Katy Tanner, a 21-year-old employee in a body-piercing and fashion store in Cardiff whose sales figures were inadequate, was sacked by text message. This was deemed sufficiently outrageous for it to be widely reported. Ian Besbie, a director of the Blue Banana chain, defended the company’s action thus: “We are a youth business and our staff are all part of the youth culture that uses SMS messaging as a major means of communication.”
I am not part of the youth culture. Indeed, at 37, I must seem as old as Methuselah to anyone in their yoof. But I regard myself as fairly enlightened and I think that Mr Besbie may be on to something here. Why should such a straightforward approach to staff relations be restricted to body-piercing shops? Texting has the potential to revolutionise the way that we work. And let’s face it, by the time today’s youth are running the country (about 2009) their current habits will be the accepted norms, so we better get used to them.
The benefits for business of the bba (Blue Banana approach) are obvious.
Let us take an everyday situation: the need to dispense with the services of an executive whose fat salary can no longer be justified when there are younger people with more hair who could be employed instead. In the old days one of the bosses might have delivered the coup de grace over a decent lunch after much flattery and guff about “the changing economic climate, nothing personal, etc”.
More recently the hapless employee has been called in to the inner sanctum, the blinds have been lowered and the trigger has been pulled by some wintry-eyed assassin from the cosily-named human resources department.
Think of the time and energy that is wasted on such encounters. Business is business, and there’s nothing to be gained from pussyfooting around when a texted “pls clr yr wrk stn” would do the trick. It’s the language that they understand, so why not use it? I’m sure the employees would thank you for it.
Texting isn’t just good for business, it has huge potential for everyone. Take politics. What a terrific tool for communicating policy proposals quickly and succinctly to busy colleagues: “Wl U jst quit no 10 u Sassenach bstrd!!!” Similarly tricky questions of succession could be so much more easily broached through SMS if you are an HRH. Years of hand-wringing and meandering conversations over the Balmoral breakfast table haven’t got you anywhere? Why not try the beautiful simplicity of a texted: “Wen u abdic8? 1 nd 2 no asap.”
(Incidentally, the word “abdicate” does not exist in the predictive dictionary of my mobile phone, which is either an expression of great loyalty to Hr Maj or an indication that the texting classes are not thought likely to require the vocabulary to discuss constitutional turmoil.)
Diplomacy is an area that could be considerably livened up by texting. All that beautifully polished equivocal waffle that doesn’t dare to say anything. All those pesky UN resolutions when what is needed is action.
Wouldn’t we rather have some straight talking from our leaders? You know the sort of thing: “Yo Blair! Iran. Sprng 2007. U in? Or u chz etng surrndr mnkey?” But the field where texting can perhaps be of most help is in affairs of the heart. I’m told that in the culture of anonymity and directness that texting has created it is now totally acceptable to digitally dump someone. Why stop there? Why not use your mobile phone to end your marriage? No need to go through all those tedious heart-to-heart chats about where it all went wrong and brutal passive-aggressive, aggressive-aggressive rows when you can say it all in four easy digits: “I h8 u.”
Of course, if you are walking out on somebody you have to be careful. “Lving u” is a message that can be open to wildly different interpretations.
Truly, the uses of texting are endless. Think of doctors. Very busy people. They could really do without spending all that time taking people into broom cupboards to gently break the news of their terminal illness. What patients need is a crisp, accurate diagnosis of the situation: “U hv tmr. cd b 6 mths. v sry.”
Most people would appreciate that, wouldn’t they? After all, when you get news like that you’re more bothered about the message than the way it’s transmitted, aren’t you? And that way it’s less time-consuming and draining for the doctor who can then spend more time filling in the essential paperwork needed if he is to hit his crucial Government target.
The more I think about it the more beautiful the text future becomes. I mean, why bother with vocal conversation at all? All that time spent talking nonsense could be spent devising new ways of condensing all communication to its briefest form.
Why stop at conversation? What about newspaper columns? Damn. If only I was yoof enough to have thought of it I could have just texted you: “shtsi. txtin gr8 unl$ u hv tsohf.”
What do you mean you need a translation? Oh, all right, just this once: “Someone had to say it. Texting is great unless you have a total sense of humour failure.”
From now on you had better start getting used to it. Because i hv hrbl fEln ths txtn sht s gn 2 tk ovr d wrld. syl8r.
Amazingly, the play’s the thing
When I first went to the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park more than 30 years ago the audience sat in deck chairs and there was certainly no children’s play in the repertoire. Last Saturday, taking my kids to the theatre for the first time, I found more than 1,000 people almost filling the auditorium for David Wood’s play Babe, the Sheep-Pig. Children’s theatre has become a serious business. Babe receives equal billing with the other plays in the season and its own sponsorship. But the most remarkable thing about the show was that in the age of cartoon networks and computer games hundreds of children sat engrossed for an hour and 40 minutes. If you assumed that kids have the concentration spans of gnats, then take some to see a children’s play this summer and see for yourself that this is not so.
Smoke scream
Staying with matters thespian: in Edinburgh Mel Smith is striking an important blow for freedom. While portraying Winston Churchill he is flouting the Scottish ban on smoking in public places by lighting up a cigar on stage. “It would have delighted Adolf Hitler. Congratulations Scotland,” he said, not overplaying the smoking ban in any way at all. Smith, who was once a famous comedian, was absolutely not trying to manufacture publicity for his show. Apparently he had tried with stage cigars but it just hadn’t worked. To borrow a possibly apocryphal line from Laurence Olivier, on discovering that Dustin Hoffmann was staying up all night in preparation for his role in Marathon Man: “Just try acting it, dear boy.”
