Time to take a break from life.

Tomorrow, I’m heading to the river to spend some time resting, fishing, and gathering my thoughts before I go completely nuts. It’s been a rough week.

If you’ve ever had to deal with AT&T, you probably understand my frustration. This is just one of the many things I had to deal with this week. The others will come in a later post.

When you call or chat with technical support these days, you’re often not dealing with a person at all. You’re dealing with AI. I’ll be the first to admit that AI can be useful, but it isn’t nearly as smart as some people think. It’s only as good as the people who program it.

If it doesn’t understand what you’re asking, it tends to circle back to a previous question, and before long, you’re stuck in an endless loop that eventually ends with the chat session closing without warning. And if you’re hoping to speak with a live person, you had better pack a lunch and prepare for a long wait.

This whole saga started last Friday when my dad asked me to come by on Saturday and help connect a new router that AT&T had sent him. According to them, the old router was bad.

As it turned out, the router wasn’t the problem at all.

Dad had already spent time with technical support trying to resolve the issue. Nothing they suggested worked. He asked repeatedly for a technician to come out, but AT&T seemed convinced that he could solve the problem himself. Eventually, they simply disconnected the call.

That’s where I entered the picture.

Friday evening, I spent an hour and a half trying to reach a live agent. After finally getting through, I was able to schedule a service appointment for Monday between noon and 5:00 p.m.

Monday came and went.

By 6:30 that evening, it was obvious that nobody was coming.

I then spent three and a half hours on hold trying to speak with someone, only to have my phone battery die before I ever reached an agent.

I called back and scheduled a callback for 9:00 the next morning. By 10:00, nobody had called.

Once again, I called AT&T and sat on hold for about an hour before finally reaching a representative.

To his credit, he was polite and listened patiently as I explained everything we had been through. By this point, the appointment had been moved to Friday, and Dad had discovered that the real problem wasn’t the modem at all. Phone lines in the area had apparently been cut—or possibly stolen—which explained why nothing was working.

I told the representative that, in my opinion, customer service had lost sight of the customer. If customers were truly important, there would be a way to speak with a real person without spending hours fighting through automated systems and AI chatbots.

There are some problems that technology simply can’t fix. Sometimes people just need to talk to another person.

The representative assured me that our conversation was being recorded and that he would escalate the issue. He said someone from AT&T would contact me regarding our experience, although it might take a week or two.

We’ll see.

After dealing with all of this, I am emotionally drained. The one thing I’m proud of is that I managed to keep my cool throughout the entire ordeal. I could have unloaded my frustration on the representative, but I knew he wasn’t responsible for what had happened. He was simply the person caught in the middle.

So tomorrow morning, Rick and I will launch the boat around 5:30 and spend a few hours on the river.

At this point, I honestly don’t care whether I catch a fish.

What I need is some peace and quiet. I need time away from hold music, automated systems, and frustration. I need to be reminded of who is really in charge.

And for me, there are few better places to find that reminder than sitting on a river at daybreak, watching God’s creation wake up around me.

Sometimes the best therapy isn’t found in an office, on a phone call, or behind a computer screen.

Sometimes it’s found on the water.