Life as a Bill Collector
Rude, arrogant, abrasive, abusive, insensitive, condescending. Those are just a few of the many words used to describe me in the past year. You are probably starting to think that I must be a total jerk. That's life as a bill collector, we might be the only people despised more than telemarketers. Rarely in my career as a Bill Collector has anyone been happy to talk to me, no matter how nice I am to somebody I'm still a collector which means I'm all of the things listed above. On a daily basis I hear all sorts of excuses on why people can't pay there bills. Some of the better ones I've heard over the years are as follows "If I make my visa payment, I won't have any money for cigarettes", "I just got back from Hawaii so I won't have any money for a while" and I really did have someone say to me "My Dog ate my payment". Perhaps the best of them all was the lady who told me her husband just passed away. Just as I was about to feel sorry for her I noticed a note on here account from exactly a year earlier, it read as follows "Cardholder said husband just passed away". Still trying to be sensitive about the situation, I very politely asked her about what she told us a year earlier, she promptly hungup all but confirming my suspicion that she made the whole story up. I also get to have people cars repossessed which just adds to the excitement of the job. There's nothing as exciting as the phone call I get from an angry person who just walked outside to go to work only to discover that we have taken their car. You can probably imagine that they're not very happy and usually they use some very colorful language. Even though they haven't paid in three months and they have ignored all the letters and the daily messages from me on their answering machine, it's still my fault not theirs. So what's the point of all this? If you ever mess up and don't pay a bill, please be nice to the collector, they're just doing their job. Bill Collectors have feelings too!