ASK Musings

No matter where you go, there you are.

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Wednesday

29

October 2014

0

COMMENTS

Tuesday

28

October 2014

0

COMMENTS

Social Media

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So, short post, but I had to share that after my post last night about Navient, I got a tweet from their social media people. Note that I didn’t tag them or @ them in the post; their company name just happened to be in my post, and they must have done a search. At 7 a.m. I got the following tweet:

“Hi Ashley! We’re going to look into this for you. A social media specialist will be reaching out to you today. Thanks! Liz”

Now, my post talked about how they were somehow even worse than Sallie Mae. But now I realize they actually are still Sallie Mae. Just re-branded. And just like how when Blackwater changed its name to Xe Services it didn’t suddenly stop being a firm full of mercenaries for hire, Sallie Mae hasn’t stopped taking advantage of customers just because it changed its name.

No one from Navient contacted me today – either in response to my email from yesterday or as part of their social media strategy. I don’t really expect to hear much from them at all, actually, beyond eventually some letter telling me my loans are paid off. And when we get that letter in the mail, or on email, I think I’m going to frame it.

And then I am going to do a very happy dance as confirm that I never have to deal with that company again.

Monday

27

October 2014

7

COMMENTS

Navient: Like Sallie Mae, But Somehow Even Worse

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As I mentioned in a post a couple of weeks ago, the Mister and I recently paid off all of our major student loans. It took a couple of tries due to the amounts owed, but we did it, and we reveled in checking the site after the amounts cleared out bank: $0 owed. Then yesterday we noticed that Navient still automatically debited the Mister’s loan payment. He signed in and saw a negative balance on one of his loans for that amount, and also noticed that instead of a zero balance on his other loan, he has a positive balance of $.43. That’s right. Forty-three cents. When he called, they explained that since it takes two days to process, they keep charging that interest. So basically it’s an impossible task to pay off a loan early; every time you pay, there’s a two day lag where you’ll accrue interest.

The woman he spoke with said they would ‘write off’ the $.43 (how generous!), and would turn off the automatic debit for the other loans. First off – how can an auto debit still happen when you have a zero balance? That’s just … what? You don’t owe anything, so there shouldn’t be anything for them to take. Or if there are still a few cents, shouldn’t it just take that? Second – they said we’ll get the money back … in 30-45 days. Will they be sending us interest on that? My guess is no.

Given what the Mister experienced, I decided to sign in and make sure my loan showed a zero balance. Nope. I still owe $.83. What. The. Hell. I have no patience with student loan companies, so instead of calling I sent an email asking for explicit instructions as to how to pay off that eighty-three cents, as well as a letter showing the loan is paid in full, along with a guarantee in writing that they have cancelled the auto-debit on that account while maintaining the auto debit on the one loan we have left. I … do not have high hopes.

This is kind of amazing. Imagine if we didn’t have the extra money that they took from us for that auto-debit? What if that had overdrawn our bank account? Or if we hadn’t checked on the accounts to make sure they still showed a zero balance (which they actually did a week ago), and thus never sent a payment, and ended up getting penalties and credit dings for late payments? I mean, student loan companies are already the worst; it’s kind of amazing that they find new ways to screw with their ‘customers.’ Given this latest development, we’ve decided to hit the savings and just pay off the final small loan. It’s not worth it anymore. I’d rather have less of a cushion than have any part of me relying on Navient to do its job.

Saturday

25

October 2014

0

COMMENTS

Cleaning Up

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As part of my attempt to sort out my IRS issue, I decided to pull everything I have in storage. The goal was to see if I still have a bunch of old documents from when I first purchased the stock in question. I did (hurrah!), but I also realized that I had a lot of other stuff that I don’t really need.

An example is my pile middle school and high school yearbooks. This might be controversial for some folks, but I have no real need for my yearbooks. I don’t ever go back and look at the notes written, or even the pictures. That might be because I’ve always loved taking pictures, so I’ve got a lot of pictures from when I was younger. And those giant books take up a whole lot of space considering how often I look at them.

Another example is the giant stack of articles and papers from my studies in London. That took up an entire plastic bin, and it was much harder to part with. On the one hand, I have all my notes and papers saved online and backed up. But on the other hand, I probably can’t access the list of articles I read again. It seemed a little bit like accepting that I won’t be pursuing further study in the field. Which is accurate, and has been accurate for a couple of years, but the finality of actually throwing it in the recycling bin gave me pause. Still, I did it, it’s gone.

