Psuedo-Communication Ain’t: Get Past the Buffers Fast

 They’ve been around forever. Roadblocks to authority figures that actually have the power to fix things. If you think that there are more of them than usual, you’re right.

I’ve had ‘em. You likely have them, or will. That the number of blockers disguised as customer service reps has grown is because they are effective. Many consumers would rather vent than follow the most important rule of communication: carefully listen first. As the iconic business management guru Peter Drucker related in his work long ago: “The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said.”

If people did, they’d likely realize that venting is all that they have done. By both listening well and asking a couple of key questions, one will get better results in a time-efficient way.

I have seen my hairstylist (I’ll call her Gwen) for a few years. As she was trained by (and worked for a while) with Vidal Sassoon in her early New York life–and has owned her own salon here in Florida for more than two decades–she knows more about hair than most.

But not about effective communication. Gwen’s a talker, and for some reason she loves to tell me in great detail about her frustrations in getting her business problems fixed. Maybe it’s because she knows that the communication arena is my thing–kinda like the intricacies of hair growth are to her.

Anyway, a few days ago she told me about an unpleasant encounter that she had with the phone rep of a popular cooking magazine. She had spent a half hour arguing with her about a billing discrepancy of $3.00. THREE DOLLARS. A subscriber for over a decade, she was told that she could either pay the disputed amount or cancel and have the amount already paid refunded.

I listened patiently as she vented and snipped my hair simultaneously.

“Then I told her that I didn’t want either offer,” Gwen said. “I have subscribed to that magazine for so long because I love their recipes. You can’t just raise the price on me without notice, though–it’s the principal of the thing, not the money. I finally asked her if there was a supervisor that I could talk to.”

“There is no one else to talk to,” the rep said. “I’m the highest person here.”

“So I told her that if she was the CEO, then her company was having major problems,” Gwen continued. “So I’ll just write a letter. Bye.” She then hung up, mad and frustrated. Another half hour of letter writing loomed for this busy small business owner. Not very efficient time management.

Rather than tell her what she did wrong, I asked her to refocus on the answers offered by the phone rep during the encounter. My intent was to prepare her for the inevitable next problem, in a subconscious nod to the concept of it being better to teach one to fish than feed them, or something.

My immediate question: did she realize that you never should try to resolve an issue with the “customer service” person that answers the phone? Be polite–that goes a long way. They get yelled at a lot. But at the first attempt to block your request, tell them that you want a supervisor, and will only continue with them.

They have to do it. That first person is technically in “customer service,” but offensive guard is more accurate. It’s all about blocking. The supervisor is actually the first customer service person that you ever talk to. They have a bit of power, which the blocker doesn’t. If there’s still a problem, they work under somebody, too. Politely follow the same technique as before. Impasse? You will only continue with their supervisor. Then shut up.

Often, they tend to change their minds and fix the problem when they see that you mean it. Worst case? When you get to the supervisor’s supervisor, you’ll get what you want, if at all reasonable. Most people don’t bother to go past the first two levels, so you’re a rarity. Beyond that? Well, that’s another post.

The things to listen for? Well, immediate rejection of your complaint, for one thing. An argumentative tone by the rep is another. The use of semantics in trying to block your issue is common, too. Time for a supervisor–stat. Don’t discuss your issue with this person anymore.

Gwen’s rep did all of these. The solution? Ask questions.

1) “If we agree that there’s a problem, do you have the power to fix it?” If the answer is no, don’t bother trying to resolve your issue with them anymore. Abort. Abort.

2) “Who can? What’s their name and/or position? I need to speak to them.” Um, please.

If the person that you initially talk to tries to tell you that their word is final, listen carefully; semantics are in play. The person that answers the phone is never, EVER, the final authority. Since everybody has a boss, the question is quite simple:

3) “Who is your boss? I need to speak to them.” Follow the basic rule upon finding that this person cannot solve your problem: stop discussion about the issue.

Remember, they are required to get their boss if you ask directly for them. No one in charge there? Get their email or ask to be connected.

