I had the opportunity to reflect on some of the experiences I have had in my life, as well as some of the situations in which I've realized that some people are just plain stupid. To me, it seems as if there has been a progression over the years:
1955- Diner: “Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup.”
Waiter: “Don’t worry, flies don’t drink much.”
2005- Diner: “Hey, there’s a finger in my chili.”
CSR: “Cool! Hey, anybody missing a finger back there!? I’m sorry, ma’am but we charge 99 cents extra for human fingers, but don’t they taste just like chicken?”
So now this lady's in jail. I hope they investigated Uncle Louie, who was once arrested for petty theft, or as the police report called it, a “four finger discount”. Or was it Grandma Edna, who accidentally chopped her finger off cutting up a ham, prompting her daughter to say, in a most sympathetic of ways: “Get Grandma a band-aid. Anybody want to go to Wendy’s?”
As a career risk manager, I take these things with a grain of salt—naw, I’ll leave that one alone. Maybe she found it on the street. Maybe she found it on e-bay, and successfully bid $89.95 for it, and needed to make her investment work for her. It gives me pause, though, to reflect back on my life, and the wonderful ruses all perpetrated in the name of cash.
First, a little risk management 101. When someone tells you it’s not the money, and it’s the principal of the thing, don’t let them fool you—it’s about the money; it’s all about the money, and it’s always about the money.
My favorite story involves a guy who thought he was smart but was actually very stupid. He worked with my wife, and in 1987, he got married, and his wife got pregnant. The baby was born in February, 1988. This guy claimed the baby on his 1987 taxes. When the IRS came a-knockin’ on his door, he told them that the U.S. Supreme Court declared that life begins at 24 weeks after conception, and since his kid legally “came alive” in 1987, he was entitled to the tax deduction. He is still to this day paying off the interest and penalties on that stroke of genius.
Then there was the guy who was a car wash supervisor for a rental car company I worked for. He went to the doctor and was diagnosed with tennis elbow. He promptly came into the branch office and made a workers comp claim. When I took the report over the phone, I deviated from the script a wee bit. I asked name, address, date of birth, and in the middle of this line of questioning, I asked him if he considered himself an active person. Yes, he did. Do you play any sports? Yes, I played softball, basketball, tennis and soccer.
I’m sorry, did you say basketball? Okay, good, got it. Social? Okay. Safety equipment provided? Okay. Now let me go back and make sure I got these activities right. You said you like tennis? Yes, I love tennis. Okay, great. One more question: Do you think that maybe your tennis elbow could have come from… playing TENNIS!?
I loved the people who would rent a car, smack it up, and then drop it off at a suburban branch after the office had closed. When the vehicle was found the next day, the manager would call the customer to find out what happened:
Customer: I don’t know. It was fine when I dropped it off.
The customer would then call my office after they received a bill for $8,000, and say they didn’t do it. Yea, 40 cars parked all neatly parked on the lot, and the only one that ever seems to come up totaled is the one that was dropped overnight. What are the chances? And every person who tries this believes they had thought of it first.
You know those highway signs that have a blinking area to direct you either left or right. There is also a middle switch (or so I assume) so the sign blinks a straight line. I had a customer tell me that they came to the fork in the road, and there was a blinking straight line, so they went straight—into the sign. I believe alcohol was involved in that one.
I’ve had employees call for an ambulance, and call an attorney on the way to the hospital. I had an employee who took a car home and totaled it on the way. He called it in, and was absolutely flabbergasted when he clocked in the next day and was promptly arrested. I had a customer tap another vehicle while parallel parking in Washington, DC. The two occupants got out of the car, saw it was a rental, and called for an ambulance. I didn’t think this was too unusual, until the customer told me the two occupants were uniformed police officers and the vehicle he tapped was a police cruiser.
Am I jaded? You bet I am. The sad aspect of all this is that there are individuals out there for which the tort system is necessary to compensate for the negligence of others. Unfortunately, the system is mired in cases in which folks just want to make a buck. As risk managers, we lose faith as well as focus, and it becomes a war zone. And the path is paved with recidivism. Once someone so inclined finds out he or she can sit at home and collect almost the same amount in pay from work comp (I like to call it the “Watching the Beav”), they are inclined to do it again. And who can blame them. It beats working.
And don’t get me started on class action lawsuits. I tried one of those once. It was against my power company. I signed up and sent it back. A year later, I received a notice saying that the suit was settled, and my bill would be surcharged $20 a month for five months as an offset. I figured we lost. To my surprise, I found out we had actually won, and the power company was going to issue an apology. The settlement, though, didn’t quite cover the attorney fees, which was the reason for the surcharge.
Oh, well, it was the principal of the thing anyway. Although… if I had that cash now, I could have gone on e-bay…
Anybody want to go to Wendy’s?
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