Smack Dab in the Middle of Life – I. Am. Not. A. Robot.

The other day I was trying to log into a website on my computer and was having trouble remembering my password. Curse words ensued as I ran through my mental list of passwords. Has that ever happened to you? When smack dab in the middle of life this happens often. Then enters Captcha into my life.

You have probably run afoul of Captcha. It’s is that computer annoyance designed to prevent robots from doing human things on computers. You know it as “click all boxes on this crappy picture that have micro-organisms in them” and then type the letters and symbols, you see which are so blurry you can’t make them out. Captcha is the ultimate pop quiz given to us when we forget our passwords. It tests our human intelligence by asking us to click on the obvious. In my view, it was keeping this human from doing human things. Logging in is now my challenge.

Jobs Lost

Captcha is the new bouncer. I’d rather be told, “No, you can’t come in” by a real live human being.

We have been reassured that computers and robots won’t take our jobs. Oh, no, they will let us humans focus on more important things. We now answer to and have conversations with these robots.  We are constantly building relationships with computers and robots. Alexa can you tell me if this is true?

So back to Captcha: It tells us that we should click each box that shows, say, a school bus. I got this – simple. I mean, I’ve been to third grade. I aced those “which one of these doesn’t belong with the others” challenges. So I click the yellow bus, which feels like it spans over one hundred of those little boxes. But then, I’m flummoxed: Does that corner of the bumper count? Does the Captcha Boss even know it’s there? One page of passably correct answers isn’t good enough. So now there are eighteen pages for me to click the school buses on. I feel my anxiety and blood pressure rising.  As I click and click there is no sight in end. With every passing second I get no closer to entering the website. It is now Man vs. Captcha!

The Treachery of Images 

There was an artist Rene Magritte in the early 1900’s whose famous work was of an ordinary pipe, the kind your father might have smoked, filling your living room with great-smelling cancer. Magritte painted just below the pipe the words, "Ceci n'est pas une pipe," French for "This is not a pipe." The artist claimed the painting is not a pipe, but rather an image of a pipe. Magritte’s masterpiece is steeped in surrealism. His website says this work “creates a three-way paradox out of the conventional notion that objects correspond to words and images.” My translation: What you see is not always what is. This is Captcha in a nutshell!

My surrealism. I can’t get into the website and now I can’t remember why I needed it in the first place. I am plagued with bewilderment and frustration. Maybe the yellow school bus is not a yellow school bus but just a picture of one. Maybe this is why I can’t pass the Captcha test?  

Gotcha!

Captcha should be renamed to Gotcha! Gotcha that you had no idea what a crosswalk looks like anymore or a traffic light or a bicycle or a yellow school bus, for that matter.

Finally, I clicked the last bus and bam! Captcha screams to me Gotcha! Evidently, I was unsuccessful clicking all the boxes with the buses in it. All parts of the bus must be checked, even the ones with a centimeter of the bumper in it. And now I’m locked out of my website. And I have to either call customer service – in some unknown foreign land, which seems to grow a lot of computerized choice trees before you actually talk to a human – or speak to the friendly chat box lady in the corner of my screen who, for some reason, is always named Erica. Another robot? Or has a computer algorithm determined that we American rubes can most easily remember the name Erica? And so everyone is now named Erica.

No More

I did what I never intended to do. I quit. The Captcha Gotcha final exam was over. Pencils down. I walked away from my computer bristly in humiliation and my ego bruised. Sesame Street taught me how to pick what didn’t belong years ago but that skillset has failed me.

This exercise challenged my thinking about what is or what is not part of the bus. The pictures were unclear and sometimes blurry to the human non robotic eye. I understand the purpose, they tried to make this process safer so the hackers can’t do their work.

In the end, there is a robot trying to verify that we are not robots. We have kept our jobs but now must defend ourselves against robots thinking we are not humans. We answer to them even as they stand in our way. Alexa please end this article...and tell your friends when they ask, I am not a robot!

Je suis une pipe.

The HR Dad Greg Brenner is the author of the Smack Dab in the Middle of Life series. His passions are with all things people. In collaboration with his incredible wife, he has two wonderful kids, a fifteen-year-old son and a twelve-year-old daughter who make him distinctly qualified to be the Dad.

At work, he leads a wonderful tribe who has taught him to learn, inspire and grow as the Assistant Vice President of Talent and Organizational Development at the fantastic University of Miami and Health System – UHealth.

He cherishes the time to write about HR, leadership, and daily life. Thanks to his tribe, colleagues, network, and family, he has plenty of material. Writer’s block is never a problem.