I use email for problem solving a lot. After briefly stating the problem. I always put the following in all caps: PLEASE TAKE THIS ISSUE DIRECTLY TO A SUPERVISOR. I WILL NOT ACCEPT OR RESPOND TO A FORM LETTER. THANK YOU.

Shouting? Well, yes. You want the first blocker’s attention. They get loads of letters. Remember that if you ask for a supervisor, they must get one. I have almost every problem resolved this way. Quite time-efficient.

It is true with any medium used. I don’t often use snail mail, but sometimes the situation warrants it.

Last week in checking in for a routine doctor’s appointment, the receptionist said that I not only owed the normal co-pay, but a no-show fee. I knew that I never had missed an appointment. When I told her this, she actually said, “Well, it’s on your account, so there’s nothing that I can do about it.” Obviously, she had no power to fix anything. I got her manager’s name (it was extremely busy) and rescheduled.

When I had time later that day, I wrote a short letter to the office manager, copied the doctor, and mailed them. Two days later, I got a letter of apology and notification that she had written off the fee. The office staff, she wrote, was instructed to collect any fees listed on the account.

Obviously, determining if they are in error is not the first blocker’s job, as it isn’t part of any first-line of defense. Rather, it’s ours to find the person that can get the problem fixed. It helps to remember that the blockers aren’t really trying to communicate with us. It’s a trick.

I always remember that Peter Drucker quote: “The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said.”

It works.

My First Published Fiction Story

 Fiction is one of those things that you do knowing that you’ll never earn a living from it. Kinda like music. Though in my youth I did make a quasi-living for a decade by playing the trombone, it was almost always supplemented with a “real” job: relief night auditor, say, or part-time teller.

Well, now I make my living as a writer of the nonfiction nature. Through creativity is certainly central to it, it’s not as central to it as it is to fiction writing. It’s fun, though. An award-winning journalist that I know once told me bout the craft:  “I just can’t do it. I tried, but I just can’t.”

I guess you have to really love it. Again, I equate it to my experience with music. You have to work your ass off with little or no promise of reward and look deep within yourself to make it work just because it is so satisfying to you.

Well, my little reward this week is that my first fiction short story was published on Wednesday by The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature.  http://www.deadmule.com/fiction/ It’s called “Damn Tourists.”

No, it’s not The Atlantic or even Reader’s Digest.  The Dead Mule, though, is a respected regional mag. Hey, it even has original poems in the same issue by the Poet Laureate. Of North Carolina.

Anyway, I write fiction as a hobby, and have not tried to get much published–or for very long either. It’s like when my Steelers make the playoffs: you might not like what you see when they get there, but they made it that far, regardless.

I hope you enjoy my little story. There are a few really good ones, too.

Effective Social Communication Lifechanging

Last week, I did some research on how the savvy use of social media affected a musical group in a niche market–a cappella (without accompaniment)–for an old-age grad school online presentation. I touched it up a bit in the hospital over the last couple of days while recovering from successful surgery, and it’s not bad. The presentation, I mean.

That said, I’m posting the link to it on this little weblog.

Please don’t dismiss this post as boring or unneeded yet. The words “a cappella” and “grad school project” (any or all of them) tend to cause that reaction in people sometimes, I know. This Horatio Alger-type story of a  nerdy genre using social media to break new ground is actually both interesting and inspiring. (Plus, there are some killer music videos.)

This presentation is in Prezi. For anyone that is not familiar with the format, it’s kinda like Power
Point on acid. After clicking the link, just click on the arrows at the bottom of the screen as you would a slide show to see it:

http://goo.gl/pVlD1

You can’t get much more old school and traditional than the a cappella genre in the music world. Harnessing the power of social media in any field is as new school as it gets. Successfully combining these two seemingly disparate worlds is important presently, of course, but will be absolutely vital not too long from now.

Emoticons Corny But Necessary

This will be the shortest post in my tiny blog’s history. With the end of my old age grad school quarter (La Tech) and the beginning of a 2-3 day post-operation hospital stay both happening next week on top of my other obligations, it has to be.

