That child is NOT of MY household!

Ok, so, WAY back in 1998, I was working for a call center company who’s main business was from other companies outsourcing their customer service to this company. For example, if you called the 1-800 number on the back of a box of Jell-O, or Kraft Mac & Cheese, your call would be answered be someone at my company who worked on that particular project. My project was the benefits department for a telecommunications company. We handled enrollments and changes to their employee health insurance, life insurance, dental, etc, etc.

One day, a manager called in. (You could always tell when it was a manager because they would have you on speakerphone, like they were doing you a favor by squeezing you in to their busy schedule.) This particular employee wanted to add his newborn son to his health insurance. I congratulated him, added the child in the system, went through the standard spiel about how the coverage worked, and advised him that he would receive a confirmation letter in the mail in 7-10 business days. At this point, he asked if I could send the letter to his P.O. Box instead. I said “sure”, and put the address in the alternate field. (what I did not know, at the time, was that the system would send the letter to BOTH addresses)

So, fast-forward about two weeks. I am taking calls, and I get a call from a lady who tells me that she is not the employee, her husband is the employee, and she had a question about the coverage. No problem, as we were allowed to disclose such info to spouses. She gave me his SSN…and it sounded…familiar. While the system pulled up the info, I asked her how I could assist her…

Lady: “Well, we received a letter of confirmation about our child’s health insurance, and we don’t have a new baby.”
Me: “Ok, no problem, let me check the system”

By this time, the system had pulled up the information, and lo and behold, it was the same guy that had called two weeks prior to add the new child. So, I confirmed that the employee had called in on such and such date to add the new child, named “David”, born on such and such date, etc, etc. What followed was the coldest that I have ever heard someone speak in my life up to that point:

Lady: “That…child…is NOT of MY household, and I want it removed from our insurance IMMEDIATELY!”
Me: “Not of your household? What do you me….OOHHH!!!”

Yup, you guessed it…the husband had had a child with his mistress, added him to the coverage, and tried to end run around his wife finding out…which failed miserably due to how our system worked. I had to explain to her, in the calmest way possible, that since her husband was the employee, and had added the child, he would have to call to remove the child. She assured me that he would be calling back, thanked me for my help, and hung up.

I had to take myself out of the call queue for a few minutes to compose myself. As I did so, I heard hysterical laughter coming from the office at the end of the row of cubicles. A few minutes later, my supervisor’s manager came down and asked me about the call. Apparently, they had been monitoring it for quality assurance, and it was the funniest thing he had heard to date.