New post.

It's been months. I suppose I should put up a new post. Heaven only knows what it will be about. Guess I'll start typing and see what happens!! Could be dangerous given my state of mind lately.

Aww.. what the hell.

So... I'm sitting here on my "stolen" bed (That'd be a good blog - remind me to get that one down when I'm feeling charming!) at 11 PM on a Monday night. I have to be at work and on the phones in 8 hours. And I'm dreading it. Simply dreading it. At this point, the only way I can bring myself to get out of my "stolen" bed & out the door in the morning is to say aloud, "At least it's a JOB - many don't have that much right now!"

Doesn't keep it from sucking - since I'm calling those people and pestering them to pay their bills with money they don't have.

Yes, I'm a bill collector. Not quite sure how that fits in with the whole mental health degree path I'm on right now -- unless I aim to end up institutionalized before I graduate. Makes a strange bit of sense to me -- like people that hit rock bottom with addiction before they become drug & alcohol counselors... But I digress!

How does my day go? Well, normally I get to work at 7am. I find a desk to use for a couple hours since I don't have one of my own (again - another story for another day) and log into the dialer system (the computer that dials numbers for us). I listen to hundreds of voicemail messages (seriously, people... do you really think it's charming to record those "Hello? ... Hello? ... HA! GOTCHA!!" messages? What if it's someone calling you about a J-O-B so you can start paying your B-I-L-L-S again??? Think they'll be impressed? Lemme answer for you. NO! They'll hang up and move on to the next applicant in the stack!). If I'm lucky, I only get yelled at 2 or 3 times. If I'm not, It's somewere between 5 and 8... And I try very hard not to cringe every time someone says, "Didn't I just talk to you guys?" (Yes, you did. But we call you every day until we have a payment arrangement. Every. Damn. Day!!)

Thankfully, THE call is out there somewhere.

Yes. The best call... They're rare. If you're lucky, you get one once a day. It's the kind of call I end up clinging to like white cat hair on a black sweater. The call where the person is nice, they legitimately need and APPRECIATE my help and they let me find a solution they can live with to get their account back up-to-date. They're kind. They're respectful. And they thank me - AND MEAN IT! - at the end of the call. And I thank them and invite them to call me back if they have any questions or problems - AND MEAN IT!!

Through them, my faith in humanity is briefly restored.

Then I take a deep breath, get back on the dialer and brace myself as it all goes back to hell in a handbasket. (Imagine a guy who hasn't paid his bill since September screaming "DON'T CALL ME NO MORE!!" over and over and over when I'm simply trying to ask him to verify his address. It happened today...)

Still, considering we call them EVERY DAY, it doesn't surprise me that they're irritated. What DOES surprise me is the distain I hear from co-workers. They're mostly young people (early twenties) who have never had to worry about finding $5 so they can get milk for their kid, let alone falling $300 short of paying their rent. They're arrogant. They're often obnoxious. And they have no problem calling these people losers (or worse) when they hang up the phone.

This bothers me because - as many of you know - I'm in a mire of debt. My credit sucks. I'm behind on everything and if I can EVER afford it, I'm going to file bankruptcy. Again. And be an uber-loser - the kind of person who should be forced to eat cat food because I'm an idiot and I don't deserve better (according to my young co-workers). How do I deal with it? Avoidance. I don't mingle with the co-workers in question. I screen my cell # calls. I never answer my home # because I know it's not anyone but a collector.

But despite my history - or perhaps because of it - I am completely baffled by the way people talk to me on the phone when I'm calling them about their bill. I can honestly say I've NEVER even entertained the thought of screaming at the people who call me. They're doing their job. I'm not doing mine. Pretty simple equation...

Besides, they have all of my secure information right there... And in a world with Google Maps, they could easily find out how to get to my place, what it looks like and probably when I'm most likely to show up. (The makings of a great slasher flick or episode of CSI right there. Collector goes psycho and massacres all the people who screamed obscenities at him on the job...)

I'll never do that. I'll just be the a$$ who never answers her phone.

Okay, now that I've rambled on and on about nothing for 40 minutes, I'll say "Caveat Smeltonia!" and wish you all a blessed sleep and collectorless phone calls....


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