I read the latest edition of my last subscription copy of the old school printed mag The Atlantic yesterday while in a hospital waiting room. Big time germ alert: never read the mags that are provided in them.  Really sick people do, too.

Anyway, there’s a great, concise article about how we communicate emotions on the internet and they originated:http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/05/how-to-tell-a-joke-on-the-internet/309293/

I personally rarely use emoticons ;p; they’re just not me. I do admit to the occasional lol and rare rofl, but I ALMOST NEVER SHOUT. I may use them sparingly myself, but everyone uses them as their own personality dictates.

But I do use them. You do, too. Since we increasingly communicate via pixels, it is simply what it is–a necessity built on doing so properly. That’s what communication is all about, after all, though some seem to forget that before clicking send.

Told you this would be short. To paraphrase some poet, lol, I’ve got  miles to go before I sleep (my operation Monday). It’s no big deal, just life-interrupting

Effective Social Media Engineering: Escape Being Categorized

Once in a while, one gets a very interesting cab driver. It happens. I don’t use taxis all that often, but when I do find a really good one, I become a personal fare for them. There’s this one driver for the local Yellow Cab company that I always call because he fits that category.

He’s interesting to me because he is a pretty established local rock guitarist that has played in cover bands for years.  He quit that not too long ago to play his own stuff as a solo guitarist–no vocals. That’s a definite niche market. Getting gigs playing in it is hard, so he drives a cab every day to finance his dream.

Anyway, we had discussed previously that in my youth I was a professional musician, so we speak the same language. Once a musician, always a musician.

Yesterday my computer went black screen with a nasty virus and I had to get a replacement stat, so I called the driver (I’ll use his stage name, Clutch). We discussed the fact that he still having a hard time finding gigs as a solo instrumental guitarist.

“People don’t go to bars to listen to my kind of stuff,” Clutch said. “The people that like original instrumental guitar music are a special breed. They’re hard to find.”

Anyway, I mention that to mention this: earlier last week I had finished a pretty detailed grad school research paper about an a cappella (without instruments) group, Pentatonix, that escaped their niche market and has quickly become established in the popular music world. Very rare.

How? Well, their music is great, of course, but there are lots and lots of great musicians out there that get no play. An example of their work(their first Billboard popular charting):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOKuAigsrec&feature=player_detailpage

They did it with the consistent and widespread use of social media. I won’t go into the details too much—hey, it took 4000 words in my paper. The thing is, they put their songs (including free videos of them all), tour dates ,and special events on virtually every social media outlet around. They use You Tube to show videos in both casual and studio settings.

Then, using Facebook, Twitter, and their website http://www.ptxofficial.com/  as bases, they post or tweet PR posts several times a day, often using their YouTube videos as bait.

I mentioned this to Clutch as something that he could do on a smaller scale. He got so excited and asked so many questions that I started to get worried about him becoming a distracted driver. Attention Yellow Cab: He didn’t. No problems.

Anyway, Clutch got excited because he saw this as a parallel to his own dilemma. I agree; that’s why I brought it up. He vowed to start using the Pentatonix plan as soon as his shift ended. He knows that to succeed, he has to escape being categorized in one genre.

Good parallel in the music business, certainly, but it is still amazing to me how many people don’t use social media effectively to escape whatever rut that they may be in. With some effort, there’s literally a whole world at our fingertips. Most know that, but don’t do anything about it.

Everyone has their muse regarding this–there are a lot of effective social media stories just a Google search away. My muse is Pentatonix. Their music is great, yes. By the effective use of social media, they’ve been able to show it by exponentially broadening their fan base.

Gotta go. Better do some tweeting.

 

 

 

 

 

Learning Good. Feels Better When the Pain Stops.

You’re as old as you feel. It’s never too late to learn. Every day’s a school day.

All true. The thing is, I have spent all week writing and um, researching a research paper that is due this week for a grad school course that I’m taking in the English department of LA Tech. Its subject is scientific and technical communication. Balancing work and school is something that millions do every year, so what I am doing is nothing special. In fact, I did it myself when I first went to college .

