Last week I received a call saying that my credit card was compromised. Within a day I received a new card. Then, I received a letter from the bank saying that I need to circle the fraudulent transactions in the statement and send it to them. Well, they forgot (intentionally?) to enclose the statement (till the cancellation date). I thought, let me download it from the Internet. I could login my (old?) account alright. And, that is it. I could not do anything while I was there. Everything was blocked!
So, I called them. I could not go through the first person I could get hold of, since, they wanted my PIN number to talk to them about my compromised account! They did not need that when I had called them about the fraud or before. I said, I forgot, but could give her all my personal history! She disconnected me. I called again. Again, they asked me for the PIN. I repeated my story. By this time, I was really upset. Hey, whoever did the fraud could do everything with my account, but, I could not even speak to these people and ask for my statement! I started yelling. It is then, she asked me to give my phone number so that she could call me (and verify that I was who I claim to be I was!). She called back and finally agreed to send me my statement, for me to circle!
This tells us that banks really have good security measures. But, only against the genuine account holders! Scammers know how to do it right! And, banks cooperate with them!!
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Now that I am unemployed, like millions in this country, for eight months now, again like millions in this country, I thought let me help someone by volunteering. I applied to the local library, local hospital, and 'networked' - in the sense, that I asked a girl in my line dancing class, who had been doing the volunteer work at that local hospital. No response till last week. Remember, I started six months ago.
Looks like, either we have more volunteers than is needed, thanks to the recession and resulting unemployment, or we need some insider contact to get into that also (just like getting a job). Last week, finally, I got an email from the hospital saying that they were glad to offer me the volunteering opportunity (remember the days, when we used to get job offers like that? Looks like it happened eons ago!). Only thing is, they wanted a commitment for one year. Now, in those days, when they made job offers, did they ask us to make a commitment? I don't think so, if my memory serves me right! Don't know. I don't have to use my memory or my internal CPU much these days. So, it might have become obsolete!
So, I replied, email-haste (internet equivalent of post-haste) saying that I was really happy, but I could commit for the weekdays as long as my unemployment days last (looks like I am still an optimist here to imagine that I would have a job within twelve months from now!), and if I got a local job, I'd continue during the weekends. I never got any response!
I am wondering, who really can give one year commitment for the weekday volunteer work. There are three categories of people doing the volunteer work these days: 1) Unemployed not seeking jobs/retired/students, 2) unemployed seeking jobs, 3) employed. Not sure how anyone in these categories commit for an uninterrupted one year? First category people can fall sick, or their children or their grand children may fall sick and break the contract. Then, there are other family/personal obligations. Students cannot say how their next semester class schedules are like. In the second category, will people say to the potential job offerers (if there is any), "can you hold this job till I finish this commitment of my volunteer work?" And, naturally, the third category people cannot afford such commitments, unless they do the vanishing trick from their flexible employers (I have seen people do such tricks in my last job and they are still employed). Lastly, people may get calls from 'the above' asking them to leave this world. Would they tell the caller-from-above to hold on until they finish their volunteering-commitment?
Well, I would like to know the answers...
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After a couple of days, sinceI received the above email, I got a call from the above hospital regarding some charity donation for the 'wheel-chair-something' event. She said, quite cheerfully, that she was not asking for any donation. Rather, she would send trash bags and I pay for that. I said, I was unemployed and was quite satisfied with my Go-Green efforts of recycling the plastic grocery bags. I also added, that if my situation was like last year, I would have contributed.
She replied, helpfully, " I understand. So, would you rather give donation then?"
Now, my question is which part of my conversation did go blank? If due to my unemployment I could not afford to buy trash bags, how could I afford to give donation?
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Please help me read this sign:
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