My First Adult Job
My first “adult” job was at a very well-known credit card company that also offered student loans. I understood the business aspect of collections, but it felt very cold and callous, as you can imagine.
My deal-breaker with the company was when I called out to a co-signer inquiring about payment on her son’s student loan, which was a month or so past due. I gave her the entire spiel and she was very patient.
She apologized profusely and explained that her son had been deceased for four years and she was still making payments; she had just lost track of time. I was shocked. See because I was an employee and knew the ropes, I knew that anytime a borrower passed away, the loan could be forgiven.
So I, of course, give her that information and she was thrilled. She even complimented my service and ended the call on a really happy note. For the first time since working there, I felt like I had really made a difference in someone’s life.
That’s not why I got into collections in the first place, but it was a nice change to what I usually dealt with. A day or so later, I was called into a meeting with my manager and the department head.
They told me that they had monitored my call, which wasn’t out of the ordinary since we had our calls shopped frequently. I thought they were going to praise me. I was so, so wrong. I was grilled about how much money I had lost the company for giving the customer the advice that I did.
Apparently, it wasn’t in the company’s “best interest” to be offering that information out. That was it for me. I was gone shortly after. I couldn’t stomach working for a company that preyed on people like that.
But knowing this secret information, I’ve always wondered if I should tell someone and make trouble for the company.