The difference? Well, that was in the 1980′s. I was a single hotel night auditor that played in a band.

As age increases, so does responsibility–of that there’s little doubt. Balancing the two worlds is usually more of a challenge for an older student–it certainly is for me–but it’s not rocket science, either.

The knowledge required in the world of technical communication today isn’t as far removed from that of rocket science as it was. Brain surgery, yes. Technology is changing so fast, though, that communicating effectively within it requires diligent and constant study.

So far this quarter I’ve learned how to build a website, basic coding in HTML, and how to critique other websites.  I also completed an adaptive online resume. Since many predict that accessing the internet on smartphones will overtake that of PC access by 2015, the ability to make your work adaptive is a vital thing to know. In some countries, the change is already in effect.

I was looking forward to this week’s assignment: a research paper. Ahh…the comfort zone for a lot of us writing types. In the process of earning an English degree, you do lots of them. It does have to be posted to my website in an adaptable format, but I can do that–at least, I can now.

As I  mentioned, though, I am old. When deciding on my thesis, I convinced myself of the idea that researching a paper on the battle between search engine optimization (SEO) theories that actually produce great content and those that don’t was the ticket. Oops.

I knew that this was a huge field, so I gave the professor the broad subject area with the promise to narrow the scope. A 4000 word paper’s gotta be pretty narrow

The thing is, the subject and all of its nooks and crannies are being studied every day by millions of people. Most areas, no matter how tiny, couldn’t be properly covered in 40,000 words properly, much less 4000. Every time that I tried to narrow the scope, I was overwhelmed with so much info that it was hard to breathe. Remember that I Love Lucy episode where she works in a chocolate factory? That was me.

Finally, I threw in the towel. I changed my thesis last night to how a particular musical group (Pentatonix) has used social media to draw attention to its talent in effectively achieving success in the popular music field. This is unique because it is very rare for an a cappella (without instruments) group to escape its small musical niche. Pentatonix is a fiercely a cappella group:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r3B9j2WF0k

I don’t mind the headaches. Much. The wasted research may prove useful later. Knowledge, even for those of us with a few gray hairs, is power, indeed. Still feels a little strange to call myself a grad student, though, after so many years attending the school of life.

Oops, gotta go.  Research paper to finish and format for my website. The worlds of the old (writing) and the new (adaptive technology) continue to collide, as they always have.

Hotels, Facebook and YouTube. Plus Sex.

 I have noticed in my WordPress stats that recount this little blog’s number of views that they dip a bit when I write about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I don’t take that personally any more than I did the katrillion times that I heard no during my decades in the sales and marketing field. It’s not personal.

Hey, SEO not an exciting subject to read about–not like, say, Shades of Grey, or anything. It’s not sexy at all–unless you’re looking up something that is sex-related,  that is. In one highly rated source, keyword researcher Wordtracker (http://www.top-keywords.com/48hours.html) they make a caveat about the subject:

We make every effort to remove adult/offensive related search terms from this report. Despite our best efforts however, adult/offensive material might occasionally appear. Due to the nature of the internet it’s simply a fact that about 20-25% of search engine keywords are of this nature. Should you find any in the list, we apologise (sic)in advance.

That means, of course, that the obvious ones weren’t removed. Heck, “por(n) hub”,” bree olson”, “elephant tube”, “emp flix”, “kristin’s archives” and “dan’s movies” are all in the top 25% of the list, and they are all either porn sites or adult stars (I, um, did my research).

Based on the fact that porn is the most profitable internet business worldwide with thousands of sites, I would be very surprised if “sex” is not the most searched for word every single day. “Sex” being pretty darn sexual, though, the top two keywords are both “keywords.” Hmmmm. Rounding out the top five are “hotels,” “facebook,’” and “youtube.” Makes sense.

