On a snowy January day, I decided to go to a popular fast-casual restaurant known for their soup because that sounded like the perfect meal for the weather. There was no one else in line, and there were four employees working behind the counter. They all looked like they were stocking the food, with two on the bakery side and two on the cafe side.

As I stood at the register, about three feet from the closest employee, no one looked at me or spoke to me. After about thirty seconds had passed, the employee closest to me shouted for someone else to come “ring.” Still, no one told me it might be a minute or even looked at me.

The person the employee called for never came up to ring. At this point, I just wanted to see if anyone would actually acknowledge me, so I stayed quiet. They all went on working for about a minute or so when the employee closest to me who had shouted for help started complaining about the person she called for. She talked about how “lazy” and “stupid” he was because he couldn’t make it up to the front to the register.

I completely understand complaining about coworkers, but not in front of customers, especially when you haven’t even looked at them! Finally, I checked my phone and realized it had been more than three minutes since I first got to the register. Three minutes isn’t a long time, but it sure felt like it when all I wanted was them to scoop some soup into a bowl for me! By now, I wanted to make sure I was still corporeal, so I left the restaurant and got food at a different fast-casual chain. I had my food from the second restaurant in about a minute and was much happier with my meal.

(I have medications being filled on a 30-day supply. My insurance company requires me to call every month and verify that I do need the medicine and that my health panel — age, weight, allergies, etc. — is up to date. I made my call earlier this month, letting them know that I would be on vacation when the medications were scheduled to be delivered and asked if they would deliver without requiring a signature. The representative said it was fine and told me that my medicine would arrive while I was gone. I asked my sister to check on the house while I was gone, specifically mentioning the delivery and the rough timeline I was given. When I come home, she tells me that there have been no deliveries. I call my insurance company again.)

Representative #1: “[Insurance], this is [Rep #1] speaking. Can I have your name and policy number, please?”

Me: “Hi, my name is [My Name]; my policy number is [number].”

Representative #1: “Okay, I have your account here. How can I help you?”

Me: “I was supposed to have some medicine delivered, but nothing has arrived.”

Representative #1: “Okay, I see here that we attempted to deliver on [date] but there was no one home to sign.”

Me: “I was told I could opt out of the signature because I was out of town.”

Representative #1: “No.”

Me: “…”

Representative #1: “…”

Me: “Can I get a new delivery scheduled?”

Representative #1: “I can add you on today’s shipment and overnight the medication to you at no additional cost.”

Me: “That’s great!”

Representative #1: “Okay, I just have to verify your info.” *we go through the same questions I answer every month* “Everything looks good. This will go out today for delivery tomorrow, with a signature required.”

Me: “Thank you!”

(The next day, I’m home all day and nothing comes. Since our package deliveries can come as late as nine pm, I’m stuck waiting all day before I can call back. The day after my delivery was to arrive, I call again. I get a different representative.)

Representative #2: “[Insurance], this is [Rep #2] speaking. Name and policy number?”

Me: “[My Name], [policy number].”

Representative #2: “Thank you, [My Name]. How can I help you?”

Me: “I spoke with [Representative #1] two days ago and was told I would have my medications delivered yesterday but nothing came.”

Representative #2: “Oh, I’m sorry about that. I see here that you tried to order [medication] on [date before vacation] and we tried to deliver but there was no one to sign.”

Me: “Yes. And I called again and was told it would be here yesterday.”

Representative #2: “I’m not showing anything like that but we can ship– Oh, wait. There’s a hold on your account for unpaid copays.”

Me: “Unpaid copays? I’ve never received a bill.”

Representative #2: “You should have received… two.”

Me: “I don’t think I did. Why was I not told of this hold when I called two days ago?”

(I open my online account to see past bills. There is nothing.)

Representative #2: “I’m not sure, ma’am. I only see a bill for $243 that needs to be paid.”

Me: “I’m confused. I’ve met my out of pocket deductibles. What is the bill for?”

Representative #2: “One moment, I can look that up for you.” *hold music* “I’m sorry, ma’am, I’m having trouble finding the specific bill.”

Me: “…”

Representative #2: “…”

Me: “So… what now?”

Representative #2: “If you want to pay in full, I can have your order shipped as early as tomorrow.”

Me: “Um… I don’t even know why I’m paying.”

