When Paid Employment Fails The Turing Test

Most people have heard of The Turing Test.

It is the proposition that where a machine
gives every impression of being human,
in so far as human beings can test it blind,
then they accept that what they are dealing with
has a consciousness, and is not merely mechanical.

But I have been aghast at so many of the humans
I have spoken with by phone who would fail the standards
set by the Turing test, because they spout scripts
from screens provided for them by employers,
and the money they get for what they spout
matters more to them than whether they are thought
to be robots, as they are attentively listened to, or not.

The net result is that I nearly every time
part way through an attempted conversation
I cease know how to respond as the ghost
of the script takes over their voice.

That is usually when for me feeling ashamed
to answer a robot, I find I don't how to answer.
That is when the robotic management intervene.....