My point, though, is that even though learning about and knowing SEO might be boring or intimidating (or both), everyone needs at least a basic understanding of it, or at least of what it does and that is important to us. Like everything else in this tip of the Technological Revolution, SEO–even as it mutates and improves before us–affects both everything that we do and that we want more information about. Most know this.

Hey, I don’t need to know major car repair, but I need to at least know what it involves. That way, even in my limited capacity I know where to go if needed.

Everybody uses the web to some extent, either directly or indirectly. A lot of folks–especially the older ones–may not think that they do, but it certainly affects the world around them. Almost every bit of media that they use is, as is almost everything else.  Even with, say, their morning coffee: you can bet that the blend was influenced by trends, market research, world pricing and availability, etc. found on the web.

Ok, back to SEO. When I write stuff for business, it is vitally important that I use keywords properly within it to make the work both practical and of value. If what I write doesn’t show up when someone searches for it, it becomes irrelevant. What is proper?

Ah, there’s the rub. Some people–I’ll call them the “white hats”–believe that carefully inserting popular search words in the context of a meaningful and informative piece is what SEO is about. Others–the “black hats”–ascribe to the theory that page rank is everything. Screw the content. If someone tries hard enough, they’ll probably get the info that they’re looking for. Eventually, that is. I’m happy to be of the ”white hat” variety.

That disparity of thought, though, is why we have to go through so much junk on the internet to find anything of use. When you Google “hotel,” for instance, you get  1,880,000,000 results.   Most folks, of course, just look at the first page or two. Google hell? No thanks. This is very slowly changing. To quote an email from my brother, Scott, a PR expert, “ Google has been working hard on this issue and has made significant progress   With the Penguin and Panda algorithm updates and introduction of Author Rank they are trying to push down crap content in search results.”

So, there’s hope. There’s been a tremendous amount of buzz about fixing SEO methodology for years, but it seems to actually be happening now. Finally. Anyway, perhaps in the future when we search for something, we’ll have a better chance of finding it painlessly. Everything isn’t as easy as finding Facebook or YouTube, of course, or even specifying our hotel or sex (or both) preference.

It’s a good start, anyway. SEO may be more boring than any of the top keywords are, but they’re how we got there.

Oh, the hamburger pic? Sorry, that’s kinda irrelevant to this post. I just heard about a 14-year old McDonald’s hamburger that is being studied, so I googled it. Wait a sec–it had the highest ranking SEO on the subject there. Never mind. Anyway, yuck: http://myfox8.com/2013/04/24/14-year-old-burger-refuses-to-rot/

Seize the PR Day

 I like Dunkin’ Donuts more now than I ever have. I dislike Carnival Cruise Lines even more. The reason is PR.

PR is a very complicated field–there’s a lot to consider when making any decision within it. Professional public relations companies exist to help their clients in putting their best foot forward in the public eye. As most know, PR is the flip side of journalism. The good companies keep up the ethical boundaries that good journalists do.

Any dealings that I have with the subject as a writer and sales consultant only touch on the fringes of that vocation.  Though I am intimate with some people in that line of work, I view PR more from an informed personal perspective more than otherwise.

It is from that point of view that I wrote the first sentence here. While doing some relaxed weekend reading this morning, I experienced very diverse emotional reactions to a couple of stories that I read during my web surfing. The first was about Carnival Cruise Lines:  http://www.nbcnews.com/travel/power-failure-hits-carnival-ecstasy-cruise-ship-1B9518757

The second was about Dunkin’ Donuts: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/19/watertown-dunkin-donuts-stay-open_n_3117323.html?ref=topbar

While I realize that the two companies are reacting to two different sets of circumstances from a PR perspective, the bottom line to me as a consumer is how their reactions to disaster make me feel. Though it’s easy to be cynical–making money is their reason for being in the first place, after all–ultimately, it’s all about how that reaction translates to the consumer.

Carnival Cruise Lines just makes me mad. They come across as arrogant as hell. I have been on two pretty long cruises myself, so I know how dependent one is on the cruise line for everything while at sea. While those poor people on the Carnival Triumph suffered for a week after an engine fire, I identified with them. When they finally docked near my home in Pensacola, FL, I cheered as loudly as anyone.

