On Unhuman Relations
GOODMAN, WALTER
FAIR GAME BY WALTER GOODMAN On Unhuman Relations It's back, that recurrent American ailment that saps the ability of its victims to distinguish between reality and commerce. Once again today,...
...My bill also reports that my customer service representative, name of Hernandez, is awaiting my call with any problem...
...No names yet—only a message as the train draws into Grand Central, 10 minutes late and possibly on fire, reminding me to take my belongings and to have a good day...
...What would Groucho Marx have thought about flying in a plane that was piloted by somebody like him...
...Listen, Chou, if 1 want a massage, I'll go to a massage parlor...
...Once again today, synthetic interpersonal relations is breaking out on all sides...
...The practice of naming the nameless began, I believe, as an effort to humanize the airlines...
...Where Conrail leads, can Con Ed be far behind...
...Consider those faces on television and voices on radio who insist on introducing themselves night after night, day after day: "Good evening, I'm Myrna Celsius...
...The citizenry has learned from its police force that when serious matters are afoot, the first thing to go is the nameplate...
...Bills, even in the shape of billets-doux, are cold comfort in a blackout...
...What, for example, is one to make of the new interpersonal-relations fortune cookie...
...The truly unsettling thing, though, is to have a voice identifying itself as that of "Your Captain" come over the loudspeaker to inform you that you are flying at 60,000 feet and passing over Akron and passengers on the left side of the plane can see, if they stretch, carcinogenic substances rising...
...Yet the spirit has infected even those who have nothing to gain from my friendly feelings...
...I'm Myrna Celsius...
...And when I ask her name, she will giVe just the hint of a smile and never never tell...
...These cookies, a compost of cardboard and monosodium glutonate, have never been acclaimed as haute cuisine, but once they were spiced with little slips of paper that promised trips to exotic places, meetings with mysterious strangers...
...Am I supposed to believe that in some recess of this most impersonal of corporations stoops a wizened clerk over a high table, losing his or her eyesight making sure that I am not being ripped off by the company...
...The news tonight is a fire in the Bronx...
...In recent months this firm, which exists in order to be hated, has been wooing me with gratitude...
...That's the news tonight...
...What reasonable neurotic passenger wants to know that there is a creature with a name attached at the controls, a being subject to all the frailties of flesh holding your life in his hands...
...Lately, conductors on the Harlem Line division of Conrail have begun to imitate the pilots...
...Hey, Hernandez, how about using whatever the computer type costs to reduce my rates...
...Upward mobility, I suppose...
...No offense, Myrna, but who cares besides your family and union...
...Oh, where is that enigmatic Eurasian who will take my hand and without a word, certainly no word about doing my duty, will lead me to places where airlines never fly, trains don't pretend to run and bills are never paid...
...No, by Kilowatthour,I am not so easily seduced...
...I am put off by people telling me to have a good day in the best of circumstances, and it comes especially ill from the institution that is so often responsible for starting my day off in a high state of anxiety...
...I have trouble telling one stewardess from another even after the introductions...
...This has now been escalated to read: con edison appreciates customers like you who regularly pay their bills promptly...
...Such stroking can be attributed to the exigencies of the marketplace—I know when our Electrolux man tells us about his grandchildren, he wants me to buy an extra batch of his filter bags...
...Now, from what may be the same machine that does Con Ed's dirty work, comes this sort of thing: "You have an inner desire to be of service to your fellow man and a dedication to duty...
...It began with a sentence on my bill in computer type: thank you for paying last month's bill promptly...
Vol. 61 • March 1978 • No. 7
