Once, I was engaged to an East Indian. He was two or three or even one on the “sweetest romances I have ever had, in the beginning,” list so please don’t assume from this story I’m prejudiced in anyway against East Indians. At work they gave him a Rebel Without a Cause poster both because he was a rebel with too many causes, all against himself it turned out, and he looked like a darker James Dean. I remember when he would slick his hair back and roll up the tee shirt sleeves to assume protector of Pia role. Uh yeah it worked as well as it sounded. This was in the early 80’s. We worked on East 28th between Madison and Park which was a welfare hotel capital then.
Me=native New Yorker with a tude. He=MidWesterner trying to adopt a street face. He was eight years younger than me, had a law degree by 21, and would be getting a PHD in AI. Couldn’t scare anybody, but tried so hard. Oh I do remember this relationship with affection.
The above was me being defensive. Here’s the story:
I live a few blocks from the beach and it’s not illegal to set off fireworks. Or it is but it’s not enforced. We certainly have enough dynamite stores. Fireworks began going off at Midnight and went off all night. It was fine when on the beach. But then I began hearing them from outside houses. Most of our houses are wood framed. Mine sure is. I began to wonder what errant fireworks could do, if a stray one would amble a bit to my house.
I didn’t fall asleep until after six AM. It was a deep luxuriant sleep filled with good dreams and thoughts of the New Year. Then I heard a noise. I don’t know how to describe this song. It’s a combo; the worst of techno, fusion, rap and disco. It didn’t stop and it was freaking loud. Finally I remembered that I had set my cell to that noise because I can never hear it on the beach and I was planning on spending all day Saturday walking.
It was 8AM. Somebody had died. That was the only explanation. Nobody would call anybody that early on New Years Day except in a dire emergency. I found the phone and answered my voicemail. It was Amex telling me that me my card had been suspended, and to call the fraud squad. Three quarters asleep but still no fool I found my card and called the number on it. I was immediately transferred to the fraud squad.
Com(dot)com had tried to charge my card $59.95. Now I would have disputed this charge when I saw it, probably on Monday, but I had an account with them going back ten years at least.
“You called me at eight AM New Years Day to tell me this?”
“Well it very important. Your card was used in a fraud.”
“Actually it wasn’t. Do you realize the time it is in the East Coast America?” (As I could tell I was speaking to an East Indian not in America)
“Yes but this very important. Your….”
“Look deny the charge but the card wasn’t used in a fraud. I had a long relationship with com(dot)com, and your records should indicate that.”
“Is not a fraud?”
“Well I opted out of Amex recurring charges but com(dot)com probably doesn’t know that.”
She said something else. I asked if Amex was aware that I check my bill everyday and pay it every time there’s a new charge. I’m not bragging at all; I think that’s rather compulsive of me but I justify it by saying that I use my card instead of cash. Which means I have way too many skymiles. I figured I could travel the world twice, just stay in the airports, and nobody would want to make a movie about that. I don’t want to spend money on hotels, force myself on friends, and am ambivalent about couch surfing. Really I think a good hotel is one of the wonders of the world. Really I can’t go anywhere until I finish my book….Then I will go somewhere wonderful.
The conversation seemed to go on for hours as they had to reinstate my Amex card as this wasn’t a fraud. I went back to sleep. Unfortantely I didn’t wake up until Noon. By the time I got out my house the beautiful sunny day was turning into a gray and dreary one. I had to do a New Years Walk to Cherry Grove Pier-it’s only two and half miles there and back and I had so wanted to walk further into Cherry Grove. It’s not often this time of year the weather is so perfect. Or was. It began to rain about a minute after I came home.
On the walk I thought about the phone call. Unwillingly. There were a million better things I wanted my mind to be occupied with but something really bothered me.
Ha! Yes I was upset by the timing. More than that I was upset because I live in a county with double digit unemployment. There is a county in South Carolina that has almost depression level unemployment figures. Personally I should be glad as it keeps prices low. Obviously that makes my money go further.
