Discover Someone

A representative from Discover Card called me one afternoon a few years ago. Not a sales call.

“Hello Mr. Jones. I’m calling from the Discover Card fraud protection unit. Did you make a $702 purchase on Walmart.com in the last 30 minutes?”

We had not.

Fortunately, Discover had declined the fraudulent charge from the outset because it was suspicious. Clever technology. Good customer service.¹

This is precisely what we want to happen. Flag potential fraudulent charges and hold for further review. The problem is, following a fraudulent charge, the credit card issuer insists on mailing a new card with new numbers and a new expiration date.

I now have the laborious task of updating the billing details for recurring charges assigned to that card. Fortunately, we limit our recurring monthly bills. So, this was only a minor annoyance, and much better than someone using our card illicitly. But, still, it was another item added to my TO DO list.

The previous time I had to do this, I made a list of all the auto-bill services we use as I updated them. I thought this might save me time in the future should I ever need to do it again. Thank you, slightly-younger-self. You were a genius. What ever happened to that guy?

Although I could elaborate further on this point (about building systems around your life for the benefit of your future self), that’s not what this article is about.

Security

This article could also be about how traditional credit cards are inadequate when it comes to security, especially considering how frequently we hand the card to servers at restaurants.

In the U.S., the server sometimes even walks out-of-sight, back to the cash register, swipes the card, and brings it back with a receipt. In this age of cybersecurity, identity theft, and stolen credit cards, that’s a lousy process. A quick picture of the front and back of your credit card with their phone’s camera would suffice to go shopping online at your expense. For this reason, many countries prohibit the restaurant server from touching a customer’s card. That rule makes sense to me.

To thwart some of the illicit activity, most credit cards now have a chip. Sometimes they even work. But mostly, this has created millions of little hand-written notes taped to the card readers directing customers to either insert or swipe. Or, insert first and then swipe if it doesn’t work. Or, just swipe it. Or…

“Here, let me try. This thing is a little finicky sometimes.” Swipe. Swipe fast. Swipe slow. Swipe back-and-forth. Swipe again.

“There, that worked.”

Also, while the chip is supposed to help with security, it does beg the question: Why are the numbers still printed on the card?

I suspect we will look back on this era and reminisce about the ridiculously basic security employed on this front. An 8-year-old with an internet connection has the ability and competency to steal and sell your credit card details. That is how simple it is today.

But alas, this story isn’t about credit card security either.

Building Credit While Young

Remember, I’m still on the phone with the customer service representative from Discover.

“My Discover card is my favorite card,” I told her.

“Why is that?” she asked, seemingly pleased to hear this.

“It was my first card. Got it when I was 18.”

I didn’t elaborate on this point while on the phone, but I will here.

I turned 18 during my freshman year in college. Around this time, I got an unsolicited credit card application in the mail. My roommate (Brad) got one too, same day. We opened our mail at the same time (because we did everything together back then) and simultaneously looked at the application.

Brad said, “Dude, we should fill these out and start building our credit.”

I wasn’t entirely sure what credit was or why I would need it. As far as I knew, credit simply meant you spent more than you made. That didn’t sound like something I should do.

Nevertheless, I filled it out and mailed it in at Brad’s recommendation. He mentioned something about it helping me buy a house some vague time in the future… bla, bla, bla. I was 18. My future planning stopped abruptly at the exact hour my next homework assignment was due.

This largely explains why Brad and I took almost all the same courses all four years at college. I just copied Brad’s course schedule every semester during course enrollment. Brad was considerably better at planning for the future. Fortunately for me, I just had to know him.

Flashback to High School

Brad and I shared a hallway locker in high school with Dave and April (technically, it was my locker, but centrally located on campus, so they each learned the lock combination and commandeered some space). Welcome to the 80’s, a fabulous time to grow up.

One afternoon, Brad and I were standing at the locker chatting.

“Where are you going to college?” I asked.

“I applied and got accepted to the University of Tulsa,” Brad replied.

“Ok. Cool.”

Lightbulb: Maybe I should have started applying to colleges and stuff… or something.

This was probably around March of my senior year in high school.

“What are you going to study?”

“Petroleum Engineering.”

Those are, like, some big words.

No clue… but I nodded my head as if I understood.

My Dad had once said he would have been an engineer if he were to do it over again.

With that as a solid foundation of research into my future, I figured… Why not? Me too, I guess. University of Tulsa. Petroleum Engineering. Here we go… guess I better apply.

So, I did. I invested about 30-45 minutes one evening on the application, including writing the essay. Somehow, I got accepted.

Fast forward four months. Brad and I went to the admissions office at the University of Tulsa to officially enroll in our courses for the Fall semester. The counselor explained the enrollment process and handed us the official university course catalog (the print version, because there was no internet). The course catalog listed every possible course offered by the University, what days & times they were held, the professor, the course description, and any prerequisite classes. It looked like a stack of 3 New York Times Sunday newspapers.

