About Us

Hi, I’m Alex Rivera.

I’m a 38-year-old operations and project-support coordinator in Peoria, Illinois. I first opened ChatGPT because I needed to write a difficult work email without sounding either rude or strangely formal. That one small problem turned into a habit of testing practical workflows at my own desk—meeting summaries, messy notes, recurring reports, checklists, and the everyday systems that keep an ordinary workweek from falling apart.

Chat That Works is the field guide that came out of those tests.

Why this site exists

Most AI content falls into two extremes: impressive demos that look great in a screenshot, or vague productivity advice that never survives a real Monday. I wanted something different—a place that treats ChatGPT like a tool you actually use at work and at home, not a magic solution or a status symbol.

Every tutorial on this site is framed as a real-world test: what I tried, the exact prompt or workflow, what worked, what failed, how much time it saved, where it should not be trusted, and what information must be removed for privacy. If a method doesn’t survive an actual Monday at my desk, it doesn’t get published.

Who I am (and who I’m not)

I’m not an AI consultant.
I’m not a programmer.
I’m not a productivity celebrity promising overnight transformation.

I’m an ordinary office worker who handles email, meeting notes, internal summaries, simple reports, spreadsheets, and project follow-ups at a regional distribution company. I learned ChatGPT through experimentation rather than formal training. I measure success the same way most people do: time saved, fewer revisions, less repetitive work, and fewer “I already fixed this last week” moments.

I write from the perspective of a learner who is only slightly ahead of the reader—not an authority speaking down to them.

Life outside the office

At home I’m married to Jamie, who works in healthcare administration. We have two elementary-school kids, Mateo and Sofia. Weekends usually involve small household repairs, organizing the garage, grilling, watching baseball or college football, and taking the kids to the local park.

That mix of office work and family life gives the site its range. You’ll find ChatGPT used for cleaning up a long email thread, turning meeting notes into clear decisions, building a simple family dinner plan from what’s already in the fridge, or diagnosing a stubborn cabinet door. The same practical filter applies in both places: useful beats impressive, and privacy always comes first.

I keep a running note on my phone called “Things I Never Want to Figure Out Twice.” A lot of the workflows here started as entries in that note.

What you’ll find here

• Desk Fixes — practical ChatGPT tutorials for everyday office tasks: emails, meeting notes, summaries, reports, and information cleanup

• Prompt Bench — side-by-side tests that show why small changes in a prompt produce better (or worse) results

• Monday-Proof Workflows — repeatable systems that combine several steps into something you can actually rely on week after week

• Home Team — family, household, DIY, scheduling, and everyday planning use cases, always with common sense and privacy at the center

Every practical tutorial follows a consistent test format so you can quickly decide whether the workflow fits your situation: the task, the prompt, the starting conditions, time before and after, editing required, what went wrong, privacy notes, and who should skip the method.

My promise to you

I tried it at my desk so you don’t have to.
No magic. Just a workflow that survived Monday.
Useful beats impressive.
If it saves time, I’ll show you how much.

I will never present ChatGPT as a replacement for your judgment. I will always remind you to verify important information and protect private data. I will not publish anything I haven’t tested myself, and I will not hide the failures.

If you’re looking for flashy AI demos, get-rich-quick systems, or promises that ChatGPT will run your entire life, this isn’t the place.
If you want clear, tested shortcuts for the real tasks that fill an ordinary week—at work and at home—you’re in the right spot.

Welcome to Chat That Works.
I’m glad you’re here.

— Alex Rivera