Agents in the Enterprise: The Real Story, Not the Glossy One

I’ve spent enough years in this industry to know that half the things we plan look great in a spreadsheet and then fall apart the second they collide with actual human beings. Or weather. Or a missing cable. Or a manager who suddenly “forgot” to approve something they promised they handled last week.

So when people ask me why agents matter, I don’t give them a slick keynote answer. I tell them stories.

The Alligator, the Elevator, and the RAID Arrays

A long time ago, I was in the middle of a nationwide infrastructure refresh. I was sitting in a bland hotel room around 7:15, drinking a cup of coffee that tasted like burnt cardboard, when one of my Florida techs called to say he couldn’t make his installs.

I braced myself for a dead car battery.

Nope.

“There’s an alligator in my car,” he said.

Not metaphorical. Not cute. A real alligator. In his real car. Blocking the driver’s seat.

Fast-forward a few hours: I’m rerouting sites, soothing a customer, and wondering why project plans never include a section titled “Unexpected Wildlife.”

Then there was the time two of my coordinators decided the customer elevator was the right place for some… extracurricular activity. We fired them immediately and then spent the next 48 hours scrambling to undo the scheduling wreckage they left behind.

And of course, the legendary RAID story: thousands of dollars of high-end arrays delivered to a giant big-box retailer in the Midwest, where a well-meaning worker slapped price tags on them and placed them neatly on a shelf between discounted microwaves and Bluetooth speakers.

I remember the photo. And the sinking feeling. And the deep, resigned sigh.

Where Agents Fit Into All of This

This is why I take glossy AI narratives with a grain of salt the size of a brick.

Real work is messy.
Real operations are unpredictable.
Real teams are human.

Agents matter because life is chaotic.

And I learned that long before AI existed. Back then it was just me, a pager, and whatever chaos showed up that day.

Agents don’t eliminate the chaos; nothing does. But they give you a faster, calmer, more disciplined way to respond before everything burns down.

They can:

• reroute
• reassign
• notify
• document
• update
• escalate
• and recover

…all while the rest of us are still saying, “Wait, start over, what happened?”

The Quiet Shift

The first time I saw an agent pick up slack without being prompted, I didn’t feel excitement. I felt relief.

And for the first time in years, the technology actually felt like a partner instead of another thing I had to babysit at 2 a.m. while everyone else slept peacefully, blissfully unaware of the fires we deal with.

The Point

Agents don’t change the world.
They change how much of the world you’re forced to carry on your shoulders.

And if you’ve lived long enough in this work, that is more than enough.