Shortly after my exit from college, I lost my position at an agency that provided assistance with children with autism. I loved this job, but by this time I was living on my own and student loans payments on the horizon. I was also without a vehicle, as I had recently been in a car accident and totaled my Bonneville. For a time, I tried to find nannying positions. I was nearly offered one working with a profoundly disabled child, but in the end lost my chance because the child’s mother thought I would hurt myself trying to carry her. With few other places to look, I started applying for an old and stable industry that always seems to have a high demand for warm bodies. (No, it wasn’t prostitution.) I soon landed a position in collections with one of the major US financial giants.
First I worked in outbound collections in early-stage delinquencies, then I was moved to the inbound department. I tended to like inbound better, as I grew sick of being on a dialer and HATED calling business numbers. This department is also where I met my best friend, Jenni. It didn’t take me long to figure out in my new Inbound position that we often would have repeat callers. Seriously, some were so repeat that we came to recognize their voices. With one such customer, my friend Jenni didn’t go through the complete verification process before addressng the customer (since they had spoken a thousand times before) and got low marks on a call she had been monitored on. Soon, I had my own customer like this who claimed to have a very unique living situation. Due to his voice and supposed lifestyle, our Inbound department soon dubbed this man Igor.
Igor was a man who lived in Alabama at the time. He spoke in deep, husky, hushed tones with a tiny drawl. Jenni thought his voice was a dead ringer for Frankenstein’s servant, so he got this name and it stuck, even traveling to our sister call center in Vancouver, Washington. He was almost always whispering or mumbling in a typical Southern fashion. Many calls were similar. Almost on a daily basis, he would call to be updated on his account status. Dutifully, we would explain the level of delinquency, attempt to collect the debt, and he would respond why he was unable to pay. This, my friends is where the story got rich.
Igor claimed to be divorced from his wife. He stated they still lived together. S and her boyfriend J lived upstairs, and he lived in the basement. He advised us that he was her court-ordered slave. J would seize any money he made outside of the home at his job at a seafood restaurant called Captain D’s. Often, in the background you could disconcerting noises like dripping water and echos bouncing off of bare concerte walls. One time, a certian collector got into an in-depth discussion with Igor that was akin to a therapy session. She took detailed notes of he situation with S, J and Igor. She noted on the account such things like, “Advised our customer he needs leave. Advised he our customer he should get out of there. Asked he our customer if he had any place to go.”
It came to the point where I got Igor on the phone myself. I was always very frank with him. I am not the sharpest pencil in the case, but I was smart enough to know you cannot be court-ordered to be a slave in the United States. The more often I would get this gentleman, the more annoyed I became with his ridiculous story about being his ex-wife’s slave. On one particular call I had grown so frustrated, I asked why he called if he was not going to pay. He explained his normal reasoning, “I am just checking up on the account ma’am.”
“Sir,” I replied, “You call nearly every day. We tell you the same thing. Why do you need to call and check on the account when the status doesn’t change?”
And on and on it went. There was a time or two where one of the collectors actually talked to J, his ex-wife’s supposed boyfriend. One call featured yelling voices and another gruff voice taking the call. The collector noted that J sounded suspiciously similar to Igor. I was, of course, suspicious of Mr. Igor’s tales of court-ordered slavery and seizure of resources, but we could never quite confirm them. Jenni and I grew tired of his games. I got ahold of a team lead in our joint call center in Washington and alerted them to the account. It was prepared for a lawsuit. That was my revenge to him for being a crackpot. Sadly, my employer dropped the suit.
Eventually, I moved to Utah. Jenni kept me updated on the account, since I was still an employee of the same company, therefore still having disclosure. Igor’s account had charged-off (in finance terms, written off as bad debt). My company had sold the debt to an outside third-party to recover some of the loss. The company policy stated that when an account has been charged off, a non-recovery collector is not responsible to collect the debt. They send it to one of the recovery specialists or refer the customer to the third-party agency if the debt was sold. Still, Igor would call us, his original debtor, to get account updates. And still, collectors who no longer had to collect the debt would attempt to make him pay.
Eventually, Jenni quit working for that company. Certain traumatic circumstances had come to head in her life, and she couldn’t think of going to work without having an anxiety attack. Both of us now removed two years from the Inbound collections department, we still discuss Igor and ponder what happened to him and the account. Well, I decided it was time to find out…. and you can read my findings tomorrow!
They stayed at the store though. I am going to wait until they go on sale.
“What do you want me to color your hair?” Pixie (because I don’t remember her name) asked, sizing me up. “I see you attempted red.” I then described my vision of golden-copper locks with blonde highlights. Pixie asked what brand of coloring I used and I brandished my box of Natural Instincts Perfect10.
ladies were chatty and engaging. I also discovered another Baptist in SLC in Pixie. Here for your viewing displeasure is a photo of me while the coloring was in.
