Having a really rotten Friday...

...and YOU people, not reading my blog, not leaving any comments, not sending me ANY DAMN EMAIL, aren't helping. NOT ONE LITTLE BIT.

Okay, having gotten that out of my system, here's why today has sucked, other than the rest of the world's complete and unacceptable failure to provide me with any positive attention to offset the negative attention I've been getting all day from pissed off participants --

Many of the people who have flexible spending accounts that my employer administers have a benny card attached to their account. People love benny cards, they think benny cards are just the cat's ass, because instead of going through the long, tedious procedure of filling out a claim form and attaching all their supporting documentation and sending it in and maybe getting it denied two or three times and having to jump through a lot of hoops to get reimbursed, they can just swipe the card like a debit or a charge card when they pay for their health care expenses, and that's MUCH easier.

But, what these people do not know is that there is a department somewhere that looks over all the charges they put on this card, and if they see something they don't understand, they send out what we call an adjudication letter, which basically says "we don't know what this charge is, please submit your explanation of benefits or your itemized receipt to validate this expense, otherwise it will be assessed as an overpayment to your account".

People rarely understand what this means, but they know it sounds bad, so they call me. And many of them are pissed, because, you know, they got the benny card (benefit card, sorry) because it was much much more convenient and they didn't have to do any paperwork and now they have to do paperwork? Well, fuck that noise!

The ones who are the maddest, of course, are the ones who, because they have the card, didn't bother to save their receipts, and now they are being asked for receipts, and they are like "Oh shit". So, naturally, they are taking this out on me.

Today, around three o'clock, I got a call from just about the meanest bitch in the universe, and she was just not going to let go. She was mad as hell. We were accusing her of fraud. She only got the card because it made it easier and now we wanted receipts? Plus she sent us her receipts, and it wasn't her fault they weren't legible! What was she supposed to do? This was way too much trouble and she wanted something done about it, now she had this huge headache at the end of the year and she wanted to know what I was going to do about it!

When I'd finally gotten her calmed down enough that she was willing to hang up in disgust, after she'd refused to take the customer service survey we offer at the end of every call, I wished her, in a monotone, a Happy Holidays... and THAT pissed her off. Then she WANTED to take the damn customer service survey, just so she could complain about how rude and sarcastic I had just been.

So I hung up on her, because, honestly, it was hang up on her or just go totally off on her, and the latter would have certainly gotten me fired.

So, then, 6 pm rolls around, it's fifteen minutes from my break, we've been slammed with calls non stop since 5 pm, which is when the day shift that works here goes home, but the day shift of desperate lunatic people who just have to call my employer hasn't punched out yet, which means that the same number of people who have been calling us steadily all day are still calling, but suddenly we only have half as many people working here taking the calls.

And I get this lunatic woman again.

And she goes into her tirade all over again, and now she wants to talk to whoever it is that looks over the charges on the accounts, and she wants a supervisor, and we have no supervisors because they were all smart enough to get the hell out of here at 5 or 5:30, and keeps me on the phone for twenty minutes of nonstop bitching.

And then she hangs up on me without warning, so I don't get a chance to hit the BREAK button, and BING, I'm right into another call.

And this guy? THIS guy says "I got this letter today, saying I need to send in some paperwork for some charges on my card, and I don't understand this..."

Hit MUTE button.

SHRIEK like a lunch whistle in hell.

Beat head on desk four times THUNK thud THUNK thud.

Repeat several times.

So I finally went on my 6:15 break about, I don't know, 6:45.

And that's just a sample. The whole day has been, more or less, just like that, just with different types of calls.

And YOU PEOPLE OUT THERE AREN'T HELPING.

Especially those of you who in addition to not reading my blog, sending me email, or posting comments, are CALLING ME UP AND ASKING ME STUPID QUESTIONS ABOUT YOUR GODDAM FLEXIBLE SPENDING ACCOUNTS.

Post script to SuperGirlfriend -- none of this is to YOUR address, you've been the only good thing in my life today. So you never mind this.

But the rest of you are on notice: Send me email, post comments on this blog, and stop calling my job about your fucking FSAs.

I mean it.

Don't make me come over there.