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.”

 

 

 

 

 

Delete My Computer, Please. Confessions of an Administrative Aide

It’s the first day of my new job. I stroll the clean, quiet halls en route to my office. It’s a long walk. On the way, I see workers in their offices, sitting at desks, bodies visible, but heads obscured by the back of their computer, almost as if the computers were their heads. Well, this isn’t right. I’ll never learn the names and faces of my new work associates doing this, will I?

My own room is cute, although windowless, about ten by ten feet. My boss greets me there, glad to finally meet the person who’s filling the long-vacated position.

“Hit Control-Alt-Delete,” she says, standing over my shoulder by my desk.

That’s funny, I never have to do this at home, and I can’t find Delete anywhere on the gigantic, trumped-up keyboard I apparently have to use here. I find Delete, but try to press all three Control, Alt, and Delete keys simultaneously with one hand and, like failing to play an octave on piano, I hit a sour note on my first job responsibility.

As the day goes on, it’s difficult to accomplish any work. Short of my bathroom break, everything  here is done through a computer. Everything. Any file I’m looking for is in a file within a file within a file within a file, sandwiched between Excel spreadsheets, distribution lists, PDFs, Word documents, technology files, room reservations, timelines and countless other folders. My search for a sense of Control has already been filed under Lost, no doubt sub-filed under Technology.

Anything this computer can do, I can do better. Example: my PC’s office calendar system that magically links everyone’s schedule in my department with each other. I’m not impressed. First of all, by the time I get to the computer calendar with new dates to add, I’ve either forgotten the date, the subject, or both. Worse yet, the computer’s design makes each week’s grid and each person’s calendar look the same. It’s only a matter of time before my doctor visits will be plastered all over the boss’s agenda. I sketch my own calendar on a scrap of paper and hide it in my desk drawer. Far more effective. Confidential. At my fingertips. Surge proof.

Meanwhile, unresolved office emails and phone tag games go on all week. If I merely walked across the hall, couldn’t I personally answer all these people in about five minutes? But no, that’s not the way it’s done anymore. If I had a window in my office, I’m sure I’d be tempted to jump through it about every hour.

I make calls from my office to other companies to update files: No one who was working at these companies a year ago is working there now. Where have they all gone? Were their jobs like mine? Did they leave from job dissatisfaction? I don’t get it.

To keep my job, the handiest survival tip I’ve used has been to write down all tasks that require three steps or more. As sure as the photocopier will go down when we need it most, I will not remember directions beyond three steps. Period. I secure an old Rolodex from the mailroom to organize the fifty index cards upon which I’ve scribbled instructions of three steps or more. They’ve been real ass-savers.

My boss is out sick today, and I’m asked to review all her email for important correspondence she may need. There’s a hundred emails. What madness. And some are personal, and I sure as hell don’t want to discover what I don’t want to know about her or anyone by snooping through their email! After all, isn’t there’s some confidentiality agreement in my job description?

I’m proud of the way I’ve learned to prioritize office duties. The most important thing in my job is knowing passwords, usernames and codes. Actually, they’re the most annoying part of my job, but taping passwords to the wall is handy and I’m far less aggravated by them in doing this. I refer to passwords, usernames and codes an average of twenty-eight times a day. Sure, they’re visible for everyone to see on the wall, but it’s less important strangers see them than I do not. Without my passwords, I might as well go home. Otherwise I can’t do a thing on either my PC, desk phone, company website, Facebook, and a zillion other things.

For some reason, I’m getting really behind. So, the last thing I want to do is spend time on the tutorials I’ve been encouraged to view. The first was on Excel spreadsheets. Then Abobe Creative Suite. Then In Design, whatever that is. But I did see the tutorial about our operating system. So confusing, the company kindly hired out a technology consultant to get me straight. That was back in the beginning before anyone knew I’d need a computer personal trainer.