Carnival’s reaction and the subsequent string of mechanical failures on their ships, though, left me cold.

Dunkin’ Donuts, on the other hand, turned disaster into triumph by serving the first responders during Boston’s recent shutdown gratis. It doesn’t matter if the reason for their action was simply to gain good pub. There is no evidence of that. They come across as generous team players.

A warm fuzzy is a warm fuzzy.

Whoever said no pub is bad pub got it wrong. Boo, Carnival! Yay, Dunkin!

Ok, I made myself hungry. I think I’ll cruise drive down the street and grab some breakfast.

Over-Promising and Under-Delivering: My Bad

 In my last post here, I broke a rule that I have had for as long that I can remember. It was an honest mistake, though.

Really. A bit embarrassing to me, nonetheless. I stated as fact that I was having a fiction story published on April 15th. Promised to link it here then, in fact.

The thing is, it’s being published on May 15th. I found my mistake when I looked for it. Oops.

In the overall scheme of things, of course, a mistaken declaration about my little short story being published by a regional magazine in this tiny blog is no big whoop.

It’s irks me a bit, though. One of the reasons that I have done well in sales for over twenty years is that I have always tried to follow one of the basic fundamentals:  always under-promise and over-deliver. I taught and monitored that practice with the hundreds of salespeople that I’ve managed, too.

You see, I first got into sales in the early eighties, which is around the time that Tom Peters (In Search of Excellence) coined that phrase. I was in the right place and right time for once; both his work and the reemergence of Og Mandino’s teachings (The Greatest Salesman in the World, et al.) happened just as I was just learning the ropes of the business. Their respective wisdom became cornerstones of my sales technique and subsequent career in that field.

That’s why breaking that rule bums me out a bit, even though it was unintentional in this case.

The simple wisdom of Peters’ statement is so profound that it seems timeless now. I can’t honestly say that the percentage of salespeople those that did the opposite back before his observation was higher than now–I  simply don’t know. I do think that the conscious awareness of his common sense phrase has become such a part of the language that it has become a cliché.

“A bird in the hand” or “love is blind,” it’s not. Not even “time is money.” But “under-promise and over-deliver” is arguably the most common business-oriented phrase to be coined in the last fifty years.

Of course, it translates to life in general, too.

Like not telling your girlfriend that you looked forever for the perfect gift for Christmas and presenting her with fireplace tools that you saw during a Wal-Mart trip. This actually happened to a friend of mine years ago.

Not surprisingly, they broke up shortly afterward.

Anyway, my disregard for Peters’ rule, even unintentionally, is especially bothersome to me for that reason. Sorry.

The good thing is that when I found out about my mistake it caused me to review how important it is to always give people more than they expect–never less.

A lot of companies have made the practice a primary goal. That’s one reason that I love Amazon so much. To me, they personify this principle. Things I order there are always delivered earlier than I expect, and returns are totally hassle-free.

Well, “Damn Tourists” will be linked from here to The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature’s site on May 15th.  That’s a promise.

But, hey, I’m certainly no Amazon. I can’t promise over-delivery with my little short story. Though I would like for it to be judged as better than expected, there are no guarantees.

Returns are easy, though.

Bonus Weekend Post: Communication Ranting Plus Flash Fiction NPR Reject

 One of the nice things about writing a blog is that you are totally in control of writing about what you want to–when you want to. For coherence purposes, among other things, it’s important that it have parameters, though. For this little web log, I choose to write about my observations and experiences in communication.

Communication is a pretty broad theme, I know. The thing is, it is what I know best because–well—I have just always have been drawn to it. When I was a classical pro musician for a decade, my means of sending a message was in the nonverbal transference of info: from Brahms, say, to me as the interpreter of his writing, and then to the audience.

In order to become a good musician, I studied my ass off. Raw talent is just that. When I was in college, I worked as a musician on performance scholarship at the same time that I entered a new field for good, consistent money: sales.  Still communication–just another form of it. Well,  as it worked in my quest to be a decent musician,  I studied everything that I could get my hands on about the subject of proper sale techniques.

