I\u2019m very lucky. Despite what our energetic young bankers-turned-derivative-peddlers have done — are still doing, that\u2019s the amazing part — to our economy, I still have a job. <\/p>\n
I was going to say I\u2019m doubly lucky because it\u2019s a cushy job that allows me to sit inside all summer in an air-conditioned office, but that wouldn\u2019t be quite right. <\/p>\n
The reason I have that KIND of job is not entirely luck (though I do give thanks) but largely because, guided by caring parents who didn\u2019t know any better than to condemn me to the government-run youth propaganda camps, where even then the gym-class bullies were beginning to take on the same leveling duties as sergeants in the Russian army, I found the strength to turn the other cheek (as it were) to innumerable locker room indignities, to patiently bide my time and internalize my rage through years of being called \u201cteacher\u2019s pet\u201d and \u201cfaggot\u201d and worse, all as my reward for the pursuits which apparently proved I had no testosterone: working hard, learning the material, getting all \u201cAs\u201d on my report cards. <\/p>\n
(Except for Mrs. Stewart in Third Grade, who gave me one B-plus for each grading period, never in the same subject. This caused some consternation in my house, since I kept insisting I had never scored below a 94 on any paper, quiz, or exam. Finally my parents contacted Mrs. Stewart, who explained that she never gave all \u201cAs,\u201d because \u201cNo child is perfect.\u201d It was my first encounter with a leveler, the kind who are parodied in Kurt Vonnegut\u2019s famous short story \u201cHarrison Bergeron,\u201d in which ballet dancers are required to wear weights around their ankles so they won\u2019t make anyone else feel bad because they can\u2019t jump that high. It never seems to occur to the Mrs. Stewarts of this country that someday we\u2019re going to run into competitors or adversaries who are way ahead of us, and we\u2019re going to need some gifted young folks who have been encouraged to move forward as fast as possible, not held back, yoked to the dummies, because their performance threatens to mess up the grading curve. Check, some day, to see how many of the guys who worked on the Manhattan Project and gave us the atomic bomb attended U.S. public schools.) <\/p>\n
I learned the material; I scored an 800 on my SAT Verbal (I hated math, probably explaining why I only got a 752 on the math, which to this day I blame on uninspiring teachers, since both math and music run in my family); I can identify all six errors in the currently typical sentence \u201cwere likely to loose both game\u2019s of the double heder,\u201d and that\u2019s why I don\u2019t have to work outside with a shovel or up on the roof in the sun like most of the bullies I went to school with, assuming any of them have survived tertiary cirrhosis and still have jobs, at all. <\/p>\n
I have a job, and therefore I can pay my bills. It\u2019s always a struggle, mind you (I still push a weekly sum down the garbage disposal known as my \u201c401(k),\u201d whose managers remind me of the banker on the cartoon show \u201cSouth Park,\u201d taking the check out of little Kyle\u2019s hand and saying, \u201cWe\u2019ll just invest this in our money market and overseas currency exchange fund, and … it\u2019s gone\u201d \u201cWhat?\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s gone\u201d), but every month I do still sit down and pay my bills. <\/p>\n
That means some of the bills get paid about a week after they arrive, while others get paid more like three weeks after they arrive. <\/p>\n
Either way, I aim to pay any bill within 21 days after I receive it. This works out fine for just about everybody. On the rare occasions when one of my payments passes an incoming bill in the mail, the gas company or the water company simply adds the \u201cdelinquent\u201d amount to the current bill, sometimes tacking on an extra buck or two as a \u201clate charge.\u201d I happily pay any such charge as the price of retaining the freedom to pay my bills when it\u2019s convenient for me — though always within 21 days. <\/p>\n
With one exception. My local phone service is with an outfit called Nevada Telephone, sometimes known as Nevada Utilities Doing Business As Nevada Telephone, and sometimes as Excella Communications. (Some of these outfits change their names more often then people in the witness protection program. I wonder if it\u2019s for the same reason.) <\/p>\n
I received my latest bill from Nevada Telephone on March 19. It had been postmarked March 17. The bill says my $30.69 is \u201cdue March 27\u201d — 10 days after they mailed it; eight days after I received it. <\/p>\n
I wrote out the check on Thursday, April 2 — 16 days after this bill was mailed — but neglected to mail it that day. <\/p>\n
On that day, April 2, I received a robot phone call from Nevada Telephone, warning me that my bill was overdue, that if it wasn\u2019t paid within 48 hours my service could be shut off, and that if that happened there would be a re-connection charge. <\/p>\n
I mailed the payment on Friday, April 3 — 17 days after the bill had been mailed; 15 days after it was received. <\/p>\n