Yeah, I do get a little sloppy sometimes. There’s no telling what keys my fingers just slid across by accident. I’m somewhere between a loose cannon and someone who can’t get out of his own way. Because of this, I’m paranoid about clicking Forward by mistake when replying to someone by email. Or clicking Select All. Or Reply All. Click the wrong button, and X might see a string of correspondences attached to my reply where Y and Z had been cc’d and X doesn’t like Y and Z said something bad about X last month. I make phones calls whenever possible, being sure to talk very carefully and very slowly.

It’s only natural I look for any physical duty there might be to do around the office now. I volunteer to tack flyers to the bulletin board. Photocopy documents. Staple handouts. Hole punch binders. File folders. Pick up mail. Open the new water jug. Walk receipts up to Finance. And, on the way, walk around and personally respond to everyone’s stalled email and phone messages!

An optional staff development invite pops into my email. I jump on it. Anything to get out of the office. But the seminar, “Decreasing Job Dissatisfaction and Improving Workplace Productivity,” could help me, too. Is there something I could change to make my job easier? Modify about my attitude? Wouldn’t it be nice to be so efficient that I alternate one good habit with another all day long?

The job dissatisfaction seminar leader begins the two-hour discussion with, “First off, I strongly recommend you get rest on weekends.” Come on. What else ya got?

“All that work on your desk? Remember. It’ll still be there tomorrow.” Right. It wasn’t done yesterday because it wasn’t done the day before that either. And, yes, it’ll still be there tomorrow. Help.

“To assist in organizing your day, start with the end first.” Apparently, there is no end to my job, so to backtrack from something that doesn’t exist is insane.

“Despite what we’ve all heard, there is no such thing as multi-tasking!” Oh, right. My job is predicated on the multi-task principle, and everyone else’s, too. I feel no more relaxed or productive now than when I walked into this room.

It all comes down to this. Your boss emails you something to be done. You do it. You email it on. That person sends it to someone else who does something with it, mostly to get it off his back, then on to someone else. She sends it to her boss who looks at it and sends it to someone else because she has rank. Somehow, someway, it may eventually come back to you, at which point you place it in your “To Do” file. I’m aware of this pattern, yet I am still ranked only as an Administrative Aide.

Confounded by yet another day of computer curve balls, I summon the IT Department. They send me a student-level tech person. In less than one hour, he teaches me things I’d never dreamed were possible on a computer! A genius, and only nineteen. It’s obvious to me he could do my job, and in half the time. What’s he doing in IT? What am I doing here?

The best thing this young tech has taught me as an Office Administrative Aide? When to hit Delete.

It’s nice to have gained control again. No passwords required either.

 

As Thrift is Joy, the Store is Home

Joyful one minute, sad the next, I drive out of the thrift store parking lot a final time. After all these months, what have I learned working as a sales associate here?

While navigating my ride home, I reminisce.

At the store’s back doors, I go through countless articles people have just donated. Immense amount of junk, I think, even for when it was new! Get a load of this crappy little ceramic house. And what about that – the world’s ugliest candlestick holder? And now a plastic cutting board with a zillion cuts in it. No wonder they got rid of these things. Hey – don’t be so judgmental. Your job is to sort the donations, not roll your eyes. Just chalk it up to a “beauty’s in the eye of the beholder” kind of thing.

But then, many of the donors turn right around, enter the front of the store, and buy more stuff. What am I supposed to think? Stuff, stuff, stuff. Buy, buy, buy. There’s nothing wrong with buying, per se, it’s just that I’ve noticed how much people play such a value on consuming, far more than I realized before I started working here.

While cashiering, I basically serve two groups of regulars. The first are dealers here in Santa Fe, buying bargains for their own thrift stores or online outlets. The other group, a far larger one, is women over sixty. They love to shop. And shop. And shop. God love ’em – they make the store go round.

Then there are all the other sub-groups of shoppers. One such group is the needy, people who can’t afford to shop anywhere but a thrift store, especially for clothes. Another group consists of the noticeably ill, disabled, or those challenged in some way, perhaps so strapped by health care costs that thrift stores like this are their only opportunity to buy clothes, furniture and whatnot. And another group – I’ve finally deduced – are here for something quite personal: the comfort they receive from the thrift store experience. Maybe they like the people who work here – regular faces and fixtures in their lives. Maybe they’re lonely. Or maybe it’s as simple as understanding a day just doesn’t feel centered without a visit to the thrift store, a little home away from home.

