stopped seeing and speaking to one another.

We are angry, disconnected, and dysfunctional as a society. Software is a grisly alternative to humans.

We are continuously pushed into auto-pays, paperless payments, phone trees, and the AI voices that claim to love us and answer our questions but rarely do either.

When any voice on the phone says, “we are sorry no one is available to take your call, but we care very much about you,” drop the phone and run.

No one is available to take your call because there are no people left in the company to take your call. It means the company is cheap and greedy.

Corporations will do almost anything to keep us from talking to other human beings that they might have to pay for or buy health insurance for.

I am not a fighter or complainer and try to live a life in peace and empathy, but I do fight very hard to speak with humans whenever there is a question or a problem with a corporation I am dealing with and dependent on.

I noticed this month that my cable bill had suddenly soared, and I spent two hours getting hold of a human who tried to sell me even more channels than I would ever watch but eventually gave up and helped me cut the bill in half. It was a grinding tussle, but we worked it out.

He gave me about 100 different options before I finally blew up and scared him into helping me. I gave him a glowing reference in the post-call survey. I felt like I got some of my power back.

If more of us did this, things would change. I can’t imagine how an 85-year-old farmer’s widow down the road could ever do this by herself. It tears at my heart.

Todd’s boss — he owns franchises for several different automobiles and has a lot of people working for him – seems to grasp the idea of keeping humans around and the value of treating people well.

I noticed that almost all the employees I asked said they liked him and believe he is a good owner and leader who will do the best he can for them.

 

 

These kind words about a boss were unusual to hear, and it was reinforced by Todd, who took pity on me, a helpless and ignorant person regarding machines of any kind.

I was immediately inclined to reward it with loyalty.

Todd was my way into this corporate process, someone I could call and speak to and freak out to and ask many stupid questions. He was an important lesson for me, and a helpful one for navigating our wacky world.

He never failed to speak with me, call me back, or give me honest advice about what the car needed. I imagine going for service from the dealer is more expensive than going to a local mechanic, but it is worth every penny to me.

More than once, I called Todd in a panic because I couldn’t figure out how one button or another in my new car might work.

He never avoided me or made me feel small or that I was pestering him with dumb questions.

He never suggested I go on the Toyota website to find an answer to a question or concern that he would answer. And he saved my ass more than once when I was about to do something stupid. I know he is busy, but he always had time for me.

He saw that I loved the car and adopted me, giving me guidance and honest advice on insurance and repairs. He stopped me from buying duplicate and supplemental insurance that a slick salesman got me to agree to.

He never called me stupid, although, at that one time – when I went for an insurance scam –  he did suggest I wasn’t the brightest bulb in the dealership.

Fair enough.

I respect honesty.

The people who try to convince us that Artificial Software is as intelligent and caring as human beings are not our friends.

AI software is not Todd; if they told me I needed to spend $1,000 on my car service today, I would be disinclined to believe them and suspicious, perhaps even angry.

Today, I brought my car in for its 40,000-mile service, and I joked on the way out that I hoped the bill wouldn’t be higher than $200. No sweat, he said, laughing. At the time, he was right.

Two hours later, he called me to tell me two of my tires had deep gouges that could be in danger of blowing out at higher speeds, and I needed four new ones.

(Toyota  Waiting Room, Bennington, Vt.)

I gulped. I just got word this morning that my credit rating was way over 700, the highest since the bankruptcy we declared in 2014, during the Great Recession, when we couldn’t sell the first Bedlam Farm.

That nightmare is now officially over.

I’m proud of that new rating, and Maria and I have worked hard for it.

I was not looking to spend $1,000 on my car right now.

I asked Todd if he thought I should do it – I would trust Todd with my farm and my dogs – and he said it was 50-50. I  could wait awhile, but there was the possibility of a blowout, especially on a highway.

I could tell he thought I should do it, although Todd doesn’t push stuff like that. Do it, I said. I trust you,, and I don’t want to be thinking of a blowout on the highway. We  drive on highways a lot. and often on steep, slick, country roads.

Maria often drives my car.

I thanked him for telling me. I thanked him for being someone I could trust completely.

I wasn’t expecting a car dealership to show how to survive increasingly inhuman corporate America.

The man who bought these car dealerships a couple of years ago understands that happy and honest employees are good people. It’s a pleasure to go in there.

People are helpful.

That doesn’t happen often.

I feel about Todd much like I felt about Steve Jobs and Apple. They have kept human beings in their equation, treated them well, are readily available, and made knowledgeable people available to doofuses like me, who know as little about computers as I do about cars.

I will never think of an AI phone voice as being the same as Todd or any human being. I will do my small part to lobby for humanity in all things. The most significant danger we faced is that we have stopped speaking to one another.

I hope we can learn to fight for people in a civil and compassionate way.

The stakes are high. Just look at Congres .

Human beigins listen. They change. They negotiate. We can talk to one another.

They can gauge the nature of the people they are dealing with. They are capable of empathy and reason. I need people like them, not only because I am helpless in some ways but because humans are meant to deal with one another, not allegedly human-like machines.

I’m grateful for spending $1,000 for my new tires (it does sting a bit).

It will add to a debt I’ve been whittl ng down for some time. Welcome to life.

But the bottom line is this: there is someone I can trust to help ensure my car lasts a long time (he noticed the wiper blades needed replacement) and Maria and I are as safe as possible riding in it.

That makes it worth any penny. Wherever I go, whatever corporation tries to steer me into isolation due to their greed and indifference, my response will be to dig in and I will find a human being that I can call and work with nothing else.

When I was calling the cable company the other day, I was locked in phone tree hell – one sweet and inhuman voice after another asking me for explanations I couldn’t give and they wouldn’t take.  Finally, I decided to just keep repeating “talk to a human,” over and over again” until someone or someting could hear it. It worked, I got to talk to a human.

It’s not exactly a revolution, but it is the very least I can do for humanity. I’m grateful to Todd for helping me see the way.