Yesterday, something rather surreal happened. It made me laugh, but it also really made me think.
I work at a mail order pharmacy, one of the really big ones in the US. I think we serve a third of the US population or something like that. Anyway, I’m the one who tells you why things aren’t covered, helps you get things covered, helps you with your bill, tracks orders, solves mysteries. My friend is one of our answer gals, the people we call when we can’t figure something out. Usually those questions involve solving problems with insurance, or figuring out technical difficulties. That’s all just a little background so you understand the story.
My friend, let’s call her Jean, came over during an impromptu break to tell me that one of my fellow reps had called her, very worried. Ah, but what was the rather inexperienced rep worried about? That’s the question. Jean said that the rep had asked where to see how long the Masons had been involved with our company.
Full stop.
The Masons?
Turns out the member who had called in was something of a conspiracy theorist, and wanted to know how long the Masons had been involved with us, and the rep who took the call had not only thought it was a serious question but actually thought it would be somewhere in our databases and resources.
That would have been interesting enough. The really funny part, at least to me, is that the rep kept hounding Jean about where this information could be found, and who should she call to get it, and also insisting it should be available in our resources. Jean ended up telling her to give the member to Corporate, which is a perfect solution – they are paid more than us, let them handle a strange question like this. The member was satisfied, Jean was satisfied, and even our rep was satisfied.
Then I started thinking about this. What kind of a person calls up in the first place and asks a front line customer service representative about this type of thing? It’s not like we have it listed in “SOP 66.6, Masonic and Illuminati Connections to the Mail Order Pharmacy,” and flagged as “business confidential, do not discuss.”
Logically, a bottom level worker wouldn’t know about it, and a top level corporate officer might, but they’d never tell. This is the kind of thing you’d go to Wikileaks or Above Top Secret, or less reputable sources, to find!
I, being a smart ass, offered a different potential solution – we could look up the founding date of our company and just give her that.
Mindflight 