The metaphor:
A friend of mine texted from the grocery store on election day. “The older woman who rang me up at Safeway just now asked me if I voted, kind of sheepishly, while I was packing up my groceries. I said I did! Did you? And she said yes! And then I gave her a high five…and started crying.”
One moment, she was ready for the world, doing her errands, getting things done. The next, she’d made a connection with a stranger that had broken down an inner barrier, letting her election anxiety flood in.
I have thought about cognitive dissonance so many times in this election cycle, about all we’re holding back from each other — and ourselves. Like this article about people who know how they’re likely to vote, but call themselves undecided because they haven’t reconciled themselves to it. It’s striking how completely we can fool ourselves, like Wile E. Coyote’s belief he’s on solid ground that keeps him floating in thin air. In both my friend’s story and mine below, kindness from a stranger is the thing that finally makes us face reality and fall.
The story:
My dad’s mom is a half-German stickler who’s only at ease when her hands are active. Chopping crudité for cocktail hour, when my grandpa would drink his Dewar’s. Washing dishes in water so hot, it hurt my hands to dry them. Working through a booklet of word searches while watching movies with suave antiheroes, Casablanca and The Fugitive, The Sting and The Great Train Robbery.
Gram is 96 now, my last living grandparent, and only just slowing down. It’s not graceful like that phrase though, “slowing down” – not a linear process, but a series of stumbles. After a lifetime of stoically showing up on the sidelines at my dad and uncle’s high school sports, then my sister’s and mine, she steps gingerly now, breathing hard after just a few steps. She’s been diagnosed with dementia, repeats herself and mixes up the days. “Don’t get old, Gwen,” she says fervently, struggling to handle the day-to-day details that have been her domain.
Last month, my dad asked me for help tracking down the unexplained charges on Gram’s credit card. “I can’t get ahead of it,” he told me. “These companies call her house and ask for her credit card number, and she gives it to them. I talk with her about not giving it out, I tape up reminders on the wall by the phone, but I keep finding new charges and she can’t remember how they got there.” My grandma still lives in my dad’s childhood house, 70 years and counting. Her phone hangs in the kitchen, next to a cabinet where my grandma tapes up Sunday comics and her signed DNR.
“I just got her set up on a new credit card, and already, they’re back,” he continues. “I’m going through her statements with her, doing her bills - I have to admit, I just don’t have the patience to track them all down.” His words light up all my strongest drives: to protect my family, to solve a puzzle, to get the right answer. I tell him I’ll handle it.
The next morning, I get up early, take a long run, and open my laptop with flames at my fingertips, ready to call them, cancel them, and try to get money back.
They’re home warranty scams, it turns out. The charges are from EFS and MEPCO, "payment processing centers" charging people for insurance policies sold by a suite of other entities. I call both companies ready for a fight, but the customer service agents hand over the details with sickening ease. It’s clear that customers often call to cancel these plans, which they booked out of fear, responding to calls or letters about home warranties expired or expiring, without pausing to check what would be covered and how to file claims. Once they realize they’re paying hundreds of dollars monthly for a plan that won’t reimburse for repairs, they call the payment processor and are directed into a shell game of companies. Most of them fail to cancel because it takes multiple calls and lots of time. Time that I intend to spend.
Gram has four active home warranties. Between these and the six policies they tell me she’s started and cancelled in the past, seven different companies have sold home warranty policies to my 96-year-old grandma through scam calls or letters. To cancel the active ones, the payment processors tell me, I have to call the three agencies that sold the active plans. When I call the first two, the customer service agents assure me I’ll receive a confirmation of cancellation by email the next day. I can see from reviews at the Better Business Bureau that often, the billing continues after they say this, with the separate selling agents and billing centers giving each other plausible deniability from their joint predatory system. I make a note to advise my dad to cancel Gram’s credit card for the umpteenth time to stop the billing, at least until they call her house again.
I’m angry, of course, I’m downright disgusted that this is all legal, that people profit from scams, but I’m also building a sense of momentum as I’m solving the puzzle, fulfilling my task. I’m studiously polite to each service call worker, I’ve compartmentalized to get what I want, writing down account numbers and completing each cancellation process. I’m in a groove, checking off steps: I’m playing the system, they’re not going to get me.
Then, at the third agency, the agent who answers breaks from the script. After we’ve canceled the open accounts, I try to prevent future calls. “Carol is my grandma,” I explain. “She’s 96 and has a dementia diagnosis. Please put her on the Do Not Call list for all of your agents and reimburse her in full.” The previous two agents gave rote replies, agreeing that her number would be flagged and that the request to reimburse would be reviewed. I didn’t trust that they’d do either, but it was worth a try, and the lack of pushback emboldened me to continue.
This third agent is different. “I have an aging grandma, too,” she says. “I’m so sorry this happened. It’s not right.”
This unexpected kindness stills my adrenaline, and without it, I can suddenly feel what’s under my anger. Like Wile E. Coyote, this is the moment when I look down and realize I’m long off the cliff: at this unexpected compassion, I am suddenly tumbling, breath catching, tears welling, voice trembling. “Thank you,” I say slowly, try and stave off the sobs I didn’t know I’d suppressed. Suddenly, I’m anguished: not just for my grandma, but for the hundreds of humans behind those reviews, losing hundreds of dollars each month to these scams. “Help!” One reads. “The bills just keep coming, charging me money I don’t even have!”
Customer service centers often have multiple contracts, with agents pulling up scripts to follow depending on the calls routed to them. They’re just people too, playing their part and reading along, not company representatives and certainly not scam architects. But they usually stick to the lines they’re paid to say.
This one tells me her name is Larissa. “Listen,” she says in a steady tone, “I’m so sorry. I really want to do the refund, but the system won't let me.” She continues, human to human: advising me how to ask the bank for a charge-back, citing Gram’s past canceled policies to prove she’s been sold a service that she doesn’t want. It feels way worse to let the pain of Gram’s victimhood yawn open, swallowing the high of my administrative victories, but it also feels real.
There’s no way to pretend I’m not crying now. Soon, I will collect myself and call my dad, calmly recapping my findings for him to take to the bank. He’ll be relieved, and he’ll even say impressed, at the data I gathered. At the bank that afternoon, he’ll decide not to replace the card he cancels for my grandma. He’ll give her cash instead, a reverse allowance, a son doling out his mother’s own money to her, in hopes that this keeps the charges from coming back. But for now, my voice squeaks as I thank Larissa, overcome by the feelings that are no longer held at bay. I hang up the phone and howl into my hands.
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