I once worked at a company that handled customer service for a health insurance company. One of the functions was to look up physicians in that company’s healthcare network for callers/subscribers. I had a female caller who called looking for some type of specialist in the area. I could tell from her tone of voice that she was A) rude, and B) going to be hard to handle, but I was pretty experienced at handling rude or troublesome callers, so I wasn’t too worried.

She gave me the details of what she was looking for (very reluctantly) and told me what mileage radius she wanted the physician to be within, etc. Then, as I was getting ready to start the database search, she added:

Caller: “And make sure the doctor has an English-sounding name and speaks fluent English.”

I was floored and blurted:

Me: “Huh?”

She repeated what she said.

Caller: “I don’t want anyone whose name isn’t American.”

At this point, I was thinking, “WTF?” but I pressed on.

Me: “I’ll be quiet for a few minutes while searching the database, but if you have questions in the meantime, I’ll still be on the line.”

After about two or three minutes, she snarled:

Caller: “Well?”

Me: “I’m about ten pages into the directory, but so far, I’ve found only find one doctor with an English-sounding name within twenty-five miles of your address, a doctor named Smith.”

Caller: “That’s very upsetting! Does [Health Insurance Company] only deal with doctors who are foreign and don’t speak English so that people like me get screwed by the system?”

Me: “…I will continue reviewing the list.”

Caller: *Angrily* “Just give me the first five names on the list!”

I provided them.

Caller: “The third name on this list is a Dr. O’Brien! Why didn’t you give me that name?!”

Me: “You specifically asked for an English-sounding doctor who could speak fluent English. O’Brien is obviously an Irish name, and our system has no way to determine how fluent their English is.”

The next thing I heard was dial tone.

Since the global health crisis, my boyfriend and I have seen many hilarious posts and videos online about people’s cats crashing Zoom call work meetings, and they always make us laugh. Neither of us has ever had an office job; we have always had the “essential” jobs of retail, food service, and general labor, so we never got the luxury of working from home in our pajamas during the health crisis.

The time comes this year when my boyfriend has to set up his life insurance policy through his job, and they request it be done over a Zoom call so they can go over all the paperwork in real time, since the main office is based out of another state. I’m sure you can guess where this is going.

Neither of us is very tech-savvy, so the hilarity of both of us trying to even figure out how to download Zoom and get it to work is a lovely enough experience by itself. But once the call gets going, everything goes smoothly.

[Boyfriend] is leaning against the kitchen island, going over this important and serious life and accident insurance information with the lady on the other end of the video call, and I’m sitting off to the side quietly sipping my coffee.

Our cat decides that now is the ideal time for some affection. She leaps up onto the counter and, before anyone can grab her, promptly walks across the laptop, stepping on a bunch of keys, and sticks her head directly up into my boyfriend’s face, demanding chin scratches, completely blocking him from the view of the camera with a mass of grey fluff.

The lady on the other end bursts out laughing in the middle of her sentence about beneficiaries in the event of my boyfriend’s accidental demise. My boyfriend also starts laughing (more out of embarrassment) and attempts to move the cat, but she wriggles away, hops back around, and just starts doing circles on the laptop keyboard, making all kinds of fun things happen on the screen along with beeping “error” sounds with each key she steps on.

I’m cracking up by this point, too, and I quickly intervene and grab up the cat and bring her to my lap.

It takes my boyfriend and the insurance lady a minute to regain their composure to resume talking about the serious matter of what would happen should my boyfriend die unexpectedly. 

After the call is over, I am delighted to point out that now we have finally had that hilarious “cat crashing a Zoom call” experience that we’ve always envied from most of the rest of the world.

I’m still on my parents’ insurance and have been struggling with my mental health. We find a counselor within the network and call them to make sure they do accept the insurance. The receptionist runs it and tells us that they do, so we make an appointment.

I see the counselor for a few months before I determine that I’m doing better and stop seeing her.

It has been a little over half a year since seeing her when I get a call from her. She is aggressive right off the bat.

Counselor: “It turns out that we stopped accepting your insurance shortly around the time that I started seeing you, so only the first two appointments were covered. You will need to pay me for my time from the other appointments.”

Me: “How much is owed?”

Counselor: “$1,600, and I will need the entire payment right now. I can take a card number from you when you are ready.”

Me: “I don’t have $1,600 in my account. You need to call my parents and discuss it with them since it was under their insurance.”

She calls my mom.

Counselor: “It turns out we stopped accepting your insurance shortly after [My Name] started seeing me, and you now owe me $1,600.”

Mom: “When we first called, your receptionist told us that you accepted the insurance. If we had known that you no longer did, we would have found a different practice that did and wouldn’t have made any more appointments with your practice. Why were we never made aware that you stopped accepting our insurance?”

Counselor: “We didn’t catch it until now. Not my fault. I’m still going to need a payment from you.”

Mom: “I understand that it was a mistake, but it’s been months since she’s stopped seeing you, and you just discovered that you no longer accepted the insurance? I’d understand if it was paying for one or two appointments, but why wasn’t this caught sooner?”

Counselor: “I don’t know what you want me to tell you.”

Mom: “So, we have to pay for a mistake that your office made?”

There’s a long pause before the counselor responds.

Counselor: “I mean, what am I supposed to do? Fire my receptionist?”

Mom: “I’m not asking you to do that, but she’s the one that made the mistake and didn’t catch it for months. Not us.”

The counselor ended up begrudgingly accepting that it was the fault of her receptionist for letting it go on as long as it did. She decided to let it go by putting some of her unused pro bono toward the sessions.

I work in a life insurance call center where I primarily deal with agents and agent staff.

Caller: “If cryogenic freezing occurred and they were able to successfully reanimate the client long after the insurance payout had already occurred, would they have to pay it back?”

I transferred them to life claims since I only handled policy service.

I receive a call from my doctor’s office.

Receptionist: “Just so you know, your insurance is no longer active.”

Me: *Slightly panicked* “Are you sure? It should still be active.”

Receptionist: “We have you in the system as being with both [Insurance Company #1] and [Insurance Company #2], so I tried billing [Insurance Company #1] and they denied it.”

Me: *Pauses* “[Insurance Company #1] was my parent’s insurance. I haven’t been under them for years.”

Receptionist: “Ohhhhh, so should I try billing [Insurance Company #2], then?”

Me: *Facepalming internally* “Yes.”