In my first month, I sold nothing. Zero. As I was selling instruments for a retail music store– a pretty natural transition–I stayed interested in faithfully studying the techniques of top performers both there and, disguised as a customer, at my competition. It worked again.  My numbers shot to the top dramatically, and stayed there until I quit a few years later. The same technique worked for me for in lots of different business arenas later.

Why should you care? Good observation. Well, maybe because my own reverence for the importance of a good chain of communication has been good to me. Perhaps it has been to you, too, or will. No? Okay. Still don’t care? That’s cool.

The point of this rambling rant is that when I started this post, I planned to point out an article that I read this morning on Mashable about the misuse of quotation marks in trying to convey a message. I’m no grammarian, as I’ve admitted a few times before–even in my last post: ( http://wp.me/p330ex-wP). When it comes to causing crappy communication, though, stuff like this gets my attention. It’s weekend funny, yes, but a bit annoying, too: http://mashable.com/2013/04/11/unnecessary-quotes-punctuation-fails/.

My point? Clear communication is vitally important to proper understanding. No doubt. To paraphrase what my first creative writing teacher–the top dog in that department and a highly recognized writer himself–said in college when I challenged the importance of proper grammar in the field during a workshop: It’s not about using critical methods techniques–it’s about being easily understood. It’s gotta flow easily. You have to be understood. That’s the point of doing it to begin with.

Got it.

In keeping with what I learned from his point, I have always tried to write in a real but flowing conversational style except for the really formal stuff, of course. To rapidly shift in a lazy weekend manner from my Mashable link about the importance of communication to my own rejected form of it, here’s the flash fiction story that I submitted to NPR recently. NPR doesn’t tell you why, just that you didn’t win. Oh well, I like it. The prompt was to tell a story of under six hundred words in the form of a voice mail message:

Lost, Then Found

            Hel-l-lo?  

            (Muffled, away from receiver) I’m calling the number in the phone! Hold on!

             Sorry, I’m here. Hi, I’m Jackie. Jackie Louise Taylor. We’ve never met, but I’m calling from the Wal-Mart next to the mall. I’m sitting in the electric shopping cart that you just dropped off at the front. Your phone was still in the basket.

            At least, I’m assuming it’s yours. Lawd!  I’m sure you would have left it at the office if it had already been in there.

            Anyway, my daughter just found this home number on the phone for me. She’s almost fifty, but she keeps up pretty well with this modern stuff. Me? I wouldn’t have even known how to turn it on. I’ll be eighty-four this year, God willing. Everybody thinks it’s funny, but I have never even used the microwave I got for Mother’s Day twenty years ago.

            Well, you never know what can happen with these new contraptions. Companies are always sending me offers for free cell phones and computer trials and such–probably ‘cause I pay my bills on time. They’re wasting stamps. No, if it was okay for my momma and my daddy not to have this stuff, I don’t need them, neither.

            If you ask me, things are moving too fast today, anyways. Everybody screams about the economy being bad, but even most poor people seem to have a place to live, food to eat, computers, and color TVs—even the kids!

            Heck, I grew up on a dirt farm in Alabama during the Depression. We never went hungry, but we never had any money, neither. One thing we did have to pay for was big sacks of flour for mama to make bread and things from. She’d sew us play clothes from the sacks, too. See, they used to print ‘em with patterns, ‘cause lots of folks used ‘em for that.

            People don’t remember that anymore, at least not out here in the real world. See, I live in a retirement home now. Most of them remember the flour sacks. Anyway, my kids say they didn’t want to put me in there, but they couldn’t take care of me anymore. That’s okay; I’ve got four children and nineteen grands, so I get away a lot. Heck, I’m in the real world as much as I am in the home.

            Things are tolerable there, but it gets pretty tiresome. People always talk about the same stuff: children, bad health, and food–the holy trinity of the elderly.

