Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Things That Could Really Turn A Person Into A Misanthrope

This morning I received a "Dear Dr. Turboglacier" letter from the Veterans' Administration, where I just turned down a job offer last month. I expected it to be a "It was a pleasure to meet you anyway" letter. Instead, its purpose was to notify me that a hard drive containing my name, social security number, physician identification number, and other personal information was stolen from a VA facility somehwere in Alabama. The letter urged me to [waste the entire day tomorrow calling "800" numbers in what will almost certainly be a futile attempt to] obtain my credit report from all three national credit agencies, notifiy the dedicated VA "hotline" of my whereabouts, contact some-or-other national agency to put a "fraud alert" on my credit accounts, and, in general, become anxious that my identity and finances are being actively usurped at this moment. I'm not sure if this is what the VA does to everyone who turns them down for a job, or if I just had bad luck. But it's pissing me off.

Then I came home to find that someone had stolen one of the three pots of pansies that I put out on the front steps last weekend. The pansies were really cheering up the neighborhood and making me happy. Who steals fucking pots of pansies?

In the words of Seinfeld-- "People! They're the worst!"

2 Comments:

Blogger C Neal said...

It's heavy trash week. Maybe someone mistook the pansies for precious heavy trash.

I myself scored a typewriter that had been discarded on the sidewalk down the street. I also picked up a few discarded identities that were just lying around outside the VA hospital.

5/10/07, 5:33 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I, too, have been marked by the VA. Got my letter the day after you did. My crime was having a patient who is married to a veteran. After Medicare pays for their half of her visits, they send my claim form to the VA for the rest. Maybe they resent having to pay up. Are ALL the records in Alabama?

5/12/07, 6:12 PM  

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