Blog 3307, 25 April 2024, Thursday
Dear friend,
No matter how far short I come from maintaining the standards we were required to maintain when we were missionaries, I think all who served have learned to try to live according to that higher level of standards. There are some obvious standards: Thou shalt not kill, A stitch in time saves nine, and other platitudes (a trite, meaningless, or prosaic statement) or clichés (phrase or expression used so often that it becomes stale) which helped us maintain our behavior. The hardest one for me was “Do what is right.” Oh, such good advice and so impossible to do.
I say that because yesterday I did something sort of questionable. A month ago we received in the mail a notice that one of the companies we deal with had overcharged its customers and had been ordered to refund some money to those who had been shorted. We were such victims. We set aside the notice and finally, on Monday, read the letter to make sure it was something we were rightfully due. That’s like at 10 p.m. on this last Monday evening April 22nd, the very last day that we could claim our share, our rightful share, of the money. The notice had to be postmarked no later than April 22nd. Earlier in the day, no problem. We’re not talking about much money, but enough. We’d failed to turn in our claim. Our fault, no one else’s mistake, we and we alone. However, rather than “do what is right,” as my least favorite platitude goes, I thought I’d push the system. On the forms I filled in nothing, but across the front page I wrote with real chicken-scratch penmanship in an effort to look like I was really old (which I’m not, according to me), I wrote “I DON’T UNDERSTAND.” This is almost as a blatant and brazen lie as I could imagine. I was trying to appeal to someone’s compassion for the elderly, taking advantage of the image of being elderly. Now, I know their staff is legalistic, rigid in the law, exactly opposite what (or who) I want to read my sad message on the blank form. It’s a little funny, certainly not a behavior such as a missionary should exhibit. We should have accepted our fate, shrugged off the financial loss, and gone on with life. We should have.
BUT I, as I am sometimes prone to do, wanted to push the company and see how rigid they are. Often they give me another chance. It’s as if I was recovering from an error. I wondered, will this ploy work? I won’t be hurt if it doesn’t, but I may make someone feel good about their job, giving them a chance to bend the rules to help protect an old person from loss, feeling good about themselves. Shame on me! And good luck! Love,
Jeannmarv Written and Posted: 6 a.m., Thursday
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