The Case of the Over-Sharing Timesharer
By: Jonathan Hermann
I’m the kind of guy who keeps his mouth shut. “Loose lips sink ships,” the saying goes, proven by the captain of the Titanic who heard about his wife’s adulterous ways moments before the iceberg struck.
I prefer to keep personal details personal, which is why to this day my mother doesn’t know my middle name. As a result, I’m very secretive whenever I’m forced to provide personal information in public.
Like at an ATM machine, which is exactly where I found myself one afternoon. The vestibule appeared vacant, so I raced in only to find a middle-aged woman standing next to the deposit slips, rummaging through a black purse large enough to lose a basketball in.
“Can’t find my card,” she said. “Probably left it at Shamrock’s last night, since that’s where I also left my cardigan and my dog. That’s what I get for drinking too many Irish car bombs.”
The hair on the back of my neck stood on end, while the hair on the back of my back curled up. This woman was the antithesis to my tight-lipped ways; she was an over-sharer—a TMI-er.
“I’ll be out of your way in a moment, miss.” I said, glancing over my shoulder and quickly entering my PIN number—too quickly, because I mistyped and the machine beeped.
“Mine is 1234,” she said, suddenly standing behind me. “Not only is it easy to remember, but it’s also the date—December 3, 2004—of the first time I saw Britney Spears in concert. She’s really talented—she dances and lip-synchs at the same time.”
Feeling her breath on my neck, I cancelled the transaction and lied, “Wrong card. This one goes to my Swiss bank account.”
“I like Swiss cheese,” she said. “I was eating some yesterday when I was talking to my insurance agent about my timeshare. Not that he was any help.”
As much as I