A thrift store, however, is made up of a wide collection of individuals, many who carry an unfortunate situation around with them. I’ve seen customers walk up to the counter and pay with change, the only currency they have. I’ve consoled donors who’ve broken down at the back door, unable to watch me unload from the car a lifetime of personal items that belonged to their just-departed spouse. I’ve picked up furniture from people who’ve just lost their job.

I’ve watched our manager ask shoplifters to leave the store. I’ve caught people ripping price tags off items hoping to get a better price at the checkout stand. I’ve dealt with hagglers who, with every visit to the store, want to wiggle the price down. Are these people con artist types, or just desperate and down on their luck?

Add to these folks the customers who wait by the front door ten minutes before we open, staring at me through the large glass windows, hoping I might open early for them. There’s those who walk in two minutes before closing, then linger ten minutes before heading to the checkout stand. And there’s those who donate large bags of goods, knowing inside that big black sack is also a lot of trash they’re happy to get off their hands.

To my surprise, many customers speak with thick, foreign accents – not just Spanish – making it crucial we take the time to help them understand the money transaction they’re about to make. There’s the time it takes us to finally understand certain customers really aren’t a threat to the store, only that they want to spend most of the day here to shop, relax and intermittently lie on a couch to read while occasionally nibbling on a snack. And there’s always the time we take to listen to customers talk about how much they know about gold, silver and jewelry – but don’t.

But what customers share most in their thrift shop experience is joy. Yes, joy. When people find what they want, they often bring it to the counter like a kid who’s just opened the Cracker Jack box to find the best prize ever inside. I sense many customers see this store as a house of healing, another home for them within our beautiful city, one that can be humbling to live in. And I am humbled by the joyous smiles I see at the counter, especially from those who’ve fallen on hard times.

 

In hindsight, I realize being part of these little customer joys was the perk to help me and other sales associates get through long days. Every day was long. Perhaps sorting through thousands of donations made us feel tired (imagine opening up your own garage doors to accept all the neighborhood’s yard sale items that didn’t sell over the weekend). Perhaps cashiering all day did it. Or, maybe it was just trying to make every customer a little happier than when they first shuffled in through the doors.

Anything to see joy.

Anything to  have a job.

Anything to live in Santa Fe.

Remember This? Lucy’s “Wrapping Chocolates” Episode?

Lucy always tried so hard. If nothing else, she had a ton of energy and a positive attitude, just what anyone needs to make a good first impression and be appreciated at the workplace.

This clip from the “I Love Lucy” show is one of my favorites. Watching it as a kid, I laughed at how silly Lucy was believing she and Ethel could keep up with wrapping those chocolates on their first day in the candy factory.

I recently started a new job at a thrift store. I was Lucy and didn’t know it. Apparently, I’d learned nothing from my favorite Lucy lesson of all.

Instead of letting all the new information sink in slowly during my first day, I was a bull in a china closet. In my haste to impress, I shattered a coffee pot; I locked an antique chest shut for all time; I nearly broke the hydraulic lift on the store truck, and priced the cheap tin hand basket at $300 instead of three. Had they asked me to wrap candy,  I’d have wrapped every one, been praised, then given more work to do, after secretly learning I’d wrapped the wrong chocolates.

There have been other jobs, too, where I tried to impress the boss right away and, unlike the thrift store experience, succeeded in doing just that. “Oh, that new fellow, Mike, is really smart, and he works really fast, too.” How could I live up to those standards every day from then on?

How silly I was. But a lot can be learned from comedy, if – after you laugh – you learn. Fortunately, Lucy had Ethel to confirm her laughable mistake. Is it just me, or has anyone else done the same stupid thing on their first day at work (and learned no lesson at all)?