Frontline Decides Everything

How Our Receptionists, Agents, and Schedulers Became the New High-Stakes Gatekeepers

When we talk about universal basic income (UBI), we often imagine checks arriving in the mail, untethered from effort. But in reality, UBI (or something like it) already exists in disguise, embedded within systems that rely on unnecessary labor, inefficient layers, and rituals of performance for a paycheck. We don’t get money for nothing. We get money for roleplay.

But here's something we overlook. Just as the work itself is often an illusion, so too is control. The people who seem peripheral — receptionists, schedulers, agents — are often the ones shaping entire realities. In this way, the front line is the system. Sometimes the only face the customer will ever see. And increasingly, it decides everything.

A Phone Call, A Religion

There’s a trend on TikTok and Red Note right now. People in need, often single mothers, low-income individuals, or the recently unhoused, are calling religious institutions on video: churches, mosques, and temples. They ask for help. Baby formula. A ride to work. Winter coats.

In one recent video series, a woman calls multiple religious institutions asking for baby formula. The responses vary in her 42 video series, from abrupt hang-ups to nine responses of immediate "yes, we can help."

(Watch full clip →)

• Highlights (starting ~2:18)
• Caller (woman):
  “Hi, I’m just calling to ask if your church helps with baby formula?”
  (…cut to multiple rejections and abrupt replies)
• Church receptionist (~5:26):
  “No, I don't believe we have anything in the food pantry for infants, okay?”
  (hangs up)

In these cases, the entire global perception of those religions can shift for that viewer, that audience. Not because of theology. Not because of doctrine. Because of the person who picked up the phone.

A Friend's Day Off

My friend works five to six days a week. Her day off this week was spent building the energy to make a couple of phone calls to schedule her own follow-up medical appointments. She dreads these calls. Not because she’s afraid of doctors. Because the voice on the other end of the line is often cold, impatient, or dehumanizing. “Can you hold?” and then after what seems like ages, "What time?" they ask. "What day?" they bark. She braces herself, waits on hold, and gets through it, barely.

Receptionists don’t perform surgery. Don’t write prescriptions. Don’t authorize imaging. But that person holds power often equal to the rest, the power to make her feel welcome or diminished, to make her health feel like a burden or a right.

My Dentist

Ten and a half months I waited. I had insurance, I found a provider, I made the appointment. When the day came, I showed up early — 25 minutes early — to fill out the forms.

The receptionist told me I would need to reschedule. Not because I was late. Because I hadn't downloaded their app.

She refused to hand me the forms to fill out in person, or to allow me to fill out information in their app in real time. Refused to let me be seen. Even the dentist, who called out my name and stood ready to take me in, was overruled. "She'll have to reschedule," the receptionist said, flatly.

I walked out.

And then I called my dentist from my prior locale. "What day works for you?" they asked. That was it. No app. No refusal. No gatekeeper with an attitude. Just access.

What This Has to Do With UBI

In the corporate and public sectors, we now live in a world of subsidized make-work — layers of compliance, processing, and make-work jobs which justify wages but slow actual value creation. We resist automation not because it’s impossible but because we’re scared of its social impact. So we keep humans in the loop, performing tasks machines could do faster.

But what happens when those humans, often underpaid, undertrained, or burned out, are the only humans a customer ever meets?

They are not low-risk hires. They are your entire interface to the world.

They shape the emotional trust of your brand. They shape the perception of your faith. They shape whether a person ever returns, recommends, or believes again.

The Hidden Cost of Dismissiveness

Corporations lose millions in lifetime customer value — and have no idea. Churches lose hearts. Clinics lose patients. Why? Because someone at the front line is rude, rushed, or resentful.

You can optimize your systems. You can automate your tools. But if the human doorway is broken, no one comes through.

Systems, Soul, and the Cost of a Hello

I believe in systems. I also believe in soul. And sometimes, all it takes to ruin both is a single, unchecked tone at the entry point.

What we call "low-cost" labor is often high-risk labor, precisely because it carries the full weight of public experience. That weight can reinforce goodwill or fracture it entirely. Entire faith systems and religions can get globally defaced due to a single phone call with a tired or cranky receptionist on the line.

So next time you walk into a practice, or place a call to a temple, or try to find help from a system designed to serve you, remember: if the person at the front desk is kind, you’ll forgive almost anything. If they’re not, you’ll forget nothing.

And if you’re the one designing systems, remember this too:
The soul of the system is in the first five seconds.

— Madonna Demir, author of Systems & Soul

UBI Dressed Like Work

What if universal basic income isn’t a future policy, but a system already at work? Madonna Demir reveals how subsidies, compliance jobs, and economic illusion keep money flowing under the guise of employment — and what this hidden architecture says about value, purpose, and modern life.

Systems. Soul. And the space between.Madonna Demir