I believe in a global economy. We’re one world; deal with it. But America’s in crisis now. We need jobs and any American would have understood why that call was so wrong on so many levels at eight AM on New Years Day. I thought anybody in the world would understand but the woman didn’t even apologize.
Customer service people in companies like Amex really play a variety of roles. People are calling about their money at a time when money isn’t easy to come by. People watch dimes when they didn’t watch a hundred dollars before. I was pissed. Amex needs all their customer centers for Americans in America. Oh god do I feel guilty for thinking this but.
So I emailed them. This morning I woke up to a cut and paste email sent by a, yes, woman with an East Indian name. Part of it did say
You have plenty of SkyMiles earned on the account. Please note that the Delta SkyMiles program is a Frequent Flyer program allowing you to earn SkyMiles and redeem them for travel awards.
When flying on a qualified Delta, Delta SkyTeam Alliance Partner, Northwest, or Continental flight, you can redeem SkyMiles towards all or part of the price of Delta tickets.
Award Travel refers to the ability for Delta SkyMiles Members to redeem miles for tickets.
Again I feel so guilty for thinking this but I believe that a complaint email should be addressed by a person in the country you’re querying about. Once I almost jeopardized my credit as I called a credit bureau and spoke to a man from another country who wrote everything I said down wrong. It took many letters to straighten that up.
I called Amex and spoke to a wonderful man in the fraud department who totally got me. Chris explained that com(dot)com had tried to put through the charge three times though I had opted out of recurrent charges and this triggered a fraud alert. Couldn’t this have been explained to me on Saturday morning? Honestly I would have understood.
He didn’t know if I were eligible for any program besides Skymiles and put me on with the wonderful Heather from Pittsburgh. I called just a few months ago to ask this question and was told I wasn’t eligible for anything else. Uh but the person didn’t know about Marketplace where I can get hotel rooms, cars (if I drove) and many other goods. It would have been nice if the person who emailed me had bothered to look this up or had said she didn’t know. I get paperless statements and should begin reading everything beside the actual bill.
Then Heather offered me a $150 loyalty reward credit.
Sometimes it really does pay to complain bitch stand up for your beliefs. But this isn’t how I wanted to spend part of the first two days of the year. Does this mean my year will be tangled up in paperwork? Uh!!
I had planned on spending one weekend out of 52 not thinking about bills, not on the computer, not doing anything but what I wanted to do. Until computers can truly think as humans and decide what is really fraud or not humans should oversee them. Until Chris explained to me that com(dot)com tried to put the charge through three times I was amazed that a recurring charge would be considered fraud. While I understand that computer fraud is a growing problem, and am glad they’re working for me, I can’t believe they would call somebody at two AM. I can’t believe how defensive I am about this! This post totally embarrasses me as I sound like such a bigot and I’m not. But I strongly believe in professionalism. This was the first sentence in the email. Normally it would have made me laugh
I do understand the reason of your displeasure as we called you in the wee hours of the winter morning, and a New Yearâs Day on top of that.
Yes those symbols were in it. “Wee hours” generally mean before dawn, and the first half of the sentence could have stood a lot of editing. I’m frustrated about a lot of things and found one stupid thing to take my displeasure out on. I promise I won’t be complaining in here in the next month or so. Unless….
I relate to your conflicting feelings about globalization. Becoming “one world”, as you say, is inevitable and will be beneficial in many ways for the majority. But progress comes change, and individuals whose livelihood depends on the old technology suffer – the industrial revolution is another recent example of this.
Anyway, sorry your first day of 2011 was a hassle – hope it gets better!
Maybe let’s say you got your frivolous paperwork done early this year.
@Stacey
Stacey–I would love to think of this as progress. But while the industrial revolution garnered new industries and new ways for people who had been “out sourced” to be employed, this particular subset of the techno revolution is probably “enabling” a permanent underclass of Americans. Every person I spoke to yesterday at Amex and they put me through to too many for my taste welcomed my call because they want as many complaints as possible about outsourcing jobs.