On Saturday morning, April 4, I received a new robot phone call from Nevada Telephone, or whatever it\u2019s now called, informing me my bill had not been paid, and that I was now subject to having my service shut off \u201cwithin hours.\u201d <\/p>\n
I dialed the \u201ccustomer service\u201d number on the bill — 648-1863 — and began listening to \u201cMexican Music on Hold.\u201d It sounded kind of like Sade in Spanish. Supposed to be relaxing, I suppose. Every couple of minutes a robot voice would interrupt the endless music loop to repeat \u201cPlease hold, all our customer service dweezils are still busy,\u201d or something to that effect. I listed for 10 minutes. For 15 minutes. For 20 minutes. <\/p>\n
\u2018THE ACCOUNTANT TOOK MY CHECKBOOK\u2019 <\/p>\n
Now, normally, I have some sympathy for folks who are trying to collect moneys owed. I know a little something about trying to collect bills. <\/p>\n
I published the Providence Eagle from 1980 to 1985. I did the collection calls myself. I quickly learned that \u201cPay your bills or I\u2019ll cut you off\u201d did little good. The stereo shops and motorcycle dealers and close-to-campus restaurants whose advertising dollars were our lifeblood had to pay their electric bills and payroll; they had to pay for their ads in the powerful daily Providence Journal-Bulletin and on TV and on the radio … which meant the new little alternative newsweekly was an afterthought, a \u201csecondary buy\u201d at best. We came last. We needed them more than they needed us, and the answer to any kind of threat was laughter, followed by an indecent suggestion and a dial tone. <\/p>\n
These guys never paid in 30 days. They took offense if you even called them before 45. I used to swear if I ever got into the business of selling anything again it would be a cash-on-the-barrelhead commodity, something like, I don\u2019t know, heroin, something where laughter was not one of the menu options for customers who were told they were late paying their bills. <\/p>\n
What worked best was offering to knock another 10 percent off what they owed — instead of adding penalties, like the big guys with the in-house lawyers could do — providing we could pick up the check that day. <\/p>\n
But what I mostly collected was Excuses of the Month. Call between Thanksgiving and Christmas and it was \u201cI\u2019ve got customers on the floor, for God\u2019s sake! I\u2019ve got to sell some Pioneer and some Teac while the sun shines! I don\u2019t have time to worry about some crummy damned ad I ran back in September! Don\u2019t you dare call me again till after Christmas!\u201d <\/p>\n
In January it was \u201cThis place looks like a battleground. I\u2019ve got blood and boxes and sales receipts all over the place. We haven\u2019t even added it all up. Call me in February.\u201d <\/p>\n
In February it was \u201cWe\u2019re not selling anything! This is the worst month of the year! Nobody comes out when there\u2019s ice on the sidewalk!\u201d or — worse, because it added insult to injury, after hearing these guys plead poverty all year: \u201cThe boss is in Florida; call back in March.\u201d <\/p>\n
But I think I liked the March Excuse of the Month best: \u201cI\u2019d love to pay you for those Christmas ads, but it\u2019s tax time and the accountant has my checkbook.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cYou mean he\u2019s got your bank statements from last year. He wouldn\u2019t need your actual current checkbook with your current checks in it.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cNo, no, really. He took the checkbook.\u201d <\/p>\n
I actually got to prefer the guys who ran the grotty cinderblock nightclubs with last night\u2019s barf in the gravel parking lots who took out the smaller ads listing their head-banging bands and specials on pitchers of beer. They never paid a bill and if you could ever reach Vinnie or Buddy or Sal on the phone he would tell you up front that he never paid a bill. I don\u2019t think they even opened their mail. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo … how do I get paid?\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cOh, that\u2019s easy. Drop by on Friday or Saturday night between 10 and midnight and I\u2019ll pay you in cash.\u201d <\/p>\n
And they did. Out of a bulging roll in their pocket. No written records for any damned tax man to subpoena, see. They never wanted to see anything on paper, either. Though if I suspect if I\u2019d ever asked for more than I was really owed, some important body part of mine would still reside in Pawtucket or North Providence. <\/p>\n
Then, more recently, I fell into the publishing and wholesale book sales business in a small way, here in Vegas, peddling my own books and a collection of non-fiction essays by my friend, science fiction author L. Neil Smith, called \u201cLever Action.\u201d <\/p>\n
You walk into a local Borders or a Barnes & Noble and offer to sell them some books by local authors, and you get nowhere. \u201cWe don\u2019t buy books,\u201d the manageress will tell you. <\/p>\n