Representative #2: “They’re unpaid copays.”

Me: “I’m looking at my online account and there’s nothing like that. How do I suddenly owe that much money?”

Representative #2: “Oh. Um. Hold, please.” *hold music* “Thank you for holding, ma’am. My supervisor is looking into this further. Unfortunately, we cannot authorize your medications until you pay your balance. I can take your credit card info—“

Me: “I’m not paying anything until I have an itemized bill.”

Representative #2: *huffs* “Hold.” *hold music* “Okay, ma’am, I’ve talked with my supervisor. Your balance is $243. Will that be card or check?”

Me: “That will be nothing until you tell me why I’m paying.”

Representative #2: *huffs again* “Ma’am. I am trying to work with you here. You owe copays. We cannot fill your prescriptions until you pay in full.”

Me: “And I will happily pay as soon as someone can tell me why I’m paying. I’m looking at my history right now. Not only is there nothing with a copay for the past six months, but all other bills are marked as paid.”

Representative #2: *clearly annoyed* “Would you like to speak to my supervisor, ma’am?”

Me: “Yes, I would.”

(Hold music.)

Supervisor: “Hello, [My Name]? I’m told you would like to speak to a supervisor. I’m [Supervisor].”

Me: “Yes, thank you. I called almost two weeks ago to have meds delivered. There was a miscommunication and they were not delivered. I called two days ago to have the same meds delivered as of yesterday, but they weren’t. I called today and found that I owe money and [Insurance Company] is withholding my medications until I pay. Nothing in my records shows any unpaid copay, so please tell me what is going on here.”

Supervisor: “I apologize for the inconvenience. Please be patient with me while I look into this further. Can I put you on hold?”

Me: *thinly veiled annoyance* “Yes.”

Supervisor: “Thank you.” *hold music* “Hmm. Ma’am, I apologize. I see the bill, but I’m not finding anything that it could be linked to. Unfortunately, I cannot authorize your prescription to be refilled until this bill is paid.”

Me: “Let me get this straight: your records show that I owe money. Yes?”

Supervisor: “Yes.”

Me: “You will not send my medication until I pay this bill. Correct?”

Supervisor: *uneasy* “Correct…”

Me: “But when I ask why you want me to pay, no one can tell me why. Am I wrong?”

Supervisor: “No, ma’am, you are not wrong.”

Me: “Can you see why I’m annoyed?”

Supervisor: “Yes. Please let me put you on hold one last time.”

Me: “No.”

Supervisor: “Ma’am?”

Me: “I will not be put on hold again. This phone call is already over an hour long. If you cannot tell me why I owe this money, I can only assume it’s a mistake on your end and I’m being billed for someone else’s medication or—“

Supervisor: “We are very thorough in our billing process and—“

Me: “—OR someone is committing insurance fraud and I’ll have to hire a lawyer to get this resolved.”

Supervisor: *panicked* “Um. No, no, that won’t be necessary.” *clicking keyboard* “I will see to it that your medication is shipped out today and I will put an override on the unpaid bill. I will continue to research this and get back to you as soon as I know what is going on. Is your number [phone number]?”

Me: “Yes, it is. Thank you.”

Supervisor: “Thank you, ma’am. Enjoy the rest of your day.”

(My medication was delivered the next day and yes, I signed for it. It’s been two weeks and I still haven’t heard anything about my mystery bill. I guess I’ll have to wait and see what happens when I call for my next refill!)

(Sometime after I cease attending a local university part-time, I get a parking ticket on campus in February of 2014. The statute of limitations on such tickets is three years in my state. Aside from a form letter, they make no attempt to collect it in that time, and there’s a three-and-a-half year gap in communications afterwards. About four years out, they apparently re-contract their collections account to a firm in another state, and they get rather aggressive out of the gate — threatening to garnish wages or intercept tax returns. I send back a letter initially disputing their claim — I have no recollection of the ticket by this time; initially, I am not even sure I owned the car in question at the time — and get all of the information from them. Okay, it’s valid… but time-barred. I call them, and this rough conversation transpires in May of 2018, four years and three months after the initial offense.)

Phone Agent: “Hello, [Collection Agency]. Can I have your name and account number?

Me: *gives them the information*

Phone Agent: “So, how much would you like to pay on the account?”

