Sometimes, when you work with the general public, you find yourself privy to things beyond your wildest estimations.

Of course, most days are like many others, but occasionally you come across something that will stick in your mind for decades to come.

That was exactly what the call handler in this story came across back in the late 1990s, when they were inadvertently privy to a marital situation they’d never forget.

Read on to find out what happened.

That child is NOT of MY household!

Way back in 1998, I was working for a call center company whose main business was from other companies outsourcing their customer service to this company.

For example, if you called the 1-800 number on the back of a box of Jell-O, or Kraft Mac & Cheese, your call would be answered be someone at my company who worked on that particular project.

My project was the benefits department for a telecommunications company. We handled enrollments and changes to their employee health insurance, life insurance, dental, etc.

And one call really stood out to this former employee, even all these years later.

One day, a manager called in. You could always tell when it was a manager because they would have you on speakerphone, like they were doing you a favor by squeezing you in to their busy schedule.

This particular employee wanted to add his newborn son to his health insurance. I congratulated him, added the child in the system, went through the standard spiel about how the coverage worked, and advised him that he would receive a confirmation letter in the mail in 7-10 business days.

At this point, he asked if I could send the letter to his P.O. Box instead.

I said “sure”, and put the address in the alternate field. What I did not know at the time was that the system would send the letter to BOTH addresses.

Then, something odd happened.

About two weeks later I was taking calls, and I got a call from a lady who told me that she is not the employee, her husband is the employee, and she had a question about the coverage.

No problem, as we were allowed to disclose such info to spouses. She gave me his SSN and it sounded familiar.

While the system pulled up the info, I asked her how I could assist her.

She explained, “Well, we received a letter of confirmation about our child’s health insurance, and we don’t have a new baby.” I replied “Ok no problem, let me check the system.”

Of course, we all know what happened next.

By this time, the system had pulled up the information, and lo and behold, it was the same guy that had called two weeks prior to add the new child.

So, I confirmed that the employee had called in on such and such date to add the new child, named “David”, born on such and such date, etc.

What followed was the coldest that I have ever heard someone speak in my life up to that point: “That…child…is NOT of MY household, and I want it removed from our insurance IMMEDIATELY!”

I replied, “Not of your household? What do you – ooohhhhh…”

This was about to get very awkward.

Yup, you guessed it, the husband had had a child with his mistress, added him to the coverage, and tried to end run around his wife finding out – which failed miserably due to how our system worked.

I had to explain to her, in the calmest way possible, that since her husband was the employee and had added the child, he would have to call to remove the child. She assured me that he would be calling back, thanked me for my help, and hung up.

I had to take myself out of the call queue for a few minutes to compose myself. As I did so, I heard hysterical laughter coming from the office at the end of the row of cubicles.

A few minutes later, my supervisor’s manager came down and asked me about the call. Apparently, they had been monitoring it for quality assurance, and it was the funniest thing he had heard to date.

Wow, that employee was about to have a lot of explaining to do when he got home.

Sure he did a good thing by putting the newborn baby on his health insurance – but trying to hide it from his wife?

He was going to slip up eventually, but to do so so quickly is true karma.

Let’s see what the Reddit community made of this.

This person explained how oddly frequent such situations are.

While others sympathised with the wife.

Meanwhile, this Redditor enjoyed the gossip.

That husband really did make a series of mistakes here.

Keeping it from his wife was one thing, but the very fact that she found out in such an unpleasant and shocking manner must have been devastating for her.

Let’s hope he learned his lesson.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a customer who insists that their credit card works, and finds out that isn’t the case.