\u201cWow,\u201d I would say, gazing around at tens of thousands of books on the shelves. \u201cHow lucky for you. So the publishers give you all these books for free; you never have to buy any?\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cOh, someone buys them, but they get shipped here from corporate headquarters,\u201d the gals in the unshaven legs and the long peasant skirts would explain, speaking slowly like I just fell off the bus from the feeb farm. \u201cYou\u2019ll have to talk to them.\u201d <\/p>\n
But corporate headquarters only buys from a wholesaler called Baker and Taylor, as it turns out. And once you jump through all the hoops required by Baker and Taylor — International Standard Book Number coded into a scannable bar code on the back cover, agreeing to let them take a 55 percent wholesale discount, that kind of stuff — the best you can hope for is to get placed on a computerized list of \u201ctitles in print,\u201d so whenever any geezer who hasn\u2019t yet figured out how to buy books Online wanders into one of the retail chain bookstores and asks for one of your titles, the store clerk can look it up and say, \u201cYes, we can order that for you, Mr. Cratchit,\u201d whereupon they send an order to Baker and Taylor. <\/p>\n
Not that Baker and Taylor would ever go so far as to order a box of 20 books and have them waiting in the warehouse, of course. No. They would wait to gather up the four or five orders they might get in the course of a couple of weeks, whereupon they would send me something called a \u201cpurchase order.\u201d <\/p>\n
They\u2019d want me to send one book to their regional warehouse in New Jersey and two books to their regional warehouse in Alabama and one to their regional warehouse in Sparks, Nevada, whereupon I was required to draw up an invoice and send it to yet a fourth address in Indiana, at which point … nothing happened. <\/p>\n
Nothing happened for 30 days, for 60 days, for 90 days. No checks. Nada. By the 120th day I was festooning my invoices, each of which bore my mailing address and phone number, with red and yellow Post-it notes, which would start with catchy phrases like \u201cYou thieves! Don\u2019t you ever pay ANY of your bills?!\u201d <\/p>\n
I looked up the name and address of the president of Baker and Taylor, somewhere in Carolina. I mailed him a hand-written letter. \u201cI know what you owe me is less than what you pay the guy to walk your dog,\u201d I said, \u201cbut is this really your policy, to slowly bleed small publishers to death? Won\u2019t you consider paying just ONE of our invoices?\u201d <\/p>\n
I never got an answer. I could never get through to him on the phone, either, though I did finally reach some black gal in \u201caccounts payable,\u201d who told me my bills weren\u2019t being paid because my \u201caccount had been put on ho.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cOn ho?\u201d I asked. <\/p>\n
\u201cYes, on ho.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cOK, I think I now what a ho is, because here in Vegas we have the annual Pimps and Hos Ball, but why is my ACCOUNT on ho? <\/p>\n
Oh, she just thought that as a knee-slapper. She had to tell all the other girls that one. But they never did pay a single invoice. I finally put them on a \u201ccash-in-advance\u201d basis, no books shipped till we received a check, which was pretty much the end of any orders from Baker and Taylor. <\/p>\n
So I do have some sympathy with folks who have trouble getting their bills paid. But \u201cnet 10\u201d? Who the hell thinks they can get away with \u201cnet 10\u201d? <\/p>\n
\u2018I CAN\u2019T TELL YOU TILL I FINISH THE ORDER\u2019 <\/p>\n
Finally, after listening to Mexican Music on Hold for more than 30 minutes, and growing just a tad upset, I hung up, opened the phone book to the page that lists all the competing local phone service providers, and called Embarq, which has also recently changed its name — I think they used to be Sprint. <\/p>\n
I dialed a local number. A guy answered. I asked what it would cost me to switch over my single-line local residential service to Embarq. The gentleman said they currently had a \u201cspecial\u201d on such service, at a rate of \u201c29.95 per month, plus tax and surcharges.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cSo it\u2019ll cost me about what I\u2019m paying now, about 30 dollars a month?\u201d I asked. <\/p>\n
\u201cYes, about that, plus taxes and surcharges,\u201d the man said. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou keep using that phrase,\u201d I observed. \u201cWhat do the taxes and surcharges add up to?\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cAbout ten dollars a month,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo you\u2019re telling me that when I just asked whether my monthly charge would be \u2018about 30 dollars a month,\u2019 and you said \u2018Yes, about that,\u2019 you actually meant \u2018about 40 dollars a month\u2019?\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cYes, about that, Plus the $55 switching fee.\u201d <\/p>\n
Mind you, they don\u2019t send some guy out to your house, any more. This is a $55 fee for throwing a switch in their office and entering your name in their billing computer. <\/p>\n
But I was actually angry enough at the Nevada Telephone robot to go for it. I told him Yes, I would pay a $55 do-nothing fee, and an extra 120 bucks a year, to get away from a company that has its robot start calling me 12 days after it sends out its bills. <\/p>\n
