CONTENT WARNING: Death

It was one week before Christmas, and my store was slammed. A customer was just about to join the long line when she got a phone call that brought her to tears and hysterics. One of my supervisors, while on the register, overheard the conversation and discreetly rang up her shopping to get her out of the store as quickly as possible.

It turns out the phone call was to tell her that her father had had a heart attack and was on his way to the hospital. He unfortunately passed, but because of the supervisor, the customer was able to leave the store with her shopping and got to see him one last time.

A couple of days after Christmas, the same customer came in and gave the supervisor $20 and a heartfelt card for allowing her a chance to say goodbye.

At the store where I work, we had a regular who often ordered by phone for things to be delivered to her, paid by credit card. She liked the look of the example-of-use tree in the newly released Christmas catalogue, so we had to figure out how many boxes were needed of every product on the tree and send them over to her.

A week or two later, she wanted it all returned for a refund. She wanted us to go pack up the now fully set-up tree and every piece on it, at her house, and bring them back to the store ourselves.

Because she was such a regular, the boss eventually agreed that if the lady packed it all back into the packaging (required of all change-of-mind refunds so it could be resold), one of our curtain installers would pick it up from her doorstep.

Well, it all came back… NZ$300 worth of cheap plastic ornaments shoved into random plastic bags with none of the original packaging, and the tree in pieces, without its box.

I wasn’t privy to what level of refund the manager granted her, but I know any profit eventually made on the now clearly used ex-display pieces would not have covered the staff labour time sorting that s*** out.

I used to work in the arrears department of an energy company. Most of the time, my job involved taking calls from customers, but on occasion, field agents would call us to give updates or ask questions.

Field agents weren’t bailiffs; they were just staff we sent to try and speak to the customer in person, and if not, hand-deliver a letter. Sometimes debts weren’t paid because the customer had died or a new tenant had moved in, or sometimes they would find the property had been demolished and we hadn’t been informed. Field agents could also offer help, including going through income and expenditure forms to work out a payment plan.

One day, I got a call from one of our field agents. He had been a field agent for over twenty years. Before that, he had been a bailiff for the local county council. There wasn’t much that could rattle a man with that much experience. But that day, I could tell something was up. He sounded… upset.

He gave me a customer account number and asked me to put the customer on our reduced tariff: a price plan with extremely low unit and service charge prices specifically for vulnerable customers, such as the disabled or those on specific benefits.

As I went through the account, he explained what had happened.

[Field Agent] had visited the customer, where he discovered that she was living in abject poverty with an infant. They lived in one room of the house because it was all she could afford to heat, and even then, the room was bitterly cold. She looked gaunt and pale. Her cupboards were bare, and she only had one tin of baby formula. The baby didn’t have a crib and instead slept in a cardboard box on the floor. She had no furniture, only a mattress on the floor.

It turned out that while she was in the hospital giving birth, her husband had run off with his coworker who he had gotten pregnant. He had taken all the things they had bought for their baby to give to his mistress, including the crib, all the baby clothes, and all the toys.

To add insult to injury, he had also cleared out their bank accounts and left her with nothing. He never came to see the baby and never paid any child support. He didn’t even bring any food or gifts for his child.

This poor woman had been trying her best — even paying us a few pounds every week without fail. She didn’t have any family who could help her, either. Even her in-laws seemed uninterested and ignored her. It was just her and her baby.

[Field Agent] went through various forms with her as per his job, and then he shut himself in his van to cry.

He had seen it all; he had been attacked by customers (often with a weapon), had dogs set on him, and had even found a corpse at a few properties. But this… this broke him.

He gave the poor woman his lunch, which he said she ate like a starved animal. Then, he sat down with her for several hours and let her use his personal phone (she didn’t have one) to call various charities. He managed to put her in touch with an organisation that would help make sure she was on all the right benefits and would help her get legal aid to get child support from her scumbag husband.

I removed all the fees on the account and backdated the lower tariff as far back as I could.

At the end of his shift, [Field Agent] went back to the woman’s house and brought nappies (diapers), baby formula, and several bags of essential groceries, as well as a cheap mobile phone he had picked up so she could take calls from the various people helping her.

When he got home, he asked his family and friends if they had any baby clothes they were no longer using. He ended up with two black sacks full of baby clothes, as well as some toys, and his neighbour donated a buggy, all of which he delivered to the woman a few days later.

She later wrote us a letter expressing her gratitude and thanking [Field Agent] for all his help.

[Field Agent] would occasionally check in on the woman if he could. I would always ask him for an update when he stopped by the office to drop off paperwork. Last I heard, the woman had been moved to a council house which was much nicer than her musty, rundown home, and she had a court date for finally getting the child support payments she was owed.

Years later, I still wonder about that woman and her son and hope they’re doing well.

When I was a theater tech for my high school’s plays back in the 1990s, we had this little telephone room where the students could call our parents to let them know we were done with rehearsal and we needed to be picked up.

One day, I made my call, and while I did, the door closed behind me… and locked. I didn’t realize until I hung up. This was before cell phones, so I couldn’t get ahold of my dad once he was on the road. (My parents were divorced, and my mom lived further away.) I pounded on the door like crazy, but in the chaos of cleaning up the auditorium and getting ready to leave, no one heard me.

My dad arrived, but no one knew where I was. Someone finally heard me and was able to let me out.

I think they took the lock completely off after that as there was no point in having the room lock to begin with.

As someone who’s outdoors in all kinds of weather, I opt to invest in a decent pair of hiking boots from a major outdoors and sporting goods store, with a repair service. When my old pair wears out (and is no longer waterproof) after six years, I go back to the same store to buy the exact same model again in August.

In November, a bare three months after buying them, I am cycling to my weekly D&D game when I am caught in a deluge. My raincoat and trousers keep me (mostly) dry, but I arrive at my destination with my feet drenched. This is not a little spatter; it’s clear that both boots have sprung a leak somewhere. My socks take hours to dry on the heater, and when I am ready to go back home, I have to put my now-dry feet back into wet and cold shoes.

Since it’s Friday night, and Saturday just happens to be a holiday, I am at the store bright and early with my boots. I explain my situation to the gentleman at the repair center. I am have some difficulty getting him to take me seriously. According to him, my boots cannot possibly be leaking after three months. What was I doing? Cycling? Am I sure it’s not just perspiration? These are heavy boots, after all! (I had to wring my socks out before putting them on the heater. No, it was not perspiration.)

Reluctantly, he takes the boots to send them to their repair center. If they find anything wrong with the boots, they’ll either repair them if possible or issue me a store credit. In order to send the boots in, I have to take out the laces and insoles. The insole of the left boot still has water droplets clinging to the underside, but he dismisses this, too, as an overreaction on my part. Still, he takes them, and I get an email confirmation that they’re being sent in.

On Wednesday morning at 9:05, I get confirmation that the boots have arrived at their repair center, and the process can take four to six weeks, depending. I resign myself to using my old pair for the time being, and I pray for no more deluges.

At 10:55, I get an email issuing me a store credit for the full amount. I guess they found the leaks.