Open Letter to Amex: What more can I say?

Dear American Express (and other Bill Collectors Worldwide),

So I just got off the phone with you, and after 25 minutes of back and forth, I have one thing to ask: What more can I say to make you understand?

You know, there is something about hitting the rock bottom of powerlessness, a place where you are under no illusions about the fact that you have not the slightest, merest shred of control, that things are completely out of your hands, that you are not capable of complying with a request, no matter how reasonable, not able to make good on a debt that you owe, period. A place where shame and fear give way to boldness and baldness, like digging straight down into the earth, through the darkeness of shame, into the hot, burning, purifying core, and emerging on the other side of the world naked and uncovered, no hiding truth. That's who I am right now. That's where I am right now.

Now, as a corporation and not an individual, I know that I will not be heard. But when you hire people to call me, over and over, trained to coax/warn/threaten me into paying, you offer me a human interface to communicate with the company. Frequently, cyclically, I am telling my story to a new voice over the phone, each one completely unfamiliar with my case but for the brief preparation summary screen that their automated call center ticket system software gives (Oh, I know all about how a call center works, having worked one myself). Over and over, I confront the powerlessness not only of myself, but of the caller. Each and every one tells me that they lack the power to negotiate with me, to work with me. How dare you send them to me so un-empowered, so ill-equipped, so desensitized to humanness? What's the point? I can't be browbeaten into paying you if there is no money, and none on the way. I can't make something from nothing, and if I could force someone to hire me, we wouldn't be talking on the phone. You force me to shame myself over and over with no result, morphing my measured explanations into begging. It's impossible to forgive, and there's no place to direct my anger but an open letter that I'm sure you're not even reading.

I'd love to work together to preserve my good name. You've no right to trash it under these circumstances! Reporting to the credit agencies, selling debt to collections, and suing me are all tantamount to harassment and torture when I am completely incapable of settling even the portion of the debt you originally asked for, let alone the exhorbitant king's ransom produced by the total amount due + fees and penalties. Why single me out among the many that are suffering in today's economic crisis? As a customer in good standing for all those years, why throw away a wonderful, once healthy relationship for circumstances out of my control? Why not negotiate? Take my small, good faith offerings, and give me a responsive interface encouraging me to continue chipping away at the debt until it is all paid. That is what I'm asking for. We both want the same thing, and only you have the power to make it happen for both of us. Help me help you help me! I know with the credit crunch and the wall street instability you're probably just passing the buck, but could you at least have passed it to someone with hands? You're beating a dead horse with me. I have basic math and several physical laws, including the law of conservation of matter, on my side. I can't make 350$/mth total earnings = 450$/mth payment to Amex. If you find a way to make it work, let me know though. Until then, don't call me, I'll call you. What more can I say?

Post Theme: The Recession (Intro) by Young Jeezy

I Feel Trapped

After my telephone interview today, I'm feeling trapped. Now before I get into this, I do realize that I may be overreacting and that next week I may feel foolish about writing this, but I gotta be me.

It's not that I didn't do well. In fact, I think that I did very well, certainly well enough to be called in for a face to face interview. Fact is, after finding out more about the job, my suspicions are confirmed. It's a sales job going back into an industry that I don't care for and that I gratefully escaped when Hurricane Katrina gave me the opportunity. The prospect of being forced to take it by my financial circumstance and sheer pragmatism (I mean it's not like I'm getting offers or even calls from anywhere else) fills me with impotence and frustration. My hands feel tied, and the irony of my situation does not escape me. After determining to revamp my resume, my angle, and my career direction in an effort to avoid being unfulfilled, I stumble onto a job just like the ones I couldn't get last fall when I was actually trying!! What does it all mean? What am I supposed to do?

The feeling of being herded in down a chute, like a doomed heifer at a meat packing plant, is achingly familiar. A feeling of doom is rising within me like the tide, and I didn't realize that I was cycling back around. You see, each time I've started over it's been like this. Forced to take a position that I didn't actively decide to take. It's like this: if I had come to the conclusion that this was my best option, then no regrets, but if I fall into this by default, then all my struggling has been for naught, because it has been a struggle for control, for power, for the chance to choose my adventure like one of those damn comic books in middle school. I didn't realize then that the ability to choose would be stripped from me at a later point in life, or I would have read those books more. Whatever happens now is a choice that I must stay committed to; to change positions in any less than three years would be career suicide, and to leave the industry a second time would consign me to being labeled "unfocused", and you can't trust an unfocused person in management. "Unfocused" people don't get promoted. So whatever my new direction, it is a weighty decision of some permanence.

