Laughter and Tears

In honor of Labor Day, and in a cheap rip-off of DeeDee's post, I present to you an assortment of insurance statements I encountered as a transcriptionist. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll say, "HUH?"

There was the old widower man who was trolling for women at the roach motels on the bad side of town. He had lots of "friends," and every now and then they spent the night at his house. He knew they were "crack hos," but he was "just trying to help them out."

And this particular CH kept stealing his car, but he kept on finding it. And he kept on letting her come back and stay at his house. And slept with his wallet and car keys under his pillow. But I guess he was a real deep sleeper, cause the last time she got his wallet and car keys and took his car, and he never saw it again.

The Claim Rep says, "Well, Mr. Widower, why did you bring her back to your house, after she'd stolen your car before?" And Mr. Widower says, "Well, I'll tell ya, I was just lonely. And I was trying to help her out."

That one made me very sad.

Sometimes I had to stop the tape to laugh, and sometimes I had to stop the tape to cry.

The saddest one to me was a guy who was driving along the service road at night. He was looping around under a bridge when an entire family, pushing a stroller, stepped out in front of his car. I don't know how many fatalities there were that night, but I can still hear that guy breaking down on the tape.

There were some fatalities that were tragic, but the insurance claims were misguided. A little boy drowned in a pond at his babysitter's property, while his mother was there and supposedly supervising him. The mother decided to file a claim against the babysitter.

A lady was walking alongside a float in a parade, which she had been warned against. She tripped and fell under a trailer and was killed. Her husband filed a claim against the owner of the trailer, and against the city that held the parade.

How about some strange thefts?

"Mr. Homeowner, why did you have $100 bottles of Cristal hidden in the attic of your $40,000 house? And how do you think the burglar knew to look up there for them?"

"Miss Homeowner, can you provide a receipt for the Rolex that was stolen? Or explain how you paid for it while working at McDonald's?"

And I've saved the best for last.

My all-time favorite was a guy who traveled to New Orleans to make money after Hurricane Katrina. He bought two utility trucks to take with him (you know, the kind with toolboxes on them, or some kind of towing equipment, or whatever), and rounded up a couple of friends/acquaintances, and they headed down to New Orleans to get rich. They camped in church parking lots, they stayed in abandoned houses; they slept wherever they could.

He met up with other guys there, and from the sounds of it, everything was very loosey-goosey. This guy was letting people he didn't even know take his $100,000 trucks for days at a time.

But here's the clincher. The insured guy's marriage was falling apart, so he came back home to Texas, AND NEVER WENT BACK. And a few months later, he reports those utility trucks stolen and tries to file an insurance claim.

The Claim Rep says, "Well, how do you know they were stolen?" And they insured guy goes, "Well, I'm sure they've been stolen by now. I left 'em parked in the Walgreen's parking lot, and the last time I talked to Joe, he told me they weren't there any more."

Y'all. The guy left his trucks in New Orleans and never went back to get them. And then tried to file a theft claim. Brilliant.