I placed an order for some clothes on the Walmart app. When I got an email saying they were delivered, I looked around, but I couldn’t see them anywhere. I called my Nana, who lives in the same apartment building, and she said she spoke to the delivery guy. He kept saying “Second floor?” And my Nana kept telling him “No, third floor.” So I called customer service and spoke to a guy with a strong Indian accent over loud static and music. He said he would send me replacements. An hour later, a lady came by with my packages, saying they had been delivered to her house across the street!

Today I noticed that I was overdrawn due to a Walmart charge and called them back. The lady was rude and impatient and short with me, and told me that I’d been charged only once (no I wasn’t, I was charged twice), saying that Walmart only charges after the items have been delivered. I lost my patience at this point and sarcastically said “It’s nice to know that Walmart takes SUCH good care of its customers. Goodbye!” And then I hung up on her. I’m normally not that rude on the phone, but I have been known to lose my temper from time to time. I am never shopping on the Walmart app again!

While socially isolating I’ve been thinking about interesting stories for NAR. Here’s a first world vignette.

I worked for a company that offered both a defined benefit pension with a lump sum option and a 401K with a good matching program. When I was ready to retire, I thought I understood all the financial implications until I received a letter from HR informing me of the “Social Security Offset.”

This was a policy that let the company decrease a pension based on its contributions to an individual’s Social Security benefits; the more they paid, the more they take back. The issue was that they didn’t use their exact payments but instead relied on the employee’s last three years pay and extrapolated backwards. I had the option of using their figures or submitting my actual SSA payments over my career.

For most of my career I was earning below the SSA cutoff amount while for the final five+ years I made well over it. The company’s formula would cause them to overestimate their payments which meant that they would claw back too large an amount.

This was described in complicated legalese so I called our outsourced HR hotline to be sure I understood it and was transferred to an “expert.” After confirming my understanding about the formula and my options, I asked “So the executive summary is that the more the company paid SSA, the more I lose in my pension, correct?” Her answer floored me: “I can’t tell you that.”

I couldn’t believe what she was saying so asked again and got the same answer. When I pointed out that I was not asking what I personally should do but a general question I still got the same non-answer. I hung up, angry to incoherence, and filed a written complaint against her. I got an apologetic call back the next business day confirming what I had thought, that sending my actual earnings increased my pension. I sent my SSA records in that day.

This was right after the 2008 financial crash and interest rates were very low, meaning the lump sum needed to fund my pension was close to seven figures; opting for it was a no brainer. I also spent some time with the numbers and calculated the approximate amount I’d receive.

The money showed up in my account about two months after I left. It was less that I’d estimated by enough that I questioned it. It turned out that, despite my wishes, they had used the extrapolation formula instead of my actual payments. Eventually they added another $15000+ to the account.

So much for outsourcing financial functions.

Addendum: A company acquaintance who was senior to me with more service time had resigned a few years before me, just before interest rates dropped. His lump sum was about 25% of mine. Due to the size of the lump sums that I and my contemporary retirees were getting, the company drastically revised the way they calculated the single payments shortly thereafter. Welcome to the plutocracy….

My siblings and I are like bookends; My eldest brother and youngest sister have really dark, thick, curly hair and dark eyes like our dad, and the rest of us have light brown, wavy hair and blue eyes like our mom. It was mostly a running gag but eventually, while I was still in high school, our family split up. Family drama aside, it was collectively determined my youngest sister, I’ll call her Leia, would move out with my mom and the rest of us would stay behind with my dad, as Leia needed Mom more than the rest of us and they didn’t want to disrupt school too much for the older kids.

Mom and Leia ended up in a small town in rural North Dakota, where most of the population was Scandinavian. Basically light hair and light eyes, so my mom could pass as a local, but my little sister definitely could not. Leia embraced the oddity and soon became a local legend for being weird and, well, herself. When she was finally old enough, she got a job at the local cafe and her sparkling sunshine self managed to accumulate a number of regulars, including me when I moved out there for health reasons.

Every year, the town would celebrate its founding with [Town] Days, which included a parade, games, and prizes. During my first [Town] Days there, I stepped into the cafe while my sister was working and she was excitedly chatting with a small family all wearing matching shirts. She immediately pulled me over and introduced me.

Turns out, their littlest girl had the same name as the town, and it happened to be her birthday to boot. The family shirts were all “[Town’s] Mom”, “[Town’s] Dad”, “I’m [Town]”, etc. They happened to find out about our little town during a local history project for her school and decided to check us out and celebrate their little girl’s birthday. I was already shocked at the sheer number of coincidences but then Leia explained the best part.

The little girl’s mom and dad would tell her bedtime stories about a warrior princess named Leia, who had dark, curly hair, and dark eyes. During their first visit the year before, they had stopped by the cafe and the little girl squealed with joy when Leia introduced herself. Since then, they made it a point to stop by the cafe each time they were in town.

Leia has since moved on to get a double major and start her own company, and I have a little girl of my own. Wherever that family is now, I hope they’ve found good fortune, and managed to spread smiles as Leia continues to do in my family’s life.

When I was 16, I graduated from school and went on to study at a new sixth form. I met a sweet boy there and we began to date. One time, we spent the entire day studying and so skipped lunch. We ended up leaving the sixth form in the evening and walked through the park that leads to the main high street, eager to get something to eat. When suddenly he fell, face first, straight into the concrete path. It all happened so abruptly. One second he was fine and the next he was lying there motionless. I froze, unable to move. Then a kind couple saw us and came over to help. They called an ambulance and even offered to give him a nutrition bar they had since we hadn’t eaten all day and it seemed like he had fainted because of low blood sugar. They stayed with us until the ambulance got there and even made sure I was okay. When the ambulance arrived, they loaded him in and I was about to join, when I realised I hadn’t thanked those amazing people. I turned, only to find that they had quietly slipped away. I am so grateful to them for rescuing my 16-year-old scared self and potentially saving my boyfriend-turned best friend. It’s 7 years later, but I still remember this moment often and am reassured that there really are good people in the world.

I live in Michigan and my family lives in California. This unfortunately means I miss most of my family’s celebrations. I still like to send gifts for birthdays though, so on my nephew’s third birthday, I send him a remote-controlled dump truck. My sister records a video on her phone of her having him thank me for the gift.

Nephew: “Thank you, Uncle [My Name].

Sister: “For what?”

Nephew: “For what?”

Sister: “No, you say… what are you thanking him for?”

Nephew: “A dump truck!”

Sister: “Yes, the dump truck! He really likes it.”

Nephew: “Thank you for the dump truck, Uncle [My name].”