As I stated before, however, these are reflections of my thoughts at this point in time. In another week, the present snow globe may have been jostled by the Divine Hand, and I will be looking at a completely different landscape. That is to say that I have concluded (wisely, if I do say so myself) to put this away, to wait and see, to stand and believe. Every step I take is ordered, and each action takes me closer. Selah.

Post Theme: Closer by Goapele

The Money Pit

Tonight, I am listening to bluesy jazz (Charlie Parker, All The Things You Are), and listening to rain pound the window. I am writing from the money pit. It sucks down here. There's no funny Tom Hanks to make me laugh by falling down the stairs.

I have come face to face with my own dire and desperate straits. Each day that passes I am cognizant of the bills due, the bills on the way, and the lack of money in my pocket. It's either invent something brilliant in the next twenty seconds, win the lottery, or get a menial job and tread water until the first paycheck. Even as I submit my resume for six figure jobs, I'll be scrubbing floors somewhere soon. I can't believe it's come to this. The only thing worse that not having a job is having one like the one staring me in the face.

Oh well. Better hit the streets tomorrow, trolling for open positions. Thing is, down here in the land that time forgot, the open positions are the equivalent of sharecropper gigs. Needless to say I am highly resistant to letting my life turn into a remake of O Brother Where Art Thou?.

I am Dust

Check out my man Van Hunt singing today's anthem, I am Dust.



I had a mock interview today, and am ready to begin my spam campaign on all the Fortune 500 companies with marketing job openings... but I know the one I really want. Send up some prayers for me!

Sick and Tired of being Sick and Tired

Feeling crappy -- my nose is swollen and full of that nasty stuff. As I am one of the nation's millions of working poor -- no wait -- make that unemployed poor, I cannot afford to pay for health care, and I don't have overpriced insurance. I hate this! Every time I have the least sniffle I can't see a doctor right off, I have to try and manage. It's only when it gets to the point that I either get some antibiotics or go into a Victorian decline that I go to the free clinic, mostly because I feel bad to use those services when I am so eminently employable and others really need then, but also because I am ashamed to show my face in there all the time. Universal health care. Really, am I the only one that can see the perfect sense this makes?

We need a revolution in this country. I can see myself, a Che-like figure. Out of my mouth pokes a thermometer, and my eye is patched. I scream around a mouthful of medical grade glass: Give us free care! Thousands rally around my cries.

Who's the bad guy in this? Money is. Our system is a capitalist market and health care is the valuable property. Only one problem: health is a right, not a good or service to be exchanged. All of the rest of the civilized world sees this and operates accordingly. Why can't we?

Enough of this, or I really will buy a beret!

Back to Blog

I have decided that this is going to be a general blog from now on to record, for posterity, what will the GREATEST YEAR EVER (or at least the best one in a long time).

Here I am, writing from the proverbial pit:

1) Unemployed since September (read: no paychecks, spent savings, etc)
2) Living with parents in coastal MS
3) Victim of Identity Theft
4) Overweight
5) Pathologically single, apallingly chaste, chillingly inexperienced

But I know all of that is going to change. In fact, it already has changed where it counts: on the inside. There's a person inside this body just BURSTING to be let free. This person is an achiever, a conqueror, a warrior. This person gets exactly what she wants. And she is familiar and has been missed. I am happy to reconnect with her, and will welcome her with open arms when she does break free. Woman, thou are loosed!

Wild Goose Chase!

I've been on this wild goose chase all day like a damn buffoon! I'm so pissed I could spit. Bottom line, after driving around like a moron for an hour and a half to find the unemployment office, it turns out to be right around the corner. Literally!

How could someone with a documented excellent sense of direction and a reputation to uphold let something so plebeian as the location of a government office beat her, you ask? It would be hard to do, but google maps gave me completely and totally wrong directions. It basically might as well have sent me through the stargate to a parallel dimension, because there is no way in hell those directions were correct. They took me out of town, goddammit!

So I get to the office, sign in, and prepare to wait and to be patronized. Nope, not me. As a big dunce cap finale, the receptionist informs me that filing for benefits is now done by phone. She gives me a card with a phone number and goes back to typing and answering the phone. Class dismissed!

So basically life is giving me a swift kick in the pants, and I don't know what for. That which does not kill us makes us stronger, right?