Other items, like photo negatives and my college diploma, I’m keeping, but I was able to consolidate way down. I also pulled out my old homecoming tiara and sash to give to a friend’s daughter to play dress-up. By the time I was done, I’d reduced three 2′ x 2′ x 2′ tubs to a handful of items that I could spread throughout the apartment. As a bonus, our storage unit now only has Austin’s climbing and camping gear (which wouldn’t be in the house anyway), and a taken-apart bistro table and chairs that we hope to use when we finally buy a place to live some day.

Austin is going to clean out the guest room closet on Sunday, which hopefully will result in a big trip to Goodwill in the afternoon. The key now is to not buy things that will fill that space back up.

Thursday

23

October 2014

0

COMMENTS

Well That Is Disconcerting

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A few months ago we got a notice from the IRS saying we hadn’t paid our taxes for 2013. We had (and had the fat chunk of missing savings to prove it). Of course the notice arrived after 5 p,m. on a Friday, but I was able to get a hold of someone and after a couple of hang-ups, an hour on hold, and some frustrating moments, I confirmed that it was an error. Before that my only other run-in with the IRS was due to an old business license. Their system didn’t update that I had closed that business with no income (I’d gotten it so I could do consulting work if needed when I moved back to Seattle), so I thought maybe this was yet another attempt to collect taxes from defunct business. Especially since it was addressed to my given name and not my current name.

Nope. Nothing to do with our 2013 taxes, or my non-existent business. From what I can tell, someone screwed up, and I might owe a whole lot of money (like, high four figures). It looks like a company I had securities with is reporting that I made X amount of money from that, and I didn’t report it as income, so I owe about 20% of X, plus a bunch of penalties and interest. First off, I never got that tax document. If you know me, you know how super duper anal I am about things like finances. If it turns out my information was wrong, and I do owe that money, I will pay it, although I’m not okay with paying penalties or interest because I didn’t actually do anything wrong based on the information I had. Also, because I’m so anal, my first thought was to log into my accounts and look for late tax documents, or something I could have missed, but the ones I view don’t match up. If they were there and they matched, that’d be that. But it’s a little hard to prove the negative of I never got it (although the fact that it still isn’t here does help).

Oh, and did I mention that this is from two years ago? Not last year, but 2012. So I’m even more confused, because why didn’t that information come out when they do their regular checks in the twenty months that have passed since that tax year ended. But thanks to some advice my mother gave me when my checks were stolen in 2001, along with my last experience with the IRS, plus Austin’s general calming influence in my attitude, I didn’t lose my shit. I didn’t pick up the phone and try to get someone to answer all my questions. I ate my dinner, turned on a crappy movie, and started doing research so that I could figure out what to say when I do finally call tomorrow. Because the reality is I might end up having to dig super deep into savings to fix an error I unintentionally made in 2012 (if it all ends up being correct). And me being angry about it right now, or being short with the unlucky IRS agent who takes my call, isn’t actually going to change any of that.

Holy shit, you guys. I think I’m becoming an adult. Weird.

Friday

10

October 2014

0

COMMENTS

So This Is Weird

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Just browsing the interwebs, seeing if anything interesting happened while I was at work today, and I came across this. In case you can’t see the article, from what I can gather, it appears that the national Fox station is forcing the company that owns Q-13 (the local Seattle affiliate) to sell to the national company or else it will end the relationship with Q-13. They’d go with a station up in Bellingham instead, which would be sort of odd considering the news would be focused on that area and not Seattle.

Why are they doing this? Well, one of the only things that Fox is good for is showing NFL games (and these days I’m not really that thrilled to watch those anyway), and when the NFL team in your market is the defending Superbowl Champions, that ends up being worth quite a bit of money. So apparently Fox decides that if you won’t sell them your TV station that makes lots of money, they’ll stop working with you, and put you out of business. I get that they have a choice in who they work with, but there’s something really off about awarding a contract, and then essentially putting the company you awarded it to out of business because they ended up making too much money.

