Dear Todd – Texting Uback w iphone: SWHSE (sorry, we hired someone else)

Out from a dark gray hoodie, a pink-flushed face appears. It’s Todd’s. He’s ready to review his job application with Mr. Deale, the store manager, clad in a vivid red polo.

Reading the top of the first page, Mr. Deale stops and squints his eyes. “You’ve written here that your middle name is … ‘IS‘?”

“Yeah, text for I’m Sorry, ‘cuz, I mean, I don’t have a middle name. Is, is that okay?”

“Is that … okay? I suppose. No need to be sorry.”

“Cool.”

“Now, Todd, I see for ‘How long living at your current address,’ you wrote WRT?”

“With Regard To.”

“Then you scribbled the letter Y?”

“Y – you know, for the word, ‘why’.”

“Why what?”

“Why do you need to know how long someone’s been at their current address?”

“Well, it’s just a formality …. Todd, looking down your application, I see it’s all abbreviations.”

“Texts. Figured you go through a lot of applications, sir, and this would speed things up.”

“For ‘Salary desired,’ you wrote IAG, NBD.”

“It’s All Good. No Big Deal.”

“And PT.”

“For Part Time. Part time, you know, that I don’t want full time.”

“Using all these texts, it’s highly irregular. For ‘Position applied for,’ you wrote, ‘IT.’ What’s ‘IT’ mean?”

“You mean, you don’t have an IT department?”

“Oh, IT. Of course we …”

“‘Cuz if you sell tech stuff, I’d like a job there.”

“On the line about any crimes, convictions, or sentences you may have had imposed, you wrote IDNDT.”

“I Did Not Do That.”

Todd’s iPhone rings.

“Just a second, sir,” he says, pulling the smooth, blue device out from his pocket.

As Mr. Deale scans the application further, Todd texts back, ‘dude’z clulss. wtf. w2f!!!‘”

“Okay. Done. Sorry. I’m all about technology, sir. You sell iPhones here?”

“I see that for driver’s license number, you wrote BOT 953 IIRC?”

“If I Remember Correctly, I think my number’s 953 BOT.”

“953 BOT is your plate number, Todd. What’s the number on your wallet?”

“Oh, that thing. Worst abbreviation ever. And for what?”

“That’s because it’s not text, Todd.  And for ‘Means of transportation,’ you wrote GF.”

“My girlfriend, Mindy, well, till the old BOT gets fixed. But I’ll be here on time, sir.”

“References are very important, Todd, yet you left that entire section blank, blank except for NA. What’s that?”

“Not Applicable, which I crossed out and switched to WB – will Write Back, which I crossed out and put NA again.”

“Why?”

“Well, mothers aren’t references, are they?”

“As for work experience, under ‘Name of last employer,’ you wrote JTLYK MOM?”

“Yeah, for Just To Let You Know, my last job was for Mom.”

“Your reason for leaving the position was ‘POS‘.”

“Parent Over Shoulder.”

“Then, in parentheses, NC?”

“Not Cool. I mean, you know what I mean, right?”

“And then SLY?”

“But – Still Love You. S’all good. I’m ready to work.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-three.”

“Well … Todd, after going over your application and body of work experience, I see you’ve done some respectable work, but it’s not exactly Target level employment material, now is it?”

“But, I’m ready to work, sir. I really am.”

“Just curious. Below, you printed your name, but left the signature line blank.”

“Oh. Cursive is dead, sir.”

“Just curious. Do you know how to sign your name?”

“LMAO no! Laughing My Ass Off – no! They don’t teach that anymore.”

“Right. Well, it’s been nice to meet you, Todd. We’ll let you know if anything comes up.”

“Cool.”

“CUL8R. For See You Later. I just made it up.”

“Hey, gonna write that down, sir.”

“Try writing it in cursive some day.”

“Ha! LMAO, sir. LMAO!”

“Right. LOL back at ‘cha, Todd.”

“Cool. You got my number! Text me.”

 

 

 

 

 

The Postal Service: We Deliver Zombies

Today’s the day. I can just feel it. It’s 10:15 – exactly between the time the Post Office opens when everybody’s trying to get ahead of everybody else and noon when everybody’s sneaking over on their break. I already notice the parking lot’s far less full. Not a whole lot of people mulling around the place either. Yes!

I enter through the squeaky, automatic glass door, turn left, and there they are – twenty-five people, all holding packages, snaked around the long desk in the middle of the room. The shock and awe on my face must resemble what I look like after having sat on a tack. Or the face on the guy in Munch’s painting, “The Scream.” All I want to do is get the right postage to send off an 8×11 manilla folder containing a long letter to my friend.

I should have known better. Next time, I’ll write my letters here, right on the desk while I’m waiting in line – I’ll have time to compose ten pages if I want.

As Customer Number Twenty-six, I try to regain control by calculating just how long I might be here. Too depressing. Bored, I read the poster on the wall, “Summer Stamps.” It’s November now, not summer, which reminds me it was June when they discontinued the automated customer ticket system. Yet, on the digital wall counter, number 32 still flickers, presumably left over from Customer Number 32 on that long-lost June day. I imagine him still standing here, a zombie, holding a parcel in his rigor mortice-stiff arms.