Me: “Actually, that’s the thing: this debt is statute-barred under Virginia law. There’s a three-year time limit.”

Phone Agent: “What year was the offense?”

Me: “2014.”

Phone Agent: “Oh, we have four years to collect, not three.”

(This is patently false, but…)

Me: “Well, the ticket was in February 2014. It is May 2018. So, even if you were correct, by your own admission just now, you’re out-of-statute.”

Phone Agent: *after a moment of silence* “Uh… we’ll make a note.”

(About a month later, the university tried to bill me for it again. I told them the same thing and they tried to pass the buck on the “oversight,” but they seem to have otherwise let the matter drop. We’ll see if that’s truly the end of it, but I feel like I may be dealing with this at odd intervals for a long time to come.)

(My elderly mother tells me that she is thinking of changing her phone number, because she’s been getting prank phone calls from “a young-sounding lady,” and it has been getting worse; now more young people are ringing her with the same rubbish. It turns out that she’s used her answering machine to record one of the calls, and it is indeed a group of teens, giggling in the background, saying stupid stuff. It seems to happen around 4:00 pm every second or third day. Mum goes ahead and changes her phone number, and even pays extra to have it unlisted. She rings to tell me the new number. Problem solved! Nope. The next day she rings back; the miscreants called again ON HER NEW NUMBER! I ring the phone provider, and after getting Mum to authorise me as her spokesperson, we have the following conversation:)

Telecommunication Company: “There’s not much we can do about nuisance calls. Are they threatening in any way?”

Me: “No, not threatening, just annoying. But the problem isn’t so much the calls; it’s that they’ve persisted despite her getting a new number.”

Telecommunication Company: “Well, who has she told her new number to? It’s unlisted, so we wouldn’t give it to anyone.”

Me: “She only got it yesterday; she hasn’t told many people yet. Only my sister and me.”

Telecommunication Company: “Well, who have you told? The caller must have got it from somewhere!”

Me: “We’ve told no one! This is now officially scary. Can’t you just tell us who rang at [time] today?”

Telecommunication Company: “Sorry, no. Privacy and all that.”

Me: “What about our privacy? It’s obviously been breached!”

Telecommunication Company: “Would you like to change numbers again? It’ll be [fee], plus [extra] to have it unlisted.”

Me: “And how would that help? They obviously got the new number somehow, hours after it had been changed!”

Telecommunication Company: “Well, I’m sorry; there’s nothing more we can do.”

(Australia has a telecommunications ombudsman, an independent government organisation that you can contact if the company doesn’t fix your problem. I am preparing a complaint to them when I ask to see Mum’s telephone bill to get the required information — account number etc. Looking through the bill, I notice a $19.50 charge at the bottom that I don’t recognise. Previous bills also have the same line item, but different costs.)

Me: “Mum, what’s this charge here?”

Mum: “Oh, that started appearing on the bill a few months ago. I thought it was a new service. I’ve been meaning to get that cancelled.”

(I jump on the Internet and find out that it’s a service that allows someone to ring a specific FreeCall number, that actually calls a normal number and charges the call to that bill. Their example is to give it to your school kid and they can ring that number rather than make a reverse-charge call to the normal number every time. It cost $10 a month, and 50c a call from anywhere in Australia. You can see where this is heading… Furious, I call the company and ask for a supervisor.)

Telecommunication Company: *after re-re-re-authorising me talking about Mum’s account* “Yes, you signed up for that service seven months ago.”

Me: “No, she definitely did not. We demand a refund for the last seven months of all charges.”

Telecommunication Company: “But the phone calls have been made. We might have been able to refund the $10 service charge, but we won’t refund the calls.”

Me: “What calls? Where were the calls made from?”

Telecommunication Company: *privacy blah blah blah*

Me: “Sorry, that won’t wash. If this was authorised to access this account, then this account is allowed to know about the calls that this account is paying for.”

Telecommunication Company: “Okay, then. They were all calls from [Boarding School] in [City in another state] to [Another City in a different state].”

Me: “How is that possible? Shouldn’t the call arrive at the number associated with this account? What is this account doing paying for a call to somewhere else?”

Telecommunication Company: “Hmm. You’re right; the call actually ended up at your account’s phone.”

