I write letters. It started when I worked for the newly forming Department of Energy, which consisted solely of cardboard boxes brimming with complaints. Some of the letter I read were like this:
“I have children I can barely feed, but now we’re out of heating oil. This morning I found my Doberman frozen by her nostril to a door mat.”
Some were like this:
“Yesterday I waited ten hours in a gas line, and as soon as the tiger hit the tank, I had to turn around and cruise on back to work.”
But my favorite letters were like this:
“Stop the god awful roaring in the skies over my home, sucking the soot straight up my chimney, and rattling the window glass with the screeching, roaring fire of hell, until my fat, wheezing wife faints dead away and wakes up convulsing under the kitchen table.”
Letters should be colorful and express the exact degree the pain and discomfort experienced by the sender. Most people, for example, when they are citing a computer problem say:
“I’m experiencing some difficulty with the new software.”
I like to say: “The fat, bloated duck of a program that you are currently torturing your client base with appears to have been written by a pinhead who got no sleep the night before, conked his head on a fire hydrant on the way into work, and then in this state of mortification, resumed his throne at your technocracy, gagged, and threw up in code.”
Most of my letters about software stress nerds or tech-monkeys. Then I like to remind the company to hire someone who is smart, and possibly someone who is not a tech-monkey, but speaks English, to bridge the gap.
Letters can be powerful. If charming enough, a letter can land a person a job. That type of practical letter can be worth the weight of five hundred resumes–especially those resumes that are going to be read by a huge computer searching for the words x500 and SYMYS(xxsw).
If a person states that he has successfully managed a team of three hundred men and five hundred horses, no one will be impressed, because no one will ever see it. Rest assured that it will have circulated down the porcelain vortex. Try sending a letter like this to your prospective boss:
“I know everything about you, because I looked you up on the net. You are so handsome and accomplished. Your power is not puny. It was inevitable that you would rise to a great height. I aspire to be like you, the way a Christian does Jesus. Couldn’t you give me a job in the mail room?”
There is one more entirely serviceable letter, and it was the kind my husband used to write, usually to public utilities.
“I received your bill for July 1 thru July 15 kilowatt hour usage on the 5th of August. This bill was unusually high, given that we had chosen by my letter of October 3 of the previous year, not to disburse the electricity costs over a twelve month period. Also I had tucked a matchstick into the meter and it hadn’t been moved, indicating that the meter reader had not made an accurate assessment. There was a late delivery due to sickness of the postmaster here in our small town. She is subject to serious rounds of gout. The bill quoted a due fee of $132.50. However the bill from the previous month, which arrived On July 1, indicated that the overage fee of $1.49 would be applied to the next month’s bill, thus reducing the necessary payment, and this was not done. In your regulations regarding payments, you stipulate that the overage will be applied to the next month’s bill, so since it hasn’t been, I’m in a quandary and will wait to hear from you.”