But it’s Fox, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

Wednesday

8

October 2014

0

COMMENTS

Ebola

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Right now there is a lot of attention focused on Ebola Virus Disease (EVD). It’s been causing death and illness overseas for many months; interest in the U.S. didn’t rise much until the first U.S. citizens were infected and transported back for treatment. And now that a man has died in Dallas the media is focusing even more on the disease, even though thousands more have died before him in western African nations. It seems we don’t care about death and destruction much until it arrives in our neighborhoods.

Some media outlets do seem to be trying very hard to provide quality reporting on this issue; others, however, are not doing a great job. There are people yelling for us to close the borders, or prevent ill U.S. citizens from coming home for treatment. The topic seems to bring out the worst in some people – some are even angry that hospitals in the U.S. are willing to accept these patients. With that in mind, I hope that as you consume media about EVD, you consider the source and compare the information provided to the scientific facts that disease experts are sharing. If this is a topic that interests you, please consider informing yourself directly at the source. The CDC website has a ton of really good information on this disease, and is a great place to start understanding what it is, how it is transmitted, and how it is contained.

Wednesday

1

October 2014

0

COMMENTS

Introvert. Extrovert.

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I’m trying to write a blog post a day during the month of October. Today’s topic? Energy. Specifically, what gives us energy, what exhausts us, and what to do about it.

I spent the day at a work event that required me to solve problems, perform tasks, be friendly, keep the people working for me happy, and make sure that we met all of our objectives. I was also required to do this without a real break. By noon I was drained; by about 4:30 I was ready to crawl under the table. I need time to myself to do my best work – it’s how I’ve always been. I need the space to puzzle things over in my head and not be around people while that’s happening. I don’t thrive in fast-paced situations; I get through them and I get the work done well, but I hate pretty much every moment of it.

At the end of today’s exercise, one of my employees stopped to talk with me before heading home. She’d had just as long of a day, and did some really great work. She pointed out that this type of situation really shows the differences in people. She said she hadn’t felt that energized at the end of a work day in a really long time, and commented that days when she’s mostly working at her desk she leaves feeling drained. Meanwhile, I was at the end of my rope but knew that after about 20 minutes of being completely alone I would start to feel like myself again. I wondered what it must be like to get that kind of energy from these situations.

I am an introvert. I need time and space. I get a lot of energy from being alone, or being with just one other person, and in those moments I feel like I can do awesome things. When I don’t get the time to process things, or the space away from a whole lot of external stimulation … I do slightly less awesome things, and my stress levels are ridiculously high. In those moments I have to turn myself into someone I’m not to fit into what’s expected, which further drains whatever energy I had stored up. It sucks.

The issues introverts face are getting more play recently. I read a book about it earlier this year, and saw that this article talks more specifically about workplace introverts. Another one also offers a few comments about introverts in general (and the myths about us). So much of society assumes that the work is done by the extroverts, because they can thrive very publicly, while the third of us who get energy from within are seen as too slow to keep up with the pace of the modern workplace. I think that’s bull, but I also see it reinforced in everything from the way offices are set up (cubicles are the least productive spaces for me – I need a door to close and a way to keep the noise out) to the desire to hold networking events at cocktail hour with dozens of people at the end of an already long work day.

In some ways I’m lucky. I can usually find a way to fit myself into a space where I’m not entirely comfortable. I’m outgoing, and I’ve learned to provide employers what they want even if its not how I would go about doing it. You want me to respond to a question without having time to think about it? I’ll get you an answer. It won’t be as good as the one I’d have if I had five minutes to think about it, but it will be sufficient. I also have the benefit of (often) controlling my environment. I send meeting agendas and materials out a week in advance so fellow introverts won’t be surprised by the subjects. I do as much preparation as I can so that if I am faced with surprises I am ready to address them. However, if you know me and know the field I work in, you know that at literally any moment of any day I could be called into work and be faced with the exact environment that leads to stress headaches and the consumption of half of a box of chewy chips ahoy at the end of the day. It’s like I’m always just a little bit on edge, and that can’t be healthy.

Tomorrow we’ll continue this exercise, but it will end early, and I’ll have an hour or two at the end of the day to regroup, reflect, and do some good work. We’ll talk about what a stressful situation it was, but many people will talk about how great it was to work in teams to solve these problems. And I’ll nod along, because the people I work with really are great – it’s just the environment that gets to me. And in the back of my mind I’ll be wondering when the next situation will arise that will drain me as much as the one we faced today.