As Customer Number Twenty-seven enters, I now get to enjoy his look of shock and awe. Same with Customer Number Twenty-eight. (Edward Munch must have frequented post offices.) Customer Twenty-nine turns around and leaves (along with impatient Number Eighteen who follows suit). Now we’re getting somewhere!

There’s five clerk postal bays in front of us. I’ve never seen five postal clerks in here – ever. Today’s there’s three. If the customers looked dead, the clerks come across as coldly limp, at best. One goes in the back and never returns. Did she die back there, die with all the others who’ve never returned to serve us? Just wondering.

I notice one clerk’s been with a customer for ten minutes. When did sending mail get so complicated? What could they possibly be talking about? What’s he mailing – air bags, cremated remains, ammunition?

But now I see the clerk smile. Hey, he’s not supposed to smile or chill or chat! He’s here to serve us – and fast. But can I blame him? Why speed up and service 500 irritated customers a day when you can get away with 300? Even 300 – isn’t that slow death for any clerk to serve in one overworked day?

I see the next customer has 8 packages. I hate Christmas. I hate it already. And it’s only early November. Someone embalm me – now.

So, as I stand here waiting in line, I compose my “Ways to Improve the United States Postal Service” list:

*Just sell stamps

*Let customers redeem their two foot-long Post Office receipts for stamps

*Eliminate Christmas altogether

*Or just disband, like aging rock groups do. Living Death, Crushed Butler and Lucifer’s Friend did (their names gone, but not forgotten, explaining exactly how I feel right now – probably Postal workers, too).

Underage Appreciation for the Long Gone Classical Music Composer

“Orchestra at Ground Level,” 15 x 23. Inks on paper

I turn around from my second row seat in Albuquerque’s Popejoy Hall and see the capacity crowd is standing and clapping. On the stage, the New Mexico Philharmonic conductor bows and the orchestra members stand, but it’s the absent composer I’m madly applauding. It’s too bad he isn’t here tonight to receive the flower bouquet laid at the conductor’s feet because Tchaikovsky’s sixth symphony, the “Pathetique,” is a masterwork.

I’m aghast how this symphony – considered a masterpiece now – was panned by critics and audiences the first time it was performed in 1893. Many great works have been panned after their first public performance, and still are. Classical music has always been owned, at least most appreciated and patronized, by older, wealthier people. I assume it was this base that panned Tchaikovsky’s sixth because, to generalize, older, wealthy people tend to be on the conservative side. Among many changes they didn’t like, perhaps the hardest was listening to the long, somber ending. What, no rousing conclusion to the fourth movement? Anything that feels too “new” or isn’t as great as the composer’s most previous work the musical establishment often scorns.

Caught up in my fervent clapping, as if hoping Tchaikovsky might hear me, I cannot believe anyone ever slammed his sixth. I don’t care what they were expecting. Beauty is beauty, isn’t it? To not be moved, I repeat – moved – by this music, seems then to have fallen upon deaf ears.

While exiting the hall, I hear negative audience response to “Circuits,” a modern piece that opened the program. Again – too new, too different, too soon for most folk? I, too, cannot see classical music evolving to the sound of “Circuits,” a rather edgy 1990 orchestral piece that places an emphasis on experimentation over “beauty.” Then again, beauty is in the ear of the listener. And wasn’t Tchaikovsky experimenting in “Pathetique,” too, a large reason audiences had difficulty with it, especially it’s “downer” ending?

When I hear raves for the night’s highlighted piece, Dvorak’s Cello Concerto in b minor, played masterfully by Zuill Bailey, I mull the fact that as classical music has changed, audiences have not. Classical music audiences tend not only to love concertos that display musician’s virtuosic abilities (and always have), but the majority of audiences are composed of the sixty and over set. My earliest concert memories attending Kennedy Center programs during the nineties were smothered by a preponderance of aging audience member’s tepid response and involvement to the events generally, complete with coughs and snores heard aplenty during them. However, in comparison, New Mexico Philharmonic patrons seem livelier and engaged, but are nevertheless overwhelmingly seniors (despite the availability of great seats for students at a huge discount). This audience loved the violin concerto and Tchaikovsky; not so much “that opening thing they played.” Sometimes when I hear responses like that, it comes across as though the people have been spoon fed what to like.

Tonight, I was caught up in all the glorious trappings that come with classical music events. I admit to my own brand of symphony snobbery by only buying seats located close to the stage. It is there I feel comfortable and most a part of the music. I can see the performers’ physical efforts of perfection, often their sweat; I bask in being surrounding by a world of concert hall browns, dotted by beautiful blacks and whites from the musician’s strict dress code, however upstaged by flower arrangement decor. While music is playing, I have difficulty sitting still like a good classical concert go-er should. And after the music is over, I clap for somebody who’s not even in the room.

I guess I strike a bit of discord with the base of classical music patrons around me, but I’m the happiest one in the hall.

The New Mexico Philharmonic performed this program October  24, 2015.
Artwork and photos by Mike Andberg.