            Food, oh yes. Lawd. About the only time that folks ever get excited there is in the hours before a meal–then they talk about it afterward. I’m friendly, but I don’t hang out in the lobby gabbing about that nonsense. I’d rather read or watch CNN in my room than hear them go on about food. It’s like sex to some of them.

            Oh yeah, sex. People think that us old folks forget about it, but I hear about sex all the time. People do it a lot there, too. Not me. After my Harry died, so did my interest.

            Most of them have really lowered their standards, though. I overheard my neighbor tell her sewing group that she would do any man living there without continence problems. She said, “I love sex, but I hate being peed on afterwards.” She wasn’t joking.

(Muffled, away from receiver) What, dear? What’s TMI? Okay, okay, I’m coming.

Sorry, but my daughter wants to start shopping. I’m leaving your phone at the service desk now. Nice talking to you. Beep. 

Still here? Thanks. Yes, it is my blog, and I admit that I have used it to erratically shift from my intended rant about improper quotation inspired by the Mashable article to  vainly publish a rejected story that I like. Why?

The thing is, I get paid to write nonfiction stuff, and have been published in that field lots of times. Business, grant, proposal, PR, ghost writing–you name it–it’s what I do for a living now, and I like it. Since fiction writing is just a hobby, though, it’s kinda exciting for me to be published for the first time in that genre–which I will be on Monday, when I will post the link to Damn Tourists in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. Anyway,  I thought of that in mid-post, and decided to shift topic a story that I like that would otherwise have remained unread in a file on my computer, in a nod to the art of fiction writing  Please excuse my vanity.

Just “communicating”. I mean communicating. Really.

 

 

           

 

R.I.P., “Whom”

My favorite mag for years has been” The Atlantic”, as I’ve mentioned here before: http://wp.me/p330ex-e8 . Though I cancelled my physical subscription, I do have an online one. Occasionally, they still send me a gratis copy by mail with a plea to renew in that form. No, thanks. Been there, done that.

Because I usually read it online before they print the physical copy, anyway, it makes no sense to have one. Usually, that is.

This past month, though, I haven’t read it as I normally do. No time. The free April issue came in handy while I was in a doctor’s waiting room with no public Wi-Fi  yesterday. Like many, I won’t touch the mags that they offer there–too many sick folks have handled them–so I took “The Atlantic” with me.

One of the first articles caught my attention.  I love words, and always have. The fact that English is an ever-evolving language is a given, but it’s still a bit of a jolt to see words that were seemingly entrenched being given the last rites. In this case, “whom.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/04/for-whom-the-bell-tolls/309266/

Now, I’ve never been that fond of the word. It has always sounded a bit snooty to me, even when I’ve used it myself. I’m just used to it. As part of obtaining my English degree, of course, I had its proper use drilled into my head. The Grammar Girl explains it well:

Just “Whom”

OK. So you all asked about “who” versus “whom,” but what I think you really want to know is just when to use “whom,” because most people don’t go around throwing unneeded “whoms” into their sentences. So remember, you use “whom” when you are referring to the object of a sentence. Use “who” when you are referring to the subject of a sentence.

For example, it is “Whom did you step on?” if you are trying to figure out that I had squished Squiggly. Similarly, it would be “Whom do I love?” because you are asking about the object — the target of my love. I know, it’s shocking, but the Rolling Stones were being grammatically incorrect when they belted out the song “Who Do You Love?” which I think was originally written by Bo Diddley.

Hey, I write for a living (and for pleasure). I’m used to certain conventions of word use that make communication effective, as I use them a lot. Using “who” in “whom’s” place will take a bit of getting used to, I’ll admit. I’m not a grammarian by any means, though. It’s all about information exchange.

As I never liked “whom”very much anyway, I’m not sorry to see it go. It always has seemed a bit awkward to me. Kinda like “perchance” or “bespeak.”

Now, if we’d only refill the lexicon with better words than my personal pet peeve, “EVOO.” http://www.slashfood.com/2006/12/11/evoo-added-to-the-dictionary/ EVOO? Please.

Who ya gonna call?