a letter to the manufacturer

Dear Apple, Inc.,

Call me frugal or call me unemployed (both of which are appropriate), but when I browsed your website and found that your ipod armbands cost $29 plus shipping, I decided that I could make my own. It's not that 30 dollars is such an unreasonable price--though it seems a bit high, considering it is constructed of small amounts of velcro, elastic and synthetic material--it's just that I realized that I have the appropriate tools and skills to make my own. I might add, as well, that being unemployed, I try to keep unnecessary spending rather controlled, and 30 dollars is 30 dollars. Besides, I was able to personalize my case and create it from bright, dyed cloth my father purchased on a trip to Africa after graduating from college.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's great that you can sell your products and be a successful, growing company, even in such a dark economic climate through which we currently traipse. Granted, you can probably make these nice profit margins because most of your factories are overseas and you employ people in countries where a much lower wage is acceptable and even appreciated. Such are the ways of globalization, and the effects are both complicated and daunting. Luckily for our consumer society, however, we can buy such products--electronics, toys, kitchenware--for a very affordable price, speaking, of course, in strictly economic terms. How could we ever afford to buy all the products we own, if they were manufactured in our own country, with our own minimum wage requirements, age restrictions and a safety regulations? Quite simply, would have to pay a higher price. Or you would have a smaller profit margin. Maybe even both.

Although, perhaps a few more of the approximately 10% of our country's unemployed would have jobs--consequently causing an increase in the unemployment of those in other countries, of course, where the current factories exist, where small farmers in Cambodia have sold their farms, moved to the city and work in your factories, trying to earn enough to feed their growing children and pay for school books, nevermind ipods. As I've mentioned, complicated and daunting, and I digress.

I simply wanted to express that, though you have not--on this occasion--managed to sell me your product, I'm sure your business will continue to thrive due to your resourcefulness and the nearly worldwide demand for your products.

Attentively,


Lindsy Glick
full-time job seeker and domestic artist extraordinaire


p.s. Should your company find itself lacking in the Promotional Department, please don't hesitate to call, I am confident that I fully meet all qualifications and feel very strongly about customer satisfaction of consumer shit.

p.p.s. I must here recognize my own hypocritical tendencies as I go out on a jog sporting my ipod nano (though with home-made armband...), adidas running shoes and Northface polar fleece. There is something to be said for quality products and I am as guilty as the next person as a consumer whore. Do you think I should go live in a hut in the mountains eating only berries and fish so that I can live guilt-free of passively affecting my brothers and sisters across the globe, not to mention negatively impacting the environment with nearly every step I take? It could be argued that though I would not be doing much external harm, I would also not be doing much good, and as an anti-societal extremist wrote on his death bed alone in the Alaskan wilderness, "Happiness only real when shared."

O tempora o mores