Geoff McGehee, 54, worked as a senior customer-relationship manager at Sears Home Services. He was good at his job — managing customer relationships, handling escalations, keeping the service side of a home services company running smoothly.
But in the years before his layoff, McGehee was asked to help the company do something that would ultimately make his own position redundant: he helped integrate AI to replace human customer service workers.
"I was literally digging my own grave," he told The Wall Street Journal.
He was laid off in October 2025. Since then, he has applied for hundreds of back-office jobs. Nothing. At 54, with decades of customer service and relationship management experience, the job market has offered him nothing. He's now considering retraining to become an electrician — a complete career pivot at an age when most people are thinking about retirement, not starting over.
His story is part of a broader pattern in Phoenix, Arizona — a city that once offered what economists called a "ladder to the middle class" through back-office jobs. Customer service representative jobs in the metro Phoenix area have dropped 26 percent in the past four years, according to the Labor Department. Nationwide, customer service representative jobs are projected to decline by 5 percent by 2034.
The cruelest part? McGehee didn't just watch AI replace workers. He was the one building the replacement. He saw the technology working, saw the efficiency gains, and didn't realize he was engineering his own obsolescence.