Street Ministry - Don’t Hang Up: Leaving a Message at the Cell Phone Store

Messages from Angels

 Over the holiday my cell phone charger finally died. No amount of plugging it into different outlets or jostling the cord would bring it back to life. My sister drove me to a cell phone store near Lake Merritt in Oakland, CA to buy a new charger. 

At the front door a female employee holding what looked like electronic clipboards greeted me. She input my name and the reason for my visit into the hand held databases. About 15 customers stood or sat idle around the big room. The scene was strangely muted as if someone had turned down the volume on the bustle and sense of purpose humanity might normally bring to commerce. 

“Ma’am, it’ll be at least one hour before you’ll be helped,” a young woman with a soft, steady voice said. 

“Oh. I only want to pick up a charger,” I replied, “If you can tell me where they are I can get it myself and then just pay for it.”  I looked around. The store was very clean, almost sterile.  Walls painted in primary colors rose from a blue carpet.  Gadgets, cables and other inventory I did not recognized lined the walls in neat though sparse rows.  I did not see any chargers.

“Ma’am, even if we find you a charger, you’ll still have to wait the hour before paying.”  

I looked the employee in the face and noticed that her eyes were as soft and steady as her voice and that they were determined as well.  

“What? You mean I can’t just pick out what I need and buy it?” I questioned, “This is a store, right?”

The employee gestured toward seven or eight customers waiting on a bench at the back of the store.  Some held bags of merchandise purchased from other stores. One customer hugged a white plastic shopping bag to her body as if it were a small child resting on her lap.  Some fidgeted.  Others whispered briefly to one another and searched the store with their eyes.  “Some of these people have two hour wait times,” said the young woman, “I can’t take you out of turn.” 

Confused, I again looked around. In addition to the 15 or so customers there were 5 or 6 employees.  I did not understand why these employees could not help us more quickly or why the young woman assigned me a one hour wait time when my purchase would take only 10 minutes.  In fact, in the time it had taken to input my information into the electronic clipboard and explain to me why I would not be allowed to simply buy a charger, I could have been finished my planned transaction.  I wondered what services the other customers had requested that had brought them two-, rather than one-, hour assigned wait times.

One of the ways the spirit world communicates with us is through our thoughts and feelings. At this moment, I registered sadness, resignation, frustration, and of the death of the spirit – what comes with being a human being working day after day in a system designed for machines by machines as if it would be better if we too became machines, entities without a creative impulse beyond that which serves our maker. These thoughts and feelings were at once individual and universal.  They described the situation of the young woman and at the same time, the consequences for all surviving in similar situations.

As I pondered these thoughts and feelings, I felt something shift in the space between my eyes and my perception changed. The store took on a surreal quality.  The walls, the inventory, the counters, the employees and customers became shrouded in gray.  The employees seemed to move via pre-established routes, as if on feet welded to rails set into the floor, grooves that had over time had become ruts.  

Out of the corner of my eye I saw my sister, who had been standing beside me, hands stuffed in the pockets of her coat, turn abruptly and walk away as if to leave.  As she moved toward the door of the store, I whispered, “Is this real?”

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