Letter To Dianne

So I’m digging around in my file cabinet in the garage and I come across the following letter that I’d written over three years ago.

Again, for those readers that need to be brought up to speed, I spend a tremendous amount of time making sure people get their money. Sometimes, that conversation can be challenging and sometimes it’s hard not to take it personally-particularly if you’re really working hard at getting these people their money and you have to deal with company nonsense while the customer is screaming at you.

I deal primarily with members of my organization now, but it wasn’t too long ago that I was dealing directly with the customers. During that role, I initially dealt with affluent customers, and then I switched to the complete opposite: people that could barely formulate sentences and would ask me for loans of ridiculous amounts, like $50.

Below is a woman named Dianne that I spoke with in September of 2008. I can’t remember the exact nature of Dianne’s call, other than she was elderly, lived in Glendale, AZ, and that I needed to get her husband’s permission to allow me to speak to her about his account with us.

Dianne didn’t like that.

She relented and I got the authorization from her husband, an extremely polite man, given whom he was married.

After providing her with the information, Dianne neglected to hand up the phone properly, so I took the liberty of listening in on her and her husband’s existence. Dianne was apparently doing the household bookkeeping that day, paying bills and balancing the checkbook, and she was doing this while completely drunk.

I noticed it during my conversation with her. She was slurring her words a bit and getting irate at the most simple of logic. Like the fact that I needed to get her husband’s authorization because she was not the owner of the account.

With our business complete, she went back to her bookkeeping, and she was barely into the task, her husband returned to ask where something was.

That’s when the fireworks started.

Through the phone I could hear Dianne completely rip into her husband for breaking her concentration. She evidently was doing the old fashion check ledger vs. calculator thing, because his question caused her to lose her place in her calculations and she proceeded to belittle him for the next five minutes.

Occasionally, I would hear him respond, but it did him no good.

His pleading was only met with more drunken shenanigans, layered with enough angry vitriol that he never could make it to the end of his sentences.

And the best part? All of this was before noon in my Central Time Zone. This meant that they hadn’t even reached 10:00am in Glendale, Arizona.

For these customers that bring a bit of extreme negativity to my world, I will sometimes reward them with a letter. My letters come from a variety of sources, but all are created to confuse, anger, or cause some kind of emotional rebuttal that will hopefully impact their day with the same amount of negative energy that they have inflicted on me.

Thankfully, for the benefit of you readers, one of these letters survived and never got delivered.

I present to you my letter to Dianne.

P.S.: All of the swearing you see below is nothing compared to the sailor mouth profanity that I heard coming from her mouth as she yelled at her husband. In closing, she lamented that she would now have to make a special trip to the bank to get her “shit squared away” because her husband’s interruption made it impossible to continue with balancing the checkbook.

P.S.S.: I’m proud that I included “2541 Hennepin Avenue, Minneapolis, MN” as the return address. Wonder if she was a Husker fan.

September 10, 2008

Dianne T.
63XX W. WXXXXX Road
Glendale, AZ 85304

Dianne:

Are you tired of having to go t the bank to get your shit squared away?

Me too.

My husband was always bugging me when I tried to balance the checkbook, causing me endless recalculations and numerous errors. I could barely figure out the fucking thing on my own, and I sure as hell couldn’t figure out the goddamn thing with my cocksucker of a husband asking me “Honey, where are all the batteries?”

How the fuck should I know where the batteries are?! Find them yourself, Richard!

Anyway, I recently changed banks and I wanted to let you know about some of the exciting services that Bank of America are now offering that I think you’d find as beneficial.

Bank of America has recently introduced an easy to use online banking service that provides a running balance of all of my accounts so that I never have to use a goddamn calculator ever again.

Now if they could only help my piece of shit husband find those batteries!

I would encourage you to call Bank of America to have them begin the easy process of transferring funds from your existing institution over to them.

Once the accounts are closed, Bank of America will begin to get your shit squared away.

Sincerely,

Betty Cosgrove
Wife of that cocksucker Richard