Social Security

Bureaucracy. I'll be reaching the maximum aggrandizement age of my Social Security benefits within 90 days (after you reach your full retirement date, every year you prolong taking benefits increases your ultimate benefit by 8 percent, up until a certain age when the increase stops, so you want to start receiving your benefits immediately upon that date without any delay) so last week I dialed the SS number, to give myself plenty of time (3 whole months) to set this well-earned and long-delayed lifetime train in motion.

Good thing I started early in the morning, with a fully charged phone. I called and was greeted by a phone menu which took four whole minutes to complete, whereupon the machine prompted me, "In a few words, describe what it is you want, such as the location of my nearest office or an explanation of my benefits."

"I want to start receiving my full benefits," I announced.

The machine intoned, "You must speak with an agent about this. All agents are currently busy. Please call back later." Whereupon the malicious robot dumped me out of the system and the connection went dead.

I hit the Most Recent Call button on my cell phone and dialed back. After sitting through the same 4 minute phone menu again, I was prompted to speak about what I wanted and I slightly changed my phraseology but I received the same curt Busy reply and I was dumped out of the system again.

This same exact sequence happened two more times, with me subtly changing my "few words" of describing what it was that I wanted, with the same hangup result.

The fifth time, almost half an hour after I started this ordeal of trying to contact the SS administration, I broke through the menu because that time, my short statement of desire seemed to resonate with the machine (we connected finally) and it announced that I would have to speak with an agent about that and the sentient idiot said, "Please hold. An agent will be with you shortly. Your call will be answered in the order in which it was received. We are sorry for the delay."

Thus started an interminable period of listening on my speaker phone to annoying phone music, punctuated every three minutes by interjections of how important my call was to them, or how sorry they were for the delay, or how I could go to www.socialsecurity.gov and enter that on-line moraass instead (go solo), or that I should have my SS number "handy" (as if after decades of life I didn't have that number imprinted on my brain) or that an agent would be with me "momentarily."

I wondered how I could send out for pizza while my phone was otherwise occupied. Then I started worrying that my battery would run out before a real person picked up.  

Almost two hours after I started this project, a nice agent came on the line and listened to me express my heartfelt desire (I want my money!) and she said that I would have to speak to an agent from my "local office" about that. She stated that she would set up an appointment for an interview.

"In person or on the phone," I inquired. "On the phone of course," she said and she put me on hold for ten minutes during which time I wondered why I had to speak to a "local" agent on the phone instead of any old agent anywhere who was in front of a computer.

The nice agent came back finally and told me to write this down. "I have scheduled you for an appointment with someone from your local office," she said.

"It will be on Monday at 11 am . . . ," she continued and then paused, for dramatic effect, I guess. Or maybe she thought I was slow with my pencil or my hand was shaking.

Meanwhile I was thinking, Hot Damn! This is Thursday and I can wrap this up by early next week. Or maybe it'll be some Monday early next month in February, which will still leave me plenty of time in case I have to show a document like a birth certificate or maybe some sort of proof of citizenship like my old, tattered draft card. Then the nice agent, seemingly enjoying her pause, dropped the other shoe.

". . . on March 14th," she continued. "Make sure you're available on the phone at that time and on that date."

I hope she didn't heard my jaw drop. Two months hence. The agency had just used up two months of the three month lead time that I had given myself to undertake this signup procedure, which I thought was wildly excessive but I guess not. I thanked her, leafed ahead two months in my weekly calendar book and carefully wrote down the appointment in red ink, one which I shall be sure not to miss.