Pet peeves at work...
Mood:  irritated
Topic: people who need help
So I'm at work this morning...just thinking about how frustrating people can be! Working for a financial institution you meet all sorts of people: people who have hundreds of thousands of dollars or more and know how to manage money, and others who wish they could even have a hundred dollars because they do not know how to manage money.

And interspersed in there are the people who don't bother to balance their checkbooks. I'll be the first to admit I don't sit down with my statement every month and "crunch numbers" to make sure everything balances in the traditional sense. I don't expect everyone to do that either. But they should at least do what I do: check their accounts periodically (every couple of days online if they're like me, but at the very least once a month via the statement they receive in the mail) and make sure that everything on there is legitimate.

Not to mention people who try to spend money before they have it! Like it's my fault you went out and wrote checks and they cleared before your direct deposit came in?! Wait until you get paid to spend your money jackass! If you decide to illegally float checks in the assumption your direct deposit will come in, then that's your risk and you should only kick yourself; don't take it out on the financial institution!

Last Monday I spoke with two people in particular that drove me absolutely nutty up the wall! The first guy said, (and I quote) "I think you guys need to double check your figures." I suppose that is to imply that we made a mistake. It's possible, I mean the computers most likely didn't make mistakes, but human error might have caused a mistake to occur. Nonetheless, he didn't say "I notice a mistake is made" he just simply noticed his checkbook balance didn't match what we showed and he was calling to have me just fork the money over to him I guess.

So basically he calls to say his records don't match ours. He says our balance is $34.07 less than what he shows on his checkbook (and continually hinted towards me just putting money into his account to correct the "error" made by us). I asked him when the last time he balanced his checkbook.

"Well, on Jan 2 you were only off by $1.93" he said...then after a little mumbling he mentions "but a check for $36 hadn't cleared yet." I did some calculations and informed him, "that means there was a difference of $34.07 then as well." When I asked when he balanced before that, he just mumbled a little more and changed subjects well enough that I forgot to go back. To me, that shows he doesn't balance his checkbook (often, if even at all). This also means he's been $34.07 out of balance for at least 3 weeks. He mentioned he had access to online banking (where he could check his balances/transactions online) but still couldn't find where the discrepancy was. This to me means he has been out of balance at least 3 weeks and would most likely he's been out of balance at least a month, if not two or more. Since I wasn't about to go over each transaction from the last 3 or 4 months I suggested he come into one of our branches and have someone double check his checkbook with the transactions we show on his account. Needless to say, he didn't like that and he just wanted me to "fix it" for him. Yeah right.

Then later in the day I get a woman who needs just as much, if not more, help. Long story short on this lady, she had some minor issues on her Visa I cleared up for her and then she asked me about why she received a notice of a late fee in the mail for her Visa card. I mentioned how her minimum payment hadn't been received because the bill payment we received electronically was split between her Visa and her savings account. She mentioned at that point that the bill pay should always go all to her Visa, yet I noticed that only $60 every time would go to Visa and the rest (usually between 20 and 40 dollars) went to savings. How long had this been happening? Since July of 2003! Meaning, over 18 months! Does this woman NEVER check the statements we mail to her?

That's just the beginning of the craziness we get here daily in the call center...