Being on the hit list of Murphy’s Law isn’t the nicest situations to be in. Even as we give in our best to waive off all possibilities of getting into it, the good old law does ensure to make its presence felt, come what may. As much as I hate it, I am once again in the mischievous hands of Murphy’s Law. This time it’s been particularly nasty, frustrating, and unusually long.
This happened earlier this month, when I was at the LIC office to pay our premium. Being bad at memorizing numbers, I’ve inculcated a habit of writing them down, which is exactly what I had done that day. When my turn came, I handed the slip with the policy numbers to the teller. He quickly punched in the first set of numbers, confirmed the policy details, took the money and generated the receipt. Nice and smooth, so I thought.
This is when Mr. Murphy stepped in. To make it simpler for the teller, I told him to just change the last digit in the first policy to get the second. But , a second later, the teller told me that the second policy had some other name. I requested him to check once again, but to no avail. So I told him not to deposit the money, and left the office fuming at the teller because I was convinced that I had written down the number correctly. I decided to come back the following weekend after reconfirming the number, still perplexed as to whether the teller couldn’t understand my handwriting and my vocal prompts .
Not wanting to rely on my handwriting again, I took an old receipt that had the policy details printed on it. I was convinced that this time round, there won’t be any problem, and I’d be finally able to pay t5he premium. As my turn came, the teller told me that they wouldn’t accept any payments as they closed cash transactions at noon. As per my understanding, the teller remains open till 12:30, that’s why I reached the office at least 20 minutes in advance.
I used the female charm to make them make an exception and accept the premium. I was told to wait for five minutes as the they were having problems connecting to server that processes out-station payments. So I waited, then I waited some more, then some, and finally when my patience ran out, I affixed a fake smile on my face and asked what seemed to be the problem. I was told that the server usually never goes down, but that day it did. Why? Because Mr. Murphy wanted it to.
On my third visit to the LIC office, I found the server still not responding, and an employee suggested that paying cash wasn’t a good idea anyways. She suggested that I give a check as it would be much simpler. This made absolute sense, but left me wondering why didn’t anyone tell this to me on my two previous visits. Once again, I left the LIC office without paying the premium.
I was determined to accomplish this mundane task in my fourth visit so took a signed check from Manu, I would just have to fill in the amount and drop the check at the counter. Simple, isn’t it, so I thought. But soon, I was once again cursing, not the LIC staff but myself.
As the lady manning the teller started banging the keyboard, I couldn’t help but congratulate myself for a job finally done. The printing of a receipt signals the end of a transaction, and when I saw mine get printed, I was so sure that now nothing could go wrong. But Murphy said that when things have to go wrong, they will. As the teller rechecked the receipt, she noticed that the amount that I had filled in was wrong. Now I would have to wait for my bank to dishonor the check, only then could I make a fresh payment.
Frustrated to the brink of madness, I was ready to pull my hair out when I realized that I being the joint account holder of which the check was, could correct the amount. The staff told me that there still existed a slight chance of the check being dishonored. If this did happen, I would once again have to come to the LIC office and redo the process, which I am hoping doesn’t happen, of course Murphy willing.