The Embarq guy asked what city I was in, which I thought was strange, since I\u2019d dialed a local number. He asked me for my phone number, which I thought was strange. A phone company without caller ID? He asked for my residence address, which I gave him. He asked for my Social Security number (\u201cnot to be used for purposes of identification,\u201d it says on my card, issued in 1966), my date of birth … et blooming cetera. <\/p>\n
\u201cWait a minute,\u201d says I. \u201cWhile I\u2019m answering all YOUR questions, you can answer one for me. What\u2019s your billing cycle? In other words, after your bill is mailed out, how many days do I have to pay it before it\u2019s considered \u2018past due\u2019? Thirty days?\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t tell you that till I finish the order,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Wow. This guy has a sale in his hands — during the worst economic slowdown we\u2019ve seen in 30 years, despite the fact his outfit is going to cost me $175 more this year than what I\u2019m paying right now. All he has to do is tell me the one sales point I need to hear, the one improvement over Nevada Telephone\u2019s performance that led me to pick up the phone. All he has to do is say, \u201cYes, our bills are net 30; duh.\u201d And he can\u2019t do it. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt varies according go the part of the country,\u201d he says. \u201cI can\u2019t give you that information till I finish taking the order.\u201d <\/p>\n
And that was the end of any chance I was going to switch my service to Embarq. <\/p>\n
Finally, more than an hour later, I got through to a nice young Hispanic lady at Nevada Telephone. <\/p>\n
\u201cOh,\u201d she said, \u201cthat\u2019s just out automatic machine. We wish it wouldn\u2019t do that, but it\u2019s just automatic.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cSo my service isn\u2019t going to be cut off \u2018within hours\u2019? You can make a note the check has been mailed?\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cYes sir, that will be fine. It\u2019s just automatic; there\u2019s nothing we can do about it.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cWhat, like the Martians came down and forced you to hook up a machine that calls all your customers 12 days after you send out their bills? The people who run your company decided to install that machine, didn\u2019t they?\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cYes, but it\u2019s just automatic, there\u2019s nothing we can do about it.\u201d <\/p>\n
I fear 97 years of the Federal Reserve usurping the power and duty of Congress to coin our money and set its value; seventy-six years of the after-effects of the tyrant Roosevelt seizing all Americans\u2019 gold (you DON\u2019T have any gold or silver in a bank \u201csafe deposit\u201d box, right?); 45 years of an increasingly worthless fiat funny-money dollar that now buys what grandpa could buy for 2 cents, may have created an economic \u201cperfect storm\u201d from which we\u2019re not going to fully \u201crecover\u201d until we get a new, silver-backed dollar and see a lot of bankers\u2019 (and clueless politicians\u2019) heads rolling in the gutters. <\/p>\n
That said — with no guarantee of its permanence, so long as the Same Old Gang is in charge in Washington and Wall Street — I\u2019m sure there\u2019ll be some improvement from the current recession, or depression, or whatever it is, in another year or two. <\/p>\n
By that time, a lot of mom-and-pop outfits will have gone under, through no fault of their own. <\/p>\n
But I believe some larger industries will also have to be completely re-shaped, if they\u2019re to survive at all. We already know big daily newspapers and chain bookstores like Borders and Barnes & Noble fall into that category. (Just how many $6 cappuccinos can they sell to geriatrics in walkers who haven\u2019t figured out how to shop at Amazon, which has never yet told a small publisher, \u201cNo, we\u2019re not going to stock your book; you\u2019re too small to be worth our trouble?\u201d) <\/p>\n
So pardon me if I wonder whether \u201ccopper-wire\u201d phone companies that set their robots to calling and threatening us 16 days after they mail out our bills — and utility companies that can\u2019t even tell you in advance whether their payment terms are \u201cnet 30\u201d — may also end up on the scrap heap of history. <\/p>\n
Hey. It\u2019s a hard rain gonna fall. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019m very lucky. Despite what our energetic young bankers-turned-derivative-peddlers have done — are still doing, that\u2019s the amazing part — to our economy, I still have a job. I was going to say I\u2019m doubly lucky because it\u2019s a cushy job that allows me to sit inside all summer in an air-conditioned office, but that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-history"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-30","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=186"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":187,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions\/187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}