Life Is But A Series Of "Really? Really?" Moments

As per the norm, a fresh writing update can be had at I Are Writer!

We are now for the most part, settled in at Tumblr for the long haul, as it applies to my writing journey. While I may share something of writing related import here from time to time, the bulk of the writing updates can be found there. So if you can find the time, please give it a look see.

As for the time to time, here is something of import to share: it looks like I'm gonna have to seriously gut and redo my Tumblr book blog. I originally set it up about a year ago as an alternative to my other book blog that has been basically put into permanent Facebook jail for the crime of me being too giddy about my first traditionally published book. I went into the Tumblr blogging system with the expectation of that being like this, but to my surprise, that ain't this, so it will require a major gut job to make it like this. I may also add another book blog here for the sole purpose of making it a little easier for people purchase my books from Tumblr.

Now, with the dry drollness out of the way, lets segue into the post title.

"Really? Really?" is my new pet phrase to safely describe the incredibly stupid behavior that I encounter not only at work, but elsewhere in the real world. You know where I'm coming from, right? You've had encounters, either at work or elsewhere, that have left you flabbergasted and/or stunned. Well, this is my world. I experience this kind of thing on a daily basis at work, and while I have a ton o' cannon fodder to use, we'll use two (count 'em) two examples from the real world that will (I hope) leave you shaking your head in amazement.

1} A check in the amount of 4 cents. That's right, you read that correctly. To elaborate, my wife was let go/laid off/fired from her job in 2008 (very long story that I will not share with you at this time), so after the dust settled, we rolled her 401k into a piddly IRA. The first problem that cropped up was that they didn't close the entire thing out. ING (now Voya), left roughly $15 behind. They eventually closed out the account, again, and sent us a check for $15, which we didn't cash because we weren't sure of the tax implications. Now you would think that after sending the wife a $15 check, that would be the end of it.

But alas, it was not. Again, an epic fail on Voya's part left a balance of three cents, which for the next seven years they felt obliged to send a quarterly statement on that three cent balance. Over the course of those seven years, we gamely tried to get them to stop, but after a half dozen phone calls, they refused to do so on the grounds that my wife needed a pin number to access the account. Which she didn't have anymore, but go figure. We finally got the pin number, but never found the time to call them back during their business hours in order to take care of this.

Last week, my wife comes down to the den and says, "G.B., I got a check for four cents from Voya."
I says, "Really?"
She says, "Yes."
I says, "Let me see that."

Sure enough, they sent a check for four cents, as final payment on her 401k. I figure between the cost of the paper to print the check and the postage, they lost a bit of money on this transaction. I still got the check, which will not be cashed, 'cause I need a chuckle every now and then.

By the way, Voya used to run our deferred compensation program. Now it's Prudential.

2} New mailing address for Citgo. Earlier this year, Citibank sold some of their commercial c/c accounts to Synchrony Bank, of which Citgo was one of them. On the account statement, they said the new mailing address would take effect on 2/19. Since that date was roughly one week after my due date, I sent the payments (mine and my wife's) to the old address. A few weeks later, we both received a letter from Synchrony Bank chastising us for sending the payment to the old address.

Hello! The new address didn't take effect until 2/19, which the average person would understand to be that everything else didn't go into effect until then, so it would make sense to mail it to the old address so that they wouldn't be penalized with a late fee.

Suffice to say, I was none-too-pleased to get a patronizing letter from the bank over something that they didn't execute correctly. Makes me almost want to send a nasty letter to them letting them know why the upper management that put this in motion has blue cheese for brains.

3} Finally, a little non-PC humor to tickle your funny bone. I have a coworker who is roughly two decades younger than me and is bi-lingual. During the course of a bitch session amongst us payroll people about the yahoos we do payroll for, he came up with a new twist on a tired cliché:

"Hey! This is America! Learn to speak Spanish!"

Suffice to say, we split a gut laughing up a storm at his comment, which was welcome diversion to a crappy work day.

Happy Prince Spaghetti Day!

(c) 2016 BOOKS BY G.B. MILLER. All Rights Reserved.