Credit Card Blues

We all know that money is dirty, and talking about it is like talking about one's sex life. So, if you're easily offended, please read no further.

Well, here's how it goes. My credit card was refused at the bookshop yesterday. I had no idea why. I phoned up the credit card company, and learnt that I had gone over my limit. The man asked me why this had happened, which rather confused me. I thought that he would tell me that. Anyway, surely it's self-explanatory – I had spent too much.

I was told I would have to do something within 28 days, but I didn't find out what, because the phone card I was using expired and I didn't have any money to buy another one.

Anyway, I managed to get a new phone card today and find out more. Perhaps I should point out that there's really no punchline to this story, so don't expect me to do anything other than peter out pathetically at the end of it. To continue – I was asked a number of questions by the girl on the end of the phone. She asked, for instance, whether she could call me "Quentin" or whether I would prefer "Mr Crisp". She asked me how long I had been unemployed. She asked what kind of work I do, when I do work. She even advised me that the credit card company needed to know the outcome of a job interview I have on Monday. She warned me, moreover, that a 'default letter' had been issued to me. I asked what this was and was told it was a "harshly worded" legal letter. I am quoting verbatim there. She truly described it as "harshly worded". I must admit this amused me. Perhaps she was saying this because she was a sweet girl and she didn't want me to worry about the letter too much, but it just made the whole thing appear ridiculously calculated to me. And, of course, it is.

I imagined – dimly, because the business world is so arcane that it is largely beyond my imagining – people meeting in an office somewhere, discussing the scale of penalties they have for the kind of violations they are hoping the credit card user will fall into.

"Well, we'll need some kind of legal letter, but we don't want it to sound too balanced. There should be a suggestion of threat somewhere, even if we can't immediately substantiate that threat. Something nebulous, but difficult to ignore."

"So, in terms of the wording, do we mean stern, harsh, menacing, scolding, contemptuous or something else?"

"Maybe harsh for the first letter. We can progress to menacing and have back up conciliatory letters if we get enough money. We should also have a few self-righteous letters on hand, just in case."

I also found it interesting to learn that I was considered a "good customer" because I had only gone over the limit once.

My intrigue got the better of me:

"Does that mean it's rare to go over the limit only once, or is that par for the course?" I asked, in what was, admittedly, a confusing pairing of alternatives. I suppose I should have said, "Or is that about average?"

I was really wondering if people generally went over the limit repeatedly, as her comment seemed to suggest.

She laughed.

"Yes, I think that's part of the course," she said.

My pedantic instincts as an unemployed teacher of English were aroused by her mangling of the idiom, but I told myself not to always mentally correct people's language. Maybe she was right, anyway. All part of the course.