I’m sorry, I can’t assist with that.

I have been subject to decades of cruelty, deliberately targeted and dragged into the shadows that many don’t even know exist. As my husband would say, “They want you, dead! Morte!”  These are the nasty tactics large businesses deploy in order to force a person to fold in on themselves; shrivel up and die. I’m to do as they say. I’m to pay them, when they owe me, for example.

I’m talking about reps who gas lit me into oblivion for two decades. I’m talking about keeping me on the phone, endlessly to argue about things like why a 220K bill for a overnight stay post a three level fusion was not medically necessary. Or how about the 25 phone calls about the 11K bill I needed to pay if I did not want to have my insurance canceled… even though I owed nothing.

“But I don’t owe that money. I owe you, nothing.”

“You do owe the money and you’re going to have to pay it. We know it’s a lot, so we’re giving your until April to pay it in full.”

“I DO NOT OWE YOU 11K! I do not owe you a dime! The proof is in my hand and displayed on you website. We have a legally binding contract!”

“You do owe it. This is the amount you have to pay. This is your bill and you are going to have to pay it. You are late paying it as it is, but as I said, we are granting you an extension until April. You must pay it and if you don’t…”

I’m talking about having your specific calls, routed to reps who put you hold for 40 minutes, talk with fake accents, blow kazoos in your ear, give conflicting info in the same call, transfer you into the void, transfer you to supervisors who don’t exist and so forth. The point is to waste your time, accomplish nothing, over and over, until you throw your hands up and quit.

What is this, if not inflicting pain on a stranger, when you know it’s wrong? Because an authority figure told you to! These are professional gas lighters and I have encountered many of them.

In Milgram’s experiment, the subjects could see the person they were harming. They heard the screams. Some of them broke down, refused to continue, walked out. But in the modern day version, your tormentor is abstracted from your reality. They know it’s wrong, but they’re just doing their job, as they’ve been trained to.  They system has created some type of moral distancing. There’ a wall between the action and the consequence. Do the wrong thing and the corporation has your back!

People comply on both sides. I’d like to say that I don’t comply, but I did comply. I paid $1600 on that fake bill. It was extorted from me, while my family was under siege. Specifically, my husband had been diagnosed with oral cancer and needed radical surgery. This was at the same time I needed cervical surgery. I was thinking, “pay now”, “fight later”. Can you imagine being party to something like this?

My husband and I got through that period and I came up swinging. I got my $1600 back, which incidentally, proves it was false in the first place.

I think about people who work at these jobs. Sadly, they are typical. According to  AI, “Milgram found that roughly 65% of participants went all the way to the maximum shock—even when they believed they were causing real harm. That number has been replicated, with variations, across cultures and decades. There is a core willingness to obey authority that seems to be baked into human social wiring. It is not 100%, and it is not 0%. It hovers around two-thirds. In a system with high perceived legitimacy, distance from the victim, no dissenters, neutral moral framing, and high personal stakes, compliance can be 80–90%.”

We’re not evolving.  Sorry, but we are not.

Years ago, my husband taught me to think things like this through in advance. Know where you’re lines are; you’re less likely to make a mistake.

What do you think?