I remember having a conversation with one of our newer hires in a past assignment. I should say that I remember trying to have a conversation with one of our newer hires in a past assignment. He obviously didn’t know who I was, and I didn’t tell him. I thought I would just strike up a conversation and get to know him, and at the same time communicate what an outgoing and friendly organization we tried to have. I should have known better.

The first thing I had to do was to try and pry his nose out of his smart phone long enough to make eye contact with me. While he did look up long enough to acknowledge that I did exist, that I was standing there next to him and that I was not in fact one of the undead zombies that he was so fond of eradicating in oh so many colorful and exciting ways, I didn’t get much more than that. No verbal greeting. No nod of recognition. It seemed that just my motion of walking up to him had caught his eye and momentarily distracted him from whatever he was doing on his smart phone. He immediately went right back to it.

Undaunted, I said hello and questioned if he was in fact the new hire that we had just brought on.

I could see the gears turning. I could see the internal battle raging. He was obviously hell bent on whatever application he was using on the smart phone and I was annoying / distracting him from it by my insistence on engaging him in some sort of social interaction. It took him a while to frame a response, without looking up.

While he went through his internal preparations, I asked him if he would like me to text him the question, if that would make responding to me any easier.

This got his attention. He looked up to see if I was being serious, if I was angry, or if he could ignore me and blow me off. I kept a straight face and to his credit he finally looked up and acknowledged me. Since it was obvious at this point that he did not know who I was (I think I was his supervisor’s, manager’s boss at that time) and again to his credit he did not choose to demonstrate what I perceived as his distain at my interrupting his communing with his smart phone. Smart boy.

Since he now recognized that I was not going to go away easily, or due to his ignoring me, he tacitly agreed to slightly more than 2 seconds of prolonged eye contact and acknowledgement before his next text message came in and distracted him. He immediately re-immersed himself in his phone and began to type furiously with his thumbs at a speed that could only have been attained after many, many hours of practice. I was amazed.

As he was typing I said that he should go ahead and respond to that text message as I would be pleased to watch and wait.

Now he knew something was up. After he had finished his prolonged message he again looked up at me to see what sort of expression I had while uttering such blasphemy regarding the priority of his smart phone connectedness. I kept my face carefully neutral. I then smiled.

At this point he now recognized that, horror of horrors, he was going to have to engage me in a real time interaction. I could tell that he recognized his predicament because he had exactly the same look on his face that my son did when my son realized what he had just stepped in because he had forgotten to clean up after the dogs in the back yard before he started mowing.

It was at this point that my smart phone started ringing. I let it ring. I could see that he was having a hard time with my nonchalance regarding the immediacy of my smart phone communication. He asked if I was going to answer that. I think he was hoping I would and that would be his opportunity to flee.

I said no and made a point of reaching in my pocket and turning the phone off. I think that single act caused the preponderance of blood to drain from his head. He seemed to grow quite pale. It seemed I wanted to talk with him and he was going to have to respond. We were going to have a conversation.

I am familiar with “text-speak”. I actually do text quite often. I just don’t converse in it real time. I prefer to speak English, although I do understand Spanish, and even took a little Russian in college. I am not quite sure what language he spoke.

What I did gather from him was that everything according to him was “like” something else. It was “like” this, or when he was surprised it was “like” wow. Things were also “seriously” one way or “seriously” another. There were also times when it appeared that he was tongue tied as he tried to locate the real-time emoticon that he could provide me that would convey the depth of his feeling or commitment in the conversation.

I think that all this time he thought that I was going to harsh his mellow.

What he didn’t realize was that in accepting that he was going to have to talk to me he had actually stumbled upon the best way to achieve what he wanted in the first place; which was to find a polite way to drive me away. I don’t think I am overly literate, but this guy drove me nuts.

About five minutes into the conversation I was looking for either the “off” button or the ejection seat switch. It was as though my children’s texts had been animated and had come to life in front of me. There were no complete thoughts or sentences that were conveyed. All standard grammatical concepts now seemed to be merely the slightest of suggestions. In short he was verbally illiterate.

I am sure that he hoped to, and quite possibly even thought that he had made a good impression on me. I believe I might have misled him down that road when at the first courteous opportunity I thanked him for talking so good with me. He smiled and immediately dove nose first back into his smart phone and beat a hasty retreat to my office.

I am concerned that we all may talk so good in business in the future.