The wonderful world of meaningless work meets the Great Resignation
Plus: Billionaire bros in space
vol. 3 issue 43
Greetings,
Here’re a few things worth mentioning today.
ONE
Update on my attempts to cancel my CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield health plan:
It’s an interesting story of mayhem and misery at an insurance company. You can come up to speed here.
The update: Still dealing with it. After 5PM on a Friday.
After I sent the one person whose email I have at the company, the link to last week’s piece calling them out for their smells-of-consumer-fraud ways of doing business, and also mentioned in that email that I was opening an investigation with the state insurance commissioner’s office, I got a phone call.
No one is admitting guilt, mind you, but suddenly everything I said was true —turns out was true, according to what the anonymous person who investigated my case on CareFirst’s end reported. They were going to honor my cancellation request.
Great.
I let them know I appreciated it, but the case with the state continues. And anyway, I asked why did I have to “request” anything. I either want a service or I don’t. Why do I have to request from any service provider that they stop taking my money? Here’s a lesson in why you should not do automatic billing with any insurance provider. The language around such an arrangement suggests that your money is actually theirs.
Well anyway, two days later, I got a medical arrears letter saying I owed my premium for this month and that I’d better pay up or be terminated for failure to pay my premium.
For real.
I reminded my email contact that I was no longer on the policy, and eventually, got another phone call telling me to ignore the letter.
No, I said. Send me proof I can ignore the letter. I want an official letter stating everything that has happened and that you are the ones to blame. Sure, you can have that, I was told.
Still waiting for it, but it’s Friday, so, I’ll give them that sweet little grace period they hate so much at the carriers.
Meanwhile, I found a great site, written by Wendell Potter, a former insurance executive who had an attack of conscience and now exposes his former employers for how they scam us.
Also of note, I was told in a chat forum this week that it’s possible this is all just innocent bureaucratic bumbling. I. DON’T. CARE.
Perhaps American businessmen don’t actually have all the answers to all our nation’s ills, SCOTUS and Mitch McConnell notwithstanding, unless the goal is to practice shitty, expensive, fuckery on unsuspecting customers rather than investing in and carrying out best business practices that ensure that what the customer is told to expect will be done.
In that case, these guys are winning at life.
More as I have it…
TWO
The Great Resignation is coming to correct the crappy boss market
Recent Labor Department statistics show that people are quitting their jobs in record numbers. The service sector has been hit especially hard. A quote from the Washington Post about this:
The phenomenon is being driven in part by workers who are less willing to endure inconvenient hours and poor compensation, who are quitting instead to find better opportunities. According to the report, there were 10.4 million job openings in the country at the end of August — down slightly from July’s record high, which was adjusted up to 11.1 million, but still a tremendously high number. This gives workers enormous leverage as they look for a better fit.
I also can’t help but think of the people at CareFirst who have to be in the middle of situations like mine. They are service reps, too, albeit not actually having to look customers in the eye like restaurant staff or bank tellers do.
Still, they deal with people like me who are trying to get exactly what the company said to expect I could have for my money and contractual obligation, and then, don’t.
I make sure to explain to these reps every time I am on the phone with them that my battle isn’t with them, it’s with their employer who thinks it’s perfectly fine to put them in situations where they are bound to fail, and where they have to tell customers lies or half truths, making them responsible for outcomes they have no authority to effect. I have to think it makes these people feel hopeless and crappy about themselves. Why is that okay? Is that okay? I want them to think about it. I want them to go find jobs with companies where they aren’t being shamed and burdened by the people above them who obviously don’t care about their employees’ welfare, otherwise they would make the working environment better.
THREE
Captain Kirk went to space for real this time. Yawn. You can look it up, but I won’t bother to link it. All I can say is that I have a lot more to say, and have done so, about Jeff Bezos in his lucky shitkickers and cowboy hat zooming around the stratosphere. You can find there here: Billionaires and bravado: The existential threat inherent in the objectification of the moon.
I’m cranky, but I am at peace. They’re not mutually exclusive.
May you find peace, too. And be cranky if it helps.
xWhitney