***
“Thank you for calling the National Group Bank of Canada, my name is Trevor, how may I assist you today?
“Hello. I received my bill today and you’re charging me interest on my account. You better reverse it or else I’ll cancel my card!”
“Sir, you’re being charged interest because you didn’t pay your bill last month. It’s legitimately charged and unfortunately we cannot reverse it.”
“Look at my account history, I never miss my payments.”
“Yes, but you’ve missed it this month. Are you familiar with how credit cards work, sir? If you don’t pay in full and on time, you will be charged interest.”
“I don’t care about all that.”
“Okay well, we do. The bank is lending you money interest free and all you need to do is pay it back each month. That seems like a pretty fair deal to me.”
“I was on vacation.”
“That is hardly a compelling argument, sir. It is still the cardholder’s responsibility to make sure they pay their bill on time, right? It’s not the bank’s fault you went on vacation and forgot to pay your bill.”
“I don’t need you to lecture me on how to pay my bill! Let me speak to your manager!”
I exhaled a deep breath and transferred the call.
“You alright there, Trevor?” Tami asked.
“No, not really. This job is going to kill me.”
“You better take it easy on yourself or else you may end up like Debbie.”
“Why, what happened to Debbie?”
“She had a heart attack, didn’t you hear?”
“Another one?”
“Yeah, must have been on your day off. The paramedics had to haul her out of here on a stretcher.”
“Dang.”
“Try not to take the job so personally,” Eduardo said.
“These people are so dumb. It’s really wearing me down having to deal with them. And it’s always the same story, isn’t it?”
“You’ve been here a long time, how long has it been?”
“It will be four years in July.”
“That’s a long time.”
“Yeah, soon I won’t have to deal with it.” I decided to take another call.
“Thank you for calling National Group Bank of Canada, this is Trevor, how may I assist you today?”
“I forgot my PIN.”
“Okay, I can definitely help you with this today ma’am.”
“You know, there are too many goddamn PIN numbers to remember these days. I got about a dozen different PINs for work, emails, online banking, and debit cards. I’ve got PINs coming out the ying-yang…”
***
“Thank you for calling National Group Bank of Canada, this is Trevor, how may I assist you today?”
“Why won’t my card work?”
“Are you keying in the correct PIN number?”
“What’s my PIN number?”
“Unfortunately, I do not have access to that information, but I can tell you how to obtain another PIN.”
“Alright what do I need to do?”
The Art of the Hustle Page 41