Brad probably put thought into this before we arrived. I mean, he knew about building credit and stuff. Surely, he can pick the correct classes for the next semester, right?

“So, uhh… Brad, which classes are you taking Monday/Wednesday/Friday and which one’s Tuesday/Thursday?”

“Uhh… yeah, that’s what I was thinking too.”

Scribble. Scribble.

“Cool.” Schedule done for next semester. That was fast.

So, not only were we going to room together in the dorm, we were going to take the same classes. Perfect.

Prior to dorm move-in day, our moms had called each other to coordinate so Brad and I would have matching sheets, comforters, pillowcases, and bed skirts.

Whoa. Wait… Bed skirts?!?

I guess it’s normal for parents to help their kids move into college. Our moms ensured our beds were made properly, including matching bed skirts, then left.²

Brad and I looked at each other.

“Dude, this is the guy’s dorm, right? There’s no way we’re having matching bed skirts.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty much like wearing a skirt.”

First thing we did was pull those bad boys off and toss them under the beds, only to resurface nine months later, on move-out day.

Anyway, I think I’ve lost the thread of this article…

A week or two into our first semester, Brad announced, “I’m going to change my major to Mechanical Engineering.”

You can change? I mean…

“OK. Uhh. Yeah. Good idea. Me too,” apparently.

With only a few exceptions, I copied Brad’s schedule every semester for four years. If Brad took the class, I took the class. Not much sense in both of us burning brains cells figuring how to cram all the requisite credits into the allotted four years in the correct order. We had already started to establish a division of labor. Selecting classes was Brad’s job. My job was to copy it.³

Fast forward eight years, my wife (Sofie) and I eventually bought our first house in Louisville, KY. We had excellent credit, largely because we had so many years to establish it. Thanks Brad.

But that’s not what this story is about either.

This story is about the unusual and poignant phone conversation I had with the customer representative at Discover Card Services. Recall that we are still on the phone with her during this part of the story.

Building Relationships & Growing Up

The customer representative was exceptionally friendly. While making initial small talk during our conversation, I learned she had recently moved from Georgia to Utah. I also surmised she was quite young, based on the timbre of her voice and her communication style.

After mentioning my special affinity for my Discover card, she remarked,

“I’m not allowed to have a credit card.”

Well, that’s a strange thing for a customer service representative of a credit card company to say. With several decades of experience talking to customers by phone, I have learned that when a customer, or any stranger really, mentions something of a personal nature, it’s because it is important to them, it is on their mind, and it is almost always worth probing into further.

“Why not?” I ventured.

“My parents won’t let me.”

This is where I decided to take a calculated risk.

“You don’t know me, and I don’t know you, but I’m going to give you some completely unsolicited advice,” I said.

“Okay,” she replied.

“You no longer live at home.”

[long pause to allow her to digest that thought in silence]

I knew she was at least old enough to have full-time employment, and I knew she had moved across the country to Utah by herself. Based on this, I reckoned she was old enough that her parents should no longer have this kind of influence on her life choices.

“Yeah,” she replied, “but I have a spending problem, and I’d probably rack up a lot of debt if I had a credit card. That’s why my mom won’t let me have one.”

An unexpected twist. My immediate thought was,

Oops. Maybe I should have been more sensitive here. I don’t know her story. Maybe I jumped in too quickly with the advice. Maybe, in her specific case, I was giving bad advice. Hmm.

But, for some unknown reason, I quickly ignored my own compassionate logic and felt compelled to say,

“In that case, I’m going to give you some more unsolicited advice.”

“OK”, she replied, as if she was listening attentively (maybe not, but I got the vibe I had her honest permission and that I should say what was on my mind).⁴

“You need to sort yourself out,” I continued.

“I know. I need to grow up,” she immediately replied.

“Well, I wasn’t going to say it like that, but since you did… yeah, you need to grow up. Grow up and start taking responsibility for yourself.”

Being responsible is part of growing up. And growing up is partly about becoming more responsible. At least it should be, as a natural progression of maturing properly.

Growing up is not the same as getting older.

Everyone gets older. Not everyone grows up.

We then moved on and resumed the business of checking other possible fraudulent transactions on my credit card. There were none.

A few minutes later, I apologized for overstepping on the advice to someone I didn’t know, especially since I was unaware of her specific circumstances.

She replied, “No, I really appreciate what you said. I needed to hear that. And sometimes it’s easier to hear things like that from a complete stranger, rather than from your parents.”

Sometimes people are more receptive to advice from strangers than to those closest to them.

Why is that? Probably because strangers do not also associate us (yet) with all the idiotic things we have done in our own lives. For those closer, they know these things. This knowledge of prior knuckle-headedness subtracts from the sage-ness of the advice giver.

Further, when someone close to us gives explicit (and perhaps unwanted) advice, the two must maintain their relationship going forward with those words still echoing through the valley of rapport. It’s something (perhaps yet another thing) the relationship must contend with going forward. More baggage. Just what everyone needs.

