Playing The Percentages

What are your superpowers? One of mine, cultivated from early childhood and strengthened routinely in my role as an emergency physician, is the ability to frame a situation in a way that allows me to move beyond aggravations, real and imagined.

(Excluded from this claim is the ability to deal with preteens and adolescents, which I consider a universally shared Achille's heel).

Getting unwillingly exposed to distasteful bodily fluids from other persons, and caring for persons under the influence of substances that make them extremely unpleasant to be around are all part of the job. Some of those you advocate hardest for are as likely to say thank you as f-you. Consequently, you build up a tolerance for hassle (and a habit of double gloving) by necessity.

Getting unexpected infusions of chaos and overstimulation at unpredictable intervals during a shift results in the ability to compartmentalize when needed. You have a job to do right now, so everything you want to feel gets shoved into your mental "overhead compartment" until the end of your shift.

These skills translate to other facets of life in interesting ways.

Story Break

A close friend from high school who returned after college to spend several years living in our hometown would update me on another classmate, "A." I recalled "A" to be tall, average looking without being particularly handsome, and having an average personality.

As relayed by my friend, "A" had the uncanny ability to emerge from our town's bar scene with above average girlfriends who seemed out of his league, being far more attractive than he was. He managed this feat on a consistent basis, which fascinated us in that way men in their twenties who pursue graduate education obsess over for no good reason.

"A" confided to my friend that his secret was playing the percentages: "I ask every girl that I find attractive to go out, and eventually I find that 5% that are willing to give a guy like me a chance. As a salesman, I don't take the rejection to heart; that's simply the cost of doing business, and the rare big wins offset the expected frequent losses."

Where Are You Going With This?

Among the minor inconveniences we experienced with the advent of COVID was the cancellation of our summer travel. We had used Chase Ultimate Rewards points to book our flights (using the Sapphire Reserve card), and had over four thousand dollars of value tied up in flights that were suddenly not going to happen.

It is an aggravation that comes nowhere near the hardships so many are facing during this time, and I'm acutely aware of that, but it promised to be an arduous process to try to hang onto those points.

First came a game of chicken with the airlines - we had to wait until awfully close to the dates before they cancelled our flights. If we blinked and requested a refund before they canceled the flights, we'd be stuck with credit on airlines that we would not ordinarily fly on (Lot and Aeroflot, the national airlines of Poland and Russia, respectively).

With nerves of steel, I waited, and as expected, the airlines cancelled the flights. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, a canceled flight for any reason by the airline entitles the passenger to a full refund.

Next came the process of contacting Chase - I spoke to multiple very polite and professional agents, none of whom were empowered to refund my flight miles. I took copious notes including whom I spoke with, wrote down an agent name and case # for each phone call I made, and followed their advice to contact the airlines directly.

Then I spoke to each airline - again encountering agents who were polite and professional. They told me they would send in the request for a refund to central, but given the reality that everyone and their mom was doing the same thing, they warned "it might be months before you hear back on a refund."

Finally I spoke with Chase every couple of weeks to follow up, going once more through endless painful phone trees to get to a rep who eventually told me that by August I'd receive a definite update.

A few days ago I called once more, and after reciting every call, Chase rep, and step I'd taken. I also explained that I'd tracked a total of 8 hours of phone calls so far in trying to resolve this issue. The rep asked me to hold while she found me her supervisor. It was this supervisor who turned out to be my equivalent of the 5% of the dating pool that "A" kept holding out for.

The supervisor jumped in on this latest call about 35 minutes into the process, at which time I informed her I had a planned lunch meeting starting in ten minutes.

• She offered to investigate and call me back in 90 minutes when my meeting was to end (when, incidentally, her shift was to end as well).
• She followed through and called, informing me that one airline had approved the refund and a it had been an oversight on the part of prior agents who failed to see notes on the digital file approving the refund.
• She could not contact the final airline, but after reviewing the FAQ on their website, she concluded that their policy explicitly stated I was entitled to a refund.

Those 8+ hours on the phone were remunerated at a rate of ~$500 per hour, and by simply persevering, I was eventually able to find that needle in the haystack service representative who had both empathy for my situation and the power to help me.

Playing the percentages; compartmentalizing the feelings that were not going to help in the moment; and tolerating a prolonged hassle were all key to facing this particular aggravation.

I'm grateful to emergency medicine for flexing these aggravation-adapted muscles often enough that they come in handy in civilian life (one could argue it's a form of professional stoic practice).

I'm grateful to financial independence to enabling me to face the aggravations in medicine infrequently enough that they don't get to me.