Me: “What is the phone number of where the call started? What is the phone number of where the phone call was supposed to go to?”

Telecommunication Company: *privacy blah blah blah*

Me: “Can you do me a favour? Can you check the notes on this account? In particular, can you see where a complaint about nuisance phone calls caused this account to have to change to a new phone number? And how that new phone number was unlisted? And how, next thing, the nuisance phone calls didn’t stop?”

Telecommunication Company: “Hmm, I see. Sorry, there’s nothing we can do about nuisance phone calls.”

Me: “Well, in this case, you can. Not only did your company make a mistake and connect this service to the wrong phone number, not only did your company not mention this mistake in any previous contact, not only did your phone company charge my mother for this mistake for the last seven months, PLUS an unlisted phone number that didn’t fix the problem, but your company has been charging my mother for the exact nuisance phone calls that she’s been receiving! First, she gets nuisance calls, and then she has to pay for them?”

Telecommunication Company: “I see what you mean. Obviously, a mistake has been made.”

Me: “This call is being recorded, right? Here is what I need you to do. 1) Refund all the charges made to this account associated with the service, including phone calls. 2) Refund all the charges associated with my mother having to change phone numbers, including for the unlisted number. 3) Cancel all future charges for having an unlisted number. 4) This is the most important: [Company] will contact the number of the person who organised this service, tell them that a mistake has been made, and that their delinquent child took advantage of the mistake to harass and annoy an innocent old lady. 5) Finally, [Company] will write a formal apology to my mother, describing how it happened and what they’ve done to fix it, including the results of that phone call.”

Telecommunication Company: “I’m not sure we can do that.”

Me: “In that case, I’m writing a formal complaint to the ombudsman. This is completely 100% [Telecommunication Company]’s fault for allowing this delinquency to happen.”

(A week later, a letter did indeed arrive from the company, apologising and describing what happened. Apparently, a parent had set up the service to allow their child, who was boarding interstate, to make calls back home. They were surprised that they hadn’t actually received any calls from said student, but figured things were going well. When they found out what happened, both they and the student passed on their apologies. The next month the next bill arrived. It contained seven months’ worth of refunds, plus a rebate for the cost of the private number. That rebate has appeared in all bills since.)

(We’re in the year 2000 or close. As a teenager, I’m slim and “nicely built” — or so I’ve heard — yet I am VERY modest, especially in the chest area, and my family know its and respects it. I don’t mind girls who wear low-cut clothes — I think it’s really great if they enjoy it and I HATE slut-shaming — yet I’d rather be slapped or punched than show the slightest part of my “parts.” Up until now, most girls and women have worn one-piece swimming suits on the local beaches, and I’ve loved it. However, bikinis are coming back into fashion and my mom wants to buy me one of those. I accept, thinking she’ll find me a modestly cut two-piece or something that’ll cover everything I want to cover. She makes me try a dozen bikinis on. All of them are too low-cut for my tastes, and the shop assistant — male — is staring.)

Me: “Mom, I don’t feel good in any of those.”

Shop Assistant: “Are you sure? Because you look great in all of those!”

Me: “I don’t feel good. I’d like to try something more modest, please.”

(The shop assistant comes back with a swimsuit that is even more low-cut than the previous one. I’m running out of patience.)

Me: “I’d like to try a one-piece on!”

Mom: “But you look so much better in a bikini!”

Me: “Mom, everyone looks good in one-pieces! They hide all the flaws!”

Shop Assistant: “Which flaws? Your mom’s right; you have a bikini body!”

Me: “It’s my body and I want to try a one-piece. I just prefer stuff I can swim in without ever losing the straps.”

Mom: “Try this one on first.”

(I try it. It’s still too low-cut for my tastes.)

Me: “I’d prefer a one-piece.”

Shop Assistant: “One-pieces are for grandmothers. Is that what you want to do: look like a granny? That would be a waste!”

Me: “I’d like something that’s not that low-cut, please.”

Shop Assistant: “Why? You have beautiful breasts.”

(He was staring at my cleavage, and I was just a girl. I felt dirty. To all shop assistants who read this: if a customer ever tells you she wants something more modest, just give her something more modest. Don’t make her try sexy things on “for her own good” if she doesn’t want to, especially if she’s a teenager. Prude-shaming is just as wrong as slut-shaming.)