I spent a year trying to connect a bathroom sink. AI couldn’t help. A Plumbing Resource at Lowes, named John Wolfe fixed it in five minutes.

Here’s what that taught me about the future of work.

I run multiple businesses where AI is baked into everything: websites, marketing funnels, training programs, data analysis. I use Grok, Claude, GPT-4o, Gemini—the whole stack. I genuinely believe AI is the greatest productivity multiplier of our lifetime.

Then I met a DIY bathroom remodel with a male-threaded tailpiece on a vessel sink that refused to connect to my home’s standard drain.

ChatGPT confidently told me I needed a “1-1/4″ slip joint extension with a 1-1/2″ tailpiece adapter”. Sounded perfect. The part doesn’t exist—it confused standard drain sizing with the sink specifications. Grok suggested a manufacturer part number that was imagined. The web links authoritatively took to me to patio furniture.  The AI had pattern-matched plumbing terminology without understanding a fundamentally different mechanical universe.

Two professional plumbers couldn’t solve it. Five stores (Lowe’s, Home Depot, Ace, two plumbing suppliers) didn’t have answers. The manufacturer was no help. I was minutes from ripping out two perfectly good $750 sinks.

Then I walked into Lowe’s Peoria, AZ and met John Wolfe. John started in plumbing in 1978.

He looked at my photo, felt the threads with his fingers, and said: “You need a 1 ½ inch trap adapter, and a 1 ¼ inch female PVC adapter, and a few other things.” 

Five minutes later he handed me $20 in parts. Done.

John had installed thousands of sinks. AI had read about thousands of vessel sinks. Not the same thing.

I see the same pattern in Global Mobility. AI can quote immigration law perfectly, generate compliant assignment letters, and analyze cost-of-living data faster than any human. But it doesn’t know that the consulate you are dealing with is backlogged eight months because of a staffing change, or that the “correct” housing allowance for Shanghai will put your assignee in the wrong school area for their teenager’s needs, or how to read the subtext when an executive says they’re “excited” about a Singapore move but their spouse just went silent on the call.

That’s the kind of pattern recognition that comes from being in the room for a thousand conversations AI has only seen transcribed.

AI can write a 2,000-word white paper in ten seconds. It cannot feel pipe thread with its fingers or read the room when a relocation is about to go sideways.

Here’s what I think this means:

The professionals who will thrive alongside AI aren’t the ones defending territory. They’re the ones building expertise that compounds with AI rather than competes with it. John doesn’t need to fear YouTube tutorials—his value comes from the 10,000 problems he’s solved that taught him which rules to break and when, what to pay attention to, and why. 

The same is true in knowledge work. AI handles the commoditized part—the research, the drafting, the data processing. What becomes more valuable is the judgment that comes from lived experience: knowing which “correct” answer won’t actually work, reading context that isn’t in the data, connecting dots across domains that AI’s training can’t see.

We’re not headed toward AI versus humans. We’re headed toward AI as the foundation and human expertise as the architecture built on top.

Thank you, John Wolfe. And thank you to every tradesperson, consultant, and veteran mobility professional who’s building the kind of expertise that makes AI better—not obsolete.

The future belongs to both.

#AI #Craftsmanship #SkilledTrades #Leadership #CustomerExperience #HumansFirst #ExperienceMatters