our manager announced a bold transformation initiative. half the company was being reorganized around automated tools, and i was suddenly the only person left on a workflow we'd once shared
he called me director of autonomous operations. the actual job involved checking errors, correcting generated reports, and explaining to customers why the new system had invented three products we didn't sell
i asked for more support and a realistic schedule. he said artificial intelligence would make everything effortless. i suggested he spend a day reviewing the outputs before repeating that sentence
by friday he had approved a smaller rollout and hired another person to help. the title stayed. i now introduce myself as the director of making sure the robots don't embarrass us