On the radio

If you listen to public radio, you might have heard me this weekend as a call-in guest on Marketplace Money. Unlike any of my other media appearances in the past few years, this one had nothing to do with my books, my blog, weight loss, headaches, or anything relevant to my online presence. Instead, I had a question about a $2600 request for overpayment on a 401K rollover from my last employer who made a vesting error on the employer’s matching contributions and oh my God do you want to stab your eyes with a rusty paperclip yet? Because I do. Anyway, I wanted some help sorting out this financial mess that was not my fault but is now my problem, so Tess Vigeland and Kathy Kristof came to the rescue. You can listen to it by clicking the “Listen to the Show” or “Listen to this Story” buttons on this page and scrolling to the 21:35 mark. I even slipped in a plug for PastaQueen.com! I’m getting much better at this self-promotion [...]

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After college I took a job doing phone surveys to help pay the bills before I was able to find a “real” job. It wasn’t telemarketing. I doubt I would have lasted an hour as a telemarketer before hanging up my headset and searching under the desk to find my lost soul. The company I worked for conducted focus groups about new products and needed to find people in a certain demographic to get their input on whatever out clients were testing. We called, asked people questions, and if they fit the parameters we invited them to the group.

I learned a lot about people. Some people were willing to lie to try to get into the group so they could get paid the participation fee. I went through about 3 pages of a diaper survey with a woman before I asked her what cartoon character was on the side of the brand name diapers she had supposedly bought, but she couldn’t give me the correct answer. Then I had to go back through 3 pages [...]

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