Sometimes a person’s biggest undoing is that they’re a jerk. Doesn’t matter if they’re at work, at home, out with friends, whatever, them being a jerk is like jamming a stick into their own bicycle wheel and then crying about no one liking them or not being very cooperative. 

We’ll be talking about a similar situation today. A clerical error led to a woman receiving $1.2k from a company by mistake. She called them up, attempting to explain the issue, but a rude receptionist wouldn’t listen to her and just pretty much sent her packing. 

More info: Reddit

Sometimes a person would rather shoot themselves in the foot than be nice to you for a couple of moments

Image credits: Karolina Grabowska (not the actual photo)

The poster took it to the malicious compliance community to share her experience with a check refund after a clerical error

Image credits: mandolin2712

Image credits: Nataliya Vaitkevich (not the actual photo)

She made a mistake addressing to whom the check would go and cancelled the transfer upon realizing

Image credits: mandolin2712

Image credits: MART PRODUCTION (not the actual photo)

The check still reached the incorrect recipient, who thought it was good and decided to refund her for it

Image credits: mandolin2712

She received the refund, but called up the place, attempting to explain that a mistake had happened, but the person she was talking to was rude and didn’t listen

Image credits: mandolin2712

As their conversations had been recorded, she just took the refund, getting $1200, to the dismay of the company

Alright, so just in case you didn’t catch that entire exchange on your first go, let me try to simplify it. And no, I didn’t get it either, you’re not alone.

So, the original poster (OP) borrowed $1200 from her dad as she was in a difficult spot. Dad said okay, OP got the money, managed to stabilize her situation, and it was time to send the money back.

As this was almost 10 years ago, online banking and money-transfer apps weren’t as popular, so the simplest and cheapest way to send money was by check. So OP did it, although not via mail, but rather via their bank.

It was at this point that autocorrect had messed up the address on the check, so it went not to the poster’s dad, but rather a medical facility in the same state. So they received the check, but the money being transferred with that check had been pulled by OP, so it was essentially a dud. And since transfers used to (and still do) sometimes take a while to do their magic, they didn’t know it was a dud yet. 

By this point, OP had already sent a check by mail to her dad. 

The medical facility, assuming that it was the father, who had used their services previously, was attempting to pay up for something, mailed the check back to the sender (OP), and so the poster was up $1200.

So just in case, a small recap. OP sends transfer to wrong “person”, cancels transfer midway, “person” receives their check but not the money, which has been canceled, thus they mail OP a refund, assuming the check will come through.

OP was smart to explicitly ask if the check really was for her, after attempting to explain the situation in vain. When the lady mistakenly confirmed it, while being rude to boot, OP decided that she had tried hard enough to help these stupid people, but they didn’t deserve her being patient with their rudeness.

Image credits: Gary Barnes (not the actual photo)

Bored Panda even managed to reach out to the poster for a quick comment about the whole situation and she graciously replied to us!

Although all this time has passed, OP still gets a chuckle thinking about the whole thing – imagine messing up so hard at your job and as a person that you’re still a hoot to laugh at, 9 years down the line. Ouch.

She also has no idea why the rude lady tried to brush her off that hard, especially when she was just trying to do the right thing. “Maybe she deals with people who are upset about bills they owe or the amount they got back and she thought I was complaining? I tried several times to explain to her that it wasn’t supposed to be mailed to me, but she just wouldn’t listen.”

If the big question on your mind was what OP had used the money for, it all went to bills and groceries as she had 2 small children at the time, which made that month much easier to get through.

Image credits: RDNE Stock project (not the actual photo)

Now that almost 10 years have passed, OP is pretty safe from any repercussions of anything bad happening because of the incident, if that’s on your mind. 

The most interesting part of the post was how many people absolutely couldn’t grasp what was going on in the post. Many called this entire story a portal into a totally different world – America.

In Europe, for example, the old check went extinct sometime around the ‘00s, but in the States, businesses still take checks, despite fraud and easier ways to pay being available. 

The best comment describing this thing comes from MuadLib:

“It always amuses me that Americans mail checks like it’s still the paleocene. You guys don’t have internet over there?”

There are many things that are different in America, if you think about it. Insider even has an entire list of the things that frequently confuse travelers. 

For example, if you think about it, all the money in the States looks the same, besides some slight design changes on the nominations. Same shade of green, same size, etc.

Also, the dreaded toilet stall gaps. According to Toilet Partitions (which, I assume, is a reputable source for this info, based on the name alone) those gaps are meant to discourage inappropriate behavior, citing that it makes it easier for law enforcement to spot people hiding from them in stalls. 

I’m sorry, but I’d rather someone go uncaught, rather than have strangers peer into my stall while I’m doing my business. 

There are so many more differences, like sales tax, the healthcare system, ads for prescription medicine, the list goes on… Oh, right, the guns too. They’re kind of rare overseas, depending on where you’re from.

The poster’s story, although dubbed confusing by many, collected over 8.5k upvotes, which just shows how much people enjoyed it as a whole. Share your own thoughts in the comments below!

Many comments complained that they couldn’t understand the sequence in the story, but those who did said they enjoyed the malicious compliance

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