 

Monday

21

April 2014

0

COMMENTS

I’m Allowed to Not Drink, You Know

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So the other day I was at an evening work event. There were some delicious appetizers, a bunch of beer and wine, and some fancy sparkling water. Anyone who knows me well knows that I’m not big into beer or wine, but that I love bubbles. So I grabbed a can of the seltzer and was enjoying it when a sweet and well-meaning former colleague came up and said “sparkling water? So? Any chance that a little one is on the way?” I laughed and said no, I just like seltzer water and am driving later, and left it at that. But it bothered me, and I realized it bothered me for a couple of reasons.

The first reason is this idea that adults are required to drink alcohol if it is available. It seems that adults are thought of as abnormal if we choose to drink non-alcoholic beverages when wine or beer are around, and I quite literally do not understand it. I don’t drink often, and when I do, I usually limit it to one or two drinks at the most. And I certainly don’t drink if I’m going to be driving in the next couple of hours. I like some alcoholic beverages (sparkling wine, Irish whiskey, rum-based tropical delights), but they are definitely what I would consider ‘sometimes’ things. I get that many people enjoy beer or wine every night, but I’ve reached the point where I find it a little bizarre that the default assumption of adulthood seems to be “evening + gathering of other adults = MUST DRINK.” Why is that? I don’t recall agreeing to that.

And to be as clear as possible – there is nothing wrong, in my opinion, with drinking wine. Or beer. Or liquor. I don’t think people should do that before driving, obviously, but I get that many people drink. A quick Googling for some data shows that in the U.S., on average, adults consume about 4 drinks per week. I probably consume maybe that many per month, so obviously some people are going to consume more. But somehow it has gotten so engrained in society that adults are going to drink at night, that someone choosing not to do so needs some sort of reason – in my case, since I’m a woman of childbearing age, it must be because I’m expecting. I don’t like that. I’d like to be able to choose whatever beverage sounds good and not have it somehow be a signal to the world that I’m in the midst of growing a human.

The second reason that bothered me is that whether I’m pregnant or not is really no one’s business. Again, anyone who knows me at all is VERY clear about the fact that if I’m pregnant, a) something has gone horribly, horribly wrong, and b) I’m not going to be pregnant for long. So even asking me that question shows that you and I? We’re not that close. And since we AREN’T that close, why would you feel it necessary to ask me such a personal question? If I were pregnant and wanted you to know, guess what? I’d tell you.

Now, I can’t speak for women who actually have been pregnant and have faced these situations, but they always strike me as very uncomfortable. I feel that asking if someone is expecting (whether it is due to abstention from alcohol or not) puts women who ARE pregnant in an unfair situation: either they tell the person they are (even if they had no intentions of doing that), or they can lie and say no. Again, if someone wants me to know they are pregnant, I really, strongly believe that it’s up to them to tell me. Sure, I’ve asked friends about timelines, in terms of a ‘hey, are you guys still thinking about going the kid route?’ more from a wanting to know what’s up in general frame, and it’s possible I’ve even forgotten myself and veered into the territory about which I’m currently complaining. Especially with really close friends – I know I’ve been tempted to want to ask how things are going when they’ve faced reproductive challenges. I want them to know I care! But over the years I’ve learned that there are ways to express support for those friends without repeatedly asking “are you pregnant now? How about now? How about … now? I see you didn’t have any beer tonight – are you finally expecting?!” I get the curiosity when someone knows that people want children, but I think it’s a really good thing to remember that people will tell me when they feel it is appropriate, and my timeline of wanting to know really doesn’t factor into it.

Are these superficial things to complain about? Possibly. But I do think they demonstrate a couple of broader problems. I think the fact that people need to find a reason for why someone chooses not to drink shows that we don’t really have a healthy relationship with alcohol in our society. It’s almost as if some people who do choose it feel insecure about that decision, and want to be reassured that it’s acceptable to have that glass of wine. I just wish they’d keep their issues to themselves, or at the very least, consider asking WHY they care about what I choose to drink.

I think it’s fairly obvious that the idea that an individual woman’s reproductive choices are fair game for discussion by anyone is problematic, and this is just but one teeny tiny (and possibly not that common?) example of the entitlement to know about those choices. It’s just one manifestation of how women of a certain age are seen almost as public property, even by those with the best and sweetest of intentions. Again, I wish more people would just take that second to think “hey, if she were pregnant, she’d probably tell me when she wanted to” and leave it at that.