By contrast, we can choose to ignore the unsolicited advice of a stranger because, well, who cares about that guy (me in this case)?

Or, we can choose to listen to a stranger’s advice with no additional relationship baggage. She’ll never interact with me again. So, who cares, right? There won’t even be a I told you so months or years later.

Besides, I had absolutely zero incentive to say something like this to her. In fact, negative incentive, because who wants to be a jerk to someone. Not me. Especially to the person with some sort of decision making surrounding my credit card.

She continued the conversation, “Yeah, I need to grow up. I know.”

“Well, here’s the good news. You’re young. You moved to Salt Lake City by yourself, found a job, and work full-time at a good company,” I countered.

“Yeah, AND I have my own apartment, and I pay the rent myself,” she added proudly.

“See. There you go. That’s how you start taking responsibility for yourself.”

“True.”

Taking it to the next level, “My guess is, you didn’t move to Utah for a job. You moved to Utah and then found a job, right?”

“Yeah…???,”

How did he know that?

“I’m also guessing you didn’t move to Utah to find a job because you just loved Utah. You moved to Utah to distance yourself from your parents and Utah sounded cool and sufficiently far away. You were moving away as much as you were moving to, correct?”

“Uhh… yeah. Exactly. That’s… that’s right.”

How could he possibly know that?

This was a good time to add an encouraging word.

“Look. This is positive. You moved away to claim a larger slice of your independence. You found a job. You’re working full-time. You’ve started to pay your own way. You’re taking steps in the right direction. That’s how you grow up. It’s a long journey of small, incremental steps. You’re on the right path. Keep going… and sort out your spending problem. Figure out what’s driving that.”

I felt like I needed to tell her this. I believe it was spot on. I knew it. She knew it.

Brief silence.

Sometimes it pays to take a risk in conversation.

I hope this interaction was one of those cases. I hope, after we hung up, she paused for a moment to think, What just happened to me?

Or maybe instead, she suddenly had to vent to a co-worker:

“The nerve! This guy just told me to ‘Grow up’. Can you believe that?!? I would have hung up on him, but he’s the customer, so I had to sit there and listen to this random guy tell me how to live. What a jerk! He probably cuts his hair himself, super-short because there’s not much left. (How did she know?) He’s probably the one that needs to grow up!” (Also, true.)

I hope that’s not how it went. I hope instead she continues her journey of growing up, just as the rest of us are also striving to sort ourselves out and to grow up alongside her.

We are, after all, a large parade of people growing up together, for a short season.

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Related posts:

Practical Advice On Budgeting & Spending

The Danger of Normalizing Extremes

The Struggles of Growing Up Today

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About the Author – Andy Jones

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FOOTNOTES:

1. We all appreciate our credit card company watching out for us like this. Merchants appreciate it even more, because they ultimately eat the financial loss from credit card fraud. Most people assume the credit card companies cover this. Not true. They simply refund any losses to the cardholder and do not credit the merchant with the funds. In other words, it’s the business owner that gets hosed when they ship product without payment. This is why it is critical to catch it quickly, before products are shipped.
2. This was a super exciting day for me. Consequently, I was completely oblivious to how sad this day was for my mom, as both of her kids were now officially out of the house. If I had to do it over again, I would have hugged her longer and come home more often to visit. But, no, I was an 18-year-old knucklehead and did neither of these.
3. Not only were Brad and I roommates and taking the same classes, we were usually lab partners, by choice. We worked well together… mostly because Brad was smarter and a more disciplined student. We also ate all three meals together, every day. We had an absolute blast.

   The next year, Brad lived next door. The following year, he lived on the other side of the building. The last year of college, I shared an apartment with Eric, and Brad stayed in the dorm.

   Even though the distance between our rooms grew with time, we still spent much of our days together, frequently studied together and continued to eat meals together. The day we graduated, the time came to say goodbye and part ways. I would later record the following in my diary about our farewell:

   Saturday, September 28, 1993. Brad and I, when it was time, just stood there and cried so hard that neither of us could say anything.

   Brad and I now live 2,000 miles apart, yet the lifelong friendship persists to this day. It would be difficult to overstate how grateful I am for this incredible friendship. On any given day, we are still more likely to text or talk than not. In fact, we spoke today, and yesterday. For decades, I just assumed, implicitly, that we would somehow reconnect and move closer together at some point. I guess this was just in the back of my mind. In 2019, while hanging out at our 30-year high school reunion, it finally dawned on me that perhaps that would not be the case. I’m not sure why I was so slow to come around to this seemingly obvious conclusion. But when I did, the realization saddened me. Still does. The years remaining are fewer than they once were.

4. On a few occasions, I have been the recipient of seemingly random advice like this myself. Two times in particular stand out to me. In both instances, I had this strong feeling that I should really listen to the person across from me. In both cases, I felt like it was going to be something I needed to hear, (and it was), although I might not have wanted to hear it. If you have experienced this feeling, you recognize it in yourself, and in others. I felt she was in that zone. So, I continued the conversation down this path, on instinct.