The email I received showed in black and white how Amex is allowing people who don’t know America or American culture to give totally wrong information because it was easy to find and the first thing they came across. Most of the rest of the email was written in the same manner as emails I would throw into spam just because of the wording
I am very conflicted on this subject. But we can’t have a jobless recovery. It’s really not a recovery–and I’m one who benefits from the so called recovery
@Doug
Doug I so hope so!!!!
complaining is so cathartic though, and when you do it entertinaing
@Pia – I definitely agree that call centers staffed with foreigners can be frustrating. The language & cultural differences make communication a challenge – that’s a legitimate complaint, not prejudice (IMO)! Along those same lines, a lot of other jobs are being outsourced overseas that shouldn’t be, such as tax accountants and even attorneys. It seems like companies are making decisions based on cost cutting & not quality. And the more companies that do that, the more that have to jump on the bandwagon just to stay competitive.
The progress I was referring to was technological progress, namely the internet, which really has revolutionized, well, everything. My husband & I moved from Florida to Texas in October and I was able to keep my job (and telecommute) because of the internet. It really is making us one world. I guess it’s the eternal optimist in me that thinks that with change comes loss, hardship, & growing pains, but that with all that come new opportunities that will ultimately benefit us all. After all, if they didn’t we’d just abandon the technology.
@cooper
Cooper–thanks. I know this wasn’t in my top one thousandth, but…
@Stacey
Stacey–I totally agree about the technology. I could have never moved from NY to SC without it. It’s changed and enhanced my life incredibly.
Through blogging I met many people that opened my mind to areas of the country I would have never thought about before. I found my house on the Internet–through a broker but I saw the ad. I furnished it through the Internet and got substantial discounts for doing that–actually was thinking about writing a post about how I got my lighting
I work through the Internet and unfortunately that is 24/7
My life is made possible through technology. At the same time I don’t know how to turn it off., and can’t during the week. My brain doesn’t allow me to disconnect. And when i got that phone call I had to check things on the computer.
There went my one computer free weekend–where I ended checking everything finance related and I needed to totally relax
Everything suffers because I have a personality that doesn’t allow me to relax and technology which is so wonderful enables that. My blog used to be a “must read,” and top ranked. It’s a shell because I’ve spread myself out so thin. So I did go ballistic, and the only way I know not to complain to people in my life is by blogging.
I can also feel that I have a full social life and realize at night my entire social life took place online–and I don’t have the excuse of being an invalid or whatever.
I, and this is just me personally, can no longer live in a 24/7 world. I have to take evenings and weekends off.
But I agree with everything you said. I think many of us and corporations need to learn parameters
There’s almost nothing that won’t wait and corporations should be considerate also
American companies are kept aloft by American consumers. It isn’t bigotry to say that they should hire American workers as well. The central premise of Capitalism is that we’re using all this money to do something productive
Globalism– like Capitalism, and like many other words that end with the suffix -ism– is one of those ideas that is going to have to be reinvented for the new century. I can’t live with the fact that when I buy a computer, I have to worry about whether or not the minerals came from the Congo, or whether or not buying a computer at all creates demand in a way that increases the flow of money to warlords no matter where the minerals come from. It’s a bad scene and I want no part of it. Something needs to be done.
I want to be able to buy pomegranates from Kandahar, and create an incentive for farmers to grow fruit instead of opium poppies.
I want to see shade-grown coffee on supermarket shelves.
If I’m sending my money to other countries, I want it to be put towards creating something meaningful. Otherwise, I want to buy from companies that employ Americans.
If someone were to propose a certification after the manner of Certified Organic or Energy Star to denote that buying a product correlates to a certain number of American jobs per million units sold, I’d be for it. Same deal when it comes to products from overseas.
We Americans are really good at buying shit. It’d be great if we could put that to use.
For clarity– when I say “American Worker” I mean “Worker who fully participates in the American economy, including paying taxes to the US government.” There are plenty of other meanings for that phrase that I don’t agree with.
