Month: May 2014

There are smart people out there who always place their personal interests ahead of everything else.  I wish I could be like that, but I'm not.  In my life, other people and things end up claiming higher priorities than Me.  I'm one of those schmucks who get overwhelmed by the sense of Responsibility, as in guilt (familial) and duty (professional), and push their private matters aside.  I know, I know – at the end of the day by abating those feelings I essentially attend to my personal needs anyway, but that's a psycho-philosophical issue we can contemplate.  In real time it feels as if I do everything for others and neglect myself. 

That's why it takes me six months to get my ass to a dentist.  And that's why I let a bunch of out-of-pocket medical expenses to accumulate before I'm pushed to the wall by the deadline to file for reimbursement from the Flexible Spending Account (FSA, aka use-it-or-loose-it pre-tax medical expense program).  It's not just me either – two of my employees completely missed the cut-off dates for filing their claims, thus losing the portion of the wages they have been contributing to the FSA.  Maybe my attitude robbed off on them.  And that's too bad, because no job deserves such loyalty unless you work for yourself or someone dear to you.

But, as Bill Cosby would say after a 30-minute introduction, this is not what I was going to talk about.  This should explain, however, why when I was filing my FSA claims online a couple of weeks ago I had to upload quite a few receipts (required as supporting evidence) covering pharmaceutical, medical, and dental co-payments.  

Here is what happened.  I entered all claims, uploaded scanned receipts, pressed the "Submit" button… and the system hanged.  You know, one of those dead freezes when nothing moves no matter what you do.  Okay!  Not a big deal for someone who's been dealing with computers and the Internet, like, forever.  Close the browser, open the browser, go back on the website, log in, retrieve the claims (thankfully saved), upload…  Same shit! 

Well, as you can imagine, entering all information item by item, scanning individual receipts, etc.  took a "minute" already, so I wanted to resolve this bullshit ASAP.  I located the tech support number and dialed it, cursing under my breath the Flex provider for not offering a dedicated debit card option instead of this cumbersome claim filing. 

In the receiver a Steve answers.  Like I said, I'm an experienced Internet user, so I go straight to the core issue, "Is there a limit on the number of documents a user can attach to a claim?  Or maybe on the total size of attachments?"  Tech support is not customer service and it's reasonable to expect that they will catch on your short-cut approach.  Uh-uh!  Not Steve!  He asks, "What is the problem?" and I'm forced to explain the whole thing anyway.

He listens and says, "I've never heard about a size limit." (Note to all, only 1 out of 10 service people fully understands the system he supports.) "But I know what the problem is - you are having an Unknown 500."

Wait a minute, wait a minute: he knows that I'm having an unknown something?  That sounds strange, doesn't it?  But I keep my cool – I understand it's a system error: "What kind of error is it?"  In return he asks (you cannot get a straight answer out of this guy no matter what!), "Do any of the files you are uploading have a '+' or a '-' in their names?"  "No," I say, "they don't.  I know that that's not allowed.  In fact, one of the scans originally had dashes in the name, but I deliberately renamed it before the uploading."  That was foolish of me to volunteer all that information.  Because now he goes, "That doesn't matter, the system still knows that the dash was there."

Really, dude?  I ask, "Are you telling me that this FSA processing site is capable of recognizing in MY computer that a file USED TO have dashes in its name?"  He confirms, "Yes, that's correct."  "Not the size of all the attachments, but the expunged name?  Are you sure?"  He confirms again.  Okay, humor me: "So, how can I remedy this?"  "Log out, shut down your computer, reboot, and then you should be able to upload your receipts," he advises.                     

Bill Cosby is definitely on my mind today, because it was him who said "as ridiculous as some things may sound, there come desperate times when you are ready to try anything."  My rational mind did not believe for a single second that it would work, but it was a proposition of a quick fix and time is of the essence.  So, after I'd hung up, I followed his suggestion.

Of course, it didn't work!  What did you think?  The guy pulled that tech recommendation out of his ass!  Didn't even offer to stay on the line with me to see if it was going to work!  Who does that?  I'll tell you who: unqualified, unprofessional, poorly trained, half-asleep, semi-retarded bitches that pervade our lives.

The right thing to do at this point would be to delete the original claims and file them in two batches instead of one.  Then call the tech support, find a supervisor (I noted Steve's full name)…   But my time is more important, so instead I downloaded the entered info into a claim form, put it together with the receipts, and did what we used to do "back in the day": faxed everything over.  You don't get a time-stamped system receipt that way, but it worked – I've got reimbursed in three days.

Meanwhile, the stupidity went unpunished.  Oh, well, we let go of things like that on daily basis.  What appalls me the most, though, is the audacity of this people!  You are called "Support," for crying out loud!  Someone in need calls you, you feed them some bullshit, hang up, and go on with your life?  And you get paid for it?  How do these people leave with themselves?  How do they go to sleep at night?  I have no clue.  I know I never worked like that. I simply couldn't.  But I bet it's much easier to be Steve.  I'm sure he never pushes his personal interests aside.