The Lil'wrekker and her dilemma

In My Humble Opinion
1

Listen to this.

The Lil’wrekker works in a professors office while finishing her degree.

Obviously the man doesn’t pay his bills. Lots of stories of bill collectors and people calling the office.

This morning. He is out with a class. A woman comes in looking for him.
Lil’wrekker says she’s deranged talking to the young woman in the outer office. That one sends her in to LW.
She immediately turns her phone on record and video.
The woman is from a realtor rental company. The Prof is back 2 mos rent.
LW doesn’t care, has no control over this. Knows nothing about the mans personal financial situation or when he can pay.
The woman cursed her. Called her illiterate and an idiot (She’s a grad student working a min.pay position for some cash).

The video is 22 minutes long. All you can hear is this woman going ballistic.
The Lil’wrekker says exactly two things. “You have to take this up with Prof. (Name insert).”
And…“What do you want me to do about it, pay it?” and she giggled at herself for saying that.

Totally incensed the woman further. Then she went crazy trying to grab her phone away.

The LW called out to the other young lady to call the Police.
And the lady left.

My opinion is she should put the video on all social media and call out the Realty company and the woman.
But, it is a University. And she doesn’t want to run a foul of them.

Your opinions please.

2

Please do not publicly shame anyone over this. That person could receive rape and death threats if it went viral. I think it’s one of the cruelest things you can do to a person.

Let the cops handle it.

3

I’m not gonna do anything.
First off.

I think the woman should be reprimanded by some one.
Second.

Police were not called afterall. The woman left thinking they would call.
So she knows she was wrong.
Bullies can’t be left to their games. My daughter was bullied for no fault of her own.
I, rightly have more sympathy for what happened to the Lil’wrekker than I do the realtors rep. I really don’t care what happens to her.
She brought the crap maybe it should get on her.

Again, I would never do anything to this person.
The Lil’wrekker will decide what to do. She’s an adult. She is the victim.
I trust her to do the right thing.

Just wanted opinions on this behavior.
What are people thinking?

4

I don’t think there is such a thing as public privacy anymore.
Its her call, I don’t know the best thing to do. At least they have a pic to show the police.

5

It is not a similar situation, but anyway: a while back, I got spammed by a company owned (and run by) one of this country (South Africa) most prolific spammers. Note, spam has been illegal since 2002.

It was nominally sent out by a small corporate law firm, but I have some skill in identifying the actual source.

I therefore forwarded the mail to the (apparently innocent) law firm, asking if they were aware of the reputation of the “marketing” company involved, and supplying evidence that this gentleman had been featured as one of the top spammers (cough, online marketers) on several reputable websites.

Then I got a phone call. The spammer had traced me down somehow, and offered to break my legs.

Naturally not wanting such a thing, I chose to fight back, and in a second email to his lawyer clients, in which I CC’d the spammer, I explained the possible reputational damage to a small law firm that this association could cause. I also mentioned I had recorded the call.

Result: no more spam, no more threatening calls.

So while my story was off topic, in my opinion is to stand up to bullies. I would approach the realtor’s boss (if I had been in your daughter’s situation) first, describe the situation and mention I have a recording.

Then sit back, and watch nature take its course.

I am not a big fan of “revenge”, I don’t think it is healthy. So I would not pursue the issue further. But I do have faith that that realtor will be in a whole new world of shit at work, in the same way I have faith there was a short panic in the boardroom in my own case, followed by a swift firing of that “marketing” company.

6

Nice. That worked out good.

She’s thinking she doesn’t wanna embarrass the Professor. Or jeopardize her job.

So I don’t know what she’ll do. At the moment.

Seems Mom is more concerned than she is about the whole thing.

7

I’m not a collections guy but such behavior I do believe can rise to violations of various flavors of fair debt collection laws…

8

It seems like the person was really, really into her job. Brings a real passion to it.

I knew a bill collector once. Super-chill guy. Terrible at his job.

It’s a shitty job but I guess it has to be done. Of course people don’t have to be jerks about it, but it’s probably effective. I wonder if it’s even effective to act like that to people who aren’t going to be paying the bills? Maybe the passion that your daughter will no doubt bring to her boss, when she tells him the story, will motivate him a bit more than if she said “the bill collector came by. Left her card, said please call her when you get a sec.”

9

That’s kinda what she told him when he came to the office. She said he threw the card in her trash can when he walked thru.

He knows.

10

Good thinking! The problem with “put[ting] the video on all social media” – an absolutely terrible idea – is that it’s not just this real estate woman who’s being implicated, it’s drawing in the reputations of the professor (“so he’s a deadbeat, huh?” would be the perceived message), the reputation of the university itself, and by extension, the reputation of the Lil’wrekker herself for having done this.

In the Lil’wrekker’s position, I’d approach the prof, show him the recording of this very nasty woman, and let him take the initiative about how he wants to handle it, and offering him the recorded evidence as support. The LW is now in the position of putting the prof in the driver’s seat while also being supportive.

11

Exactly what I was going to say. If the harasser was from a RE company rather than from a collections agency, said company might expect a tad more decorum, at least when their reps are dealing with innocent bystanders who have no control over whether the deadbeat pays up or not.

I also wonder if LW’s problem, not of her own making, may end up extending past this particular incident. Even when it dies down, it seems likely there will be more of the same in the future. Has she thought about how she is going to handle it?

I can understand her not wanting to call out her professor, but it sounds like SOMEONE needs to. He’s not doing the university any favors by causing this kind of kerfuffle to be brought to campus. Would LW consider talking to the school’s administration/HR office?

12

I think the HR dept. might in the thinking.
The other young woman in the office is terribly upset. She’s wanting to quit.

The LW can be unflappable sometimes.
I think she’s being too cool about it.
Like I said, maybe Mom is more worried than she.
The video is very upsetting, to me.

13

I can understand LW’s fear of running afoul of the professor. However, what that women did was illegal. Under the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act, bill collectors cannot legally come to your place of business. A deranged woman violating the law is not something to shrug off. The prof may not be worried, but he should be.

It might help alleviate LW’s anxiety if she and the secretary work together. First off, campus security should be notified. LW and the secretary don’t have to talk about the professor’s debts, just that this woman acting deranged came in and was acting aggressively, including yelling slurs at LW. Campus security is sometimes pretty lame, but they should make the call anyway.

They should also contact the real estate office, just a polite call to tell them that a deranged and belligerent woman claiming to be from XYZ Collections stormed into the office and shouted slurs at someone. Since this is illegal, they think the real estate office would want to know so they can contact XYZ Collections.

I hope this gets resolved quickly for LW’s sake and yours, too.

14

Well, let’s see…

United States, 2024, cell phone video, someone acting Ass…

Monetize it!

That’s always the answer.

15

She’s more patient than I would have been. I would have asked that the police (or security) be called after five minutes.

16

Like I said. She’s unflappable. And was probably thinking, ooh cel phone video!!
Young peeps these days! WYGD?

I’m always amazed by what they will stand by and video.

17

Contact with HR is rarely a good thing for a minimum wage worker. Min wage workers are as disposable as paper plates at a picnic.

Also, publicly embarrassing your boss is absolutely, positively, NEVER a good idea for anybody.
Not for a minimum wage worker. And especially not when you will continue to have contact with your boss in the future. Her boss is a respected professor, she is just a lowly grad student, (I assume at the same campus in your rural area.).

If she goes public with this, the prof will bad-mouth her to others on campus and off.

My advice: forget the whole episode.
If she escalates it, she has a lot to lose, and nothing to gain.
Save the video of course. If the crazy lady returns, then make a second video, and you have a more serious case. But even then, unless there is actual damage to LW(not just shouting), I would ignore it all. It is none of her concern .

18

And seemingly a deadbeat. :wink:

19

I can understand the urge to publicly shame someone for the kind of behavior described in the OP, but yeah, there could be disproportionate consequences. That’s one thing I got from Jon Ronson’s book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed.

20

I haven’t had a landline in decades, but when I last had one I got a call from collections people about the person who rented the house prior to me. Several of these calls led me to investigate a bit, and I learned that the person bill collectors were looking for currently lived less than a mile away.

From that point forward, I told any bill collector calling that I knew where the guy lived and could provide his current address. For a fee. I wanted a percentage of what the collections company received.

Nobody wanted to pay me. They all were monumentally pissed off and threatened to sue me for withholding necessary information. Of course I laughed at this.

Ahhh, the good old days. Landlines, answering phone calls, wow.