Sundays With Seymore
Welcome to the debut of Sunday’s With Seymour, the first in a weekly series of opinion columns from Seymour Outrage. Expect sharp takes & stubborn rants – all served fresh each Sunday from the cluttered mind of a man who still yells at his microwave. In this week’s opinion piece Seymour discusses what happens if “AI Replaces My Job”.
I’m 55 years old. Gainfully employed. Somewhat emotionally stable. I own two pairs of khakis and one opinion about modern jazz. Yet despite all this, my mother still believes my greatest accomplishment would be finding a “nice woman who does yoga but also eats bread.” Her words. If AI replaces my job I hope it can handle my mother as well.
Lately, everyone’s terrified of artificial intelligence taking over jobs. And I get it. The robots are learning fast. They can write emails, build PowerPoints, and apparently flirt better than I can on Bumble. Fine. But I have one very serious question for Silicon Valley:
Can your AI take my mother’s phone calls?
“Seymour, The Cat From Down the Street Is Engaged”
My mom calls me three times a week, each time with a fresh anxiety about my romantic status. Last Tuesday, she informed me that “even Bonnie’s son—the one with the face thing—just got engaged.” Then she asked if I’ve “considered dating someone with fewer opinions.”
I’m not sure an algorithm can respond to that without self-destructing.
Now, if ChatGPT can endure a 17-minute tangent about how my 1996 girlfriend “always looked hydrated,” while also pretending to care about Aunt Dolores’s arthritis, I’ll gladly hand over my career. But until then? The robots stay in their lane.
Real Men Multi-Task: Work Email and Existential Shame
Look, I’m not against technology. I once downloaded a meditation app. It made me angrier. But I’ve been in the workforce long enough to know the value of certain human skills: writing vague but urgent memos, nodding in Zoom meetings while microwaving soup, and rewording an email seven times to avoid sounding passive-aggressive.
No robot can match the emotional endurance of a single middle-aged man fending off a quarterly barrage of “Have you tried church groups?” from his own mother. That takes grit.
“I’ll accept AI in the workplace the moment it can survive one dinner with my mom without crying in the car afterward.”
Replace My Job? Try Replacing 55 Years of Guilt
The real Turing Test isn’t about logic puzzles or passing for human. It’s about fielding a call from your mother while you’re in the Costco parking lot, and somehow convincing her that being single at 55 is not a moral failing but rather a lifestyle choice—despite the overwhelming disapproval of the entire mahjong group.
So yes, tech bros, build your machines. Replace me at work. If AI replaces my job it also better be able to handle my mom asking “How’s your cholesterol?” like it’s a character flaw, I am staying right where I am.
In khakis. Alone. And essential.
Disclaimer: If you believed this article was real —or worse, felt personally offended — you might be taking life too seriously. It’s satire, not a subpoena. Relax and remember jokes aren’t assault.