@Pia – sounds like we are on the same page. I couldn’t agree with you more about the 24/7 world. I’m a huge proponent of work/life balance & actually wrote an article in which I expressed skepticism about “unlimited vacation policies”, especially for those with technology related jobs. Not to go on about myself, but I switched jobs in 2009 after 13 years because of hours & stress, and I was an on-site employee at that time! I lucked out and found my current company, which has a 9-5 culture, and that’s why I fought to keep my job when we moved.
Still, for most people, getting emails on your phone ALONE is enough to keep you working 24/7. And the lines between time on & off do blur for many telecommuters. So…that’s a big downside.
@EsotericWombat
Wombat–The call and emails being from India hit me personally as I know more people from India than I do from the Congo, and I disliked my feelings.
you know me. I do worry about the things you mentioned But I worry about you (meaning you and your entire generation of Americans more)
The industry I worked in when the beginning of this post took place was computerized litigation. I managed deposition digesting, other legal writing and computerized lit projects. I hired many temp workers. Great jobs for almost grads, new grads, people between jobs–I had jobs for all despite level of experience, education, intelligence or talent. We also set up the first computerized court rooms in the country. I worked on many “name” cases.
A lot of the industry is now computerized itself which is kind of ironic. Much of the industry has been outsourced to India where there is a need for American lawyers to oversee the projects. Only we learned that lawyers generally make the worst managers and employees in this industry for a number of reasons
There were so many nuances to the digesting jobs in particular__I could still give a course in it and it’s be years. You in particular would be great at digesting
I think the phone call and the email, not in good English–the parts that weren’t pasted–awoke a series of conflicted feelings in me that I couldn’t quite comprehend until I wrote about it and discussed. oh god, after all these years I finally understand what blogging’s about!
@Stacey
Stacy–exact same page. I loved the article, and go on about yourself, please
My father was self-employed and while he worked longer hours he worked when he wanted to–which included times on vacation–but it was his choice. He worked until he died at 77 but went to Europe twice a year–once a year somewhere exotic and totally unplugged–Florida to see relatives and friends for three weeks and numerous weekends away. My parents had a great life that I freely admit aspiring to
I have friends who went to work in Europe, and Asia after college, and the difference in their lives and our lives was amazing. Americans lived to work. They worked to live
We’ve been in bad recessions before but this one is different. The jobless recovery scares me as its impossible. i understand why President Obama focused on the infrastructure and it makes a certain amount of sense until you realize that everything is perception and we need a massive jobs program for people to understand that we’re on the road. Because until that happens only part of the people will recover and not the people who need it the most
I can hear your pain–i hate dealing with people at inconvient times or those who don’t understand… but Cherry Grove, that name takes me back in time!
It’s gotten to the point where if I receive what should probably be considered normal, decent customer service, I’m so pleasantly surprised that I feel like I should write a letter of commendation.
We had a nice, warm New Year’s Day here, too. 70ish. I wore long sleeves and wished I hadn’t.
H-N-Y, P-I-A.
@sage
Sage–Cherry Grove has more parks and places of interest than it did when you were young. However, I’m sure you had more youthful fun than walking half way across the channel in low tide 🙂
@Bone
Bone-_I do write letters of commendation. Well emails! I think Amex might keep them in a public file. Or else people I speak to on the phone just love me and give me credits and 1,000 more skymiles–just for complaining. Might take it up as a career but honestly I don’t have that many complaints since the utility/bank/credit card world became so competitive
I have a feeling Midwesterners and New Yorkers struggle to mix well 🙂
Happy New Year! I’ll be contacting you next time I have a flight problem!
TC–Happy New Year! This was the first time I was angry in a really long time. Didn’t enjoy it. Even writing this wasn’t cathartic but seemed to make it worse. Learned a lot from that
You have a right to be angry, they used the trust their brand has established over more than a 100 years to intrude upon your private life without your permission.
Companies now behave in a way that would have one time been considered discourteous and/or disrespectful, today they call it “customer service”. They don’t believe it and neither do we, however, we seem to all too often accept it as inevitable.
I’m guessing that they didn’t ask you to complete a short survey after the call.
I think it’s better to clear the decks early in the year, it only gets better!