Life advice: don't piss off this widow with insensitivity

I’m all anger right now. Anger, hurt. I’m all emotion, fight or flight. I’m Kick Your Ass Spice (the sixth Spice Girl, fiercer than the rest).

My body is still recovering from my bout with sepsis and my kidney stone. My tolerance level for bullshit is low. My speak-your-mind level is high. 

I’m not normally like this. I’m not a doormat but I’m generally pretty good at letting things roll off my back. Hell, I worked 18 years on the ground as a customer service agent and then Guest Service Manager for an airline and then as a flight attendant for a year. You need to go with the flow in those jobs.

All it took was a phone call to set me off.

I had just come home from brunching with a close friend and was preparing to take a nap. My cellphone rang and the caller ID was for that of a nationwide tax preparation service. I answered the phone and the woman on the other end asked to speak to My Favourite Husband (MFH). I was silent for a beat and then said no. She asked why. I asked why she wanted to speak to him. She said her records show he had not filed a tax return for 2022. 

Now if you’re calling on behalf of Revenue Canada (the agency that collects taxes in my country), I would say that’s a fair statement. But to be saying that as a tax filing service, it’s none of your business. 

“You can’t speak to my husband . He’s been dead for over two years.”

Blunt? Perhaps. But you’re cold calling a man who’s deceased ... and YOUR OFFICE OBTAINED GOVERNMENT CLEARANCE TO FILE HIS FINAL TAXES AND THEN YOU FILED THEM. The business knew he was deceased. So no, I had no mercy; no desire to soften my words.

Did I get an apology? Words of condolence uttered? I did not. Instead I was informed their “system doesn’t update with that information until they are told."

 

I did not care — about this lady, about her system. I just did not. So I told her to take his name off the list and then I hung up on her.

I sat for a few minutes stewing in my rage. Rage is not a familiar emotion to me, so letting it wash over me felt foreign but not wrong. I thought about how unprofessional this person was coupled with a lack of empathy. And it fuelled that rage.

That, along with the fact I had taken both my and MFH's taxes to this company and had received the most incompetent service I have ever received in any place of business. I was given incorrect information multiple times and, at one point, I got up at 5 a.m. before I went to flight attendant training, to call Revenue Canada, get correct answers to information I was being told and relayed that to this tax filer. All of that came flooding back.

I did not think I could get angrier than I was but it turns out I could.

And so I did something I normally wouldn’t do. I did not let it go. I did not put it aside. I picked up my cell, hit redial and proceeded to unload.

When my call was answered, I asked the voice on the other end of the line if she was the person who had just called me to speak to my DEAD HUSBAND about filing his 2022 taxes. She said she was not. And then, my words flowed.

She said their system doesn’t update that a person is deceased until they are informed. And as I heard her voice speak those words, I knew I had heard that voice before, so I asked her name to confirm and, when she told me, I started calling her out. I told her what nonsense all of this was. I reminded her it was HER who applied to the government for final clearance to have MFH's taxes done and HER who did his final taxes and that she could’ve updated their system once his final taxes had been done. She volleyed back that asking about a 2022 tax filing was totally fair as “things could’ve come up that required taxes to be filed.” I shot back THAT statement was garbage as the whole purpose of getting government clearance for final taxes was that the government was satisfied that anything that needed to be reported for taxation purposes was. 

She had nothing to come back with. I told her that before she or anyone in her office cold called again, they have a look at the last taxes filed and see if they were final taxes — that would save someone on the other end of the line some heartache.

My call with her ended when I told her that the reason I didn’t file my 2022 taxes with her was because of the complete and utter debacle that happened with MFH and my taxes and that she was responsible for it. I told her — in no uncertain terms — to take both of our names off anything to do with her company. Of course, I fully expect to hear from that company again in the near future as getting things done correctly doesn’t seem to be a priority for them.

I hung up on her. With all my heart I wished, in that moment, I had the satisfaction of having an old-fashioned rotary phone that promised an ear-splitting bang when slammed onto the cradle. Alas, I only had a button on a cellphone that ended my call.

I don’t know that I felt better calling back. But I don’t know that I felt worse. I intentionally set out to wound much as I had been wounded. I did not even pretend to try and turn the other cheek. I did not want to accept that mistakes happen or any other logical explanation for the initial cold call that started the chain of events. 

She called me, had no apologies, no empathy no kindness or softness for my hurt. And that made things wrong in my mind and in my heart.

After my second hang up, I waited a couple minutes and called my Mom. My Mom, my rock. I asked her to listen and then words flowed; the good words, the words that would’ve gotten my mouth washed out with soap in my younger days. But those words that flowed were not spoken, they were sobbed out. 

I cried because MFH was dead. I cried because I was a widow and I thought that all the stuff had been handled for over a year now. I cried because I thought I could handle everything but it turns out I can’t. 

She listened and soothed and when I was done she just loved me like only a Mom can.

It’ll be fine. I went to the pool to work out. I told a few close friends about my experience. And now I’m writing it out in the hopes that this will make my heart sting a little less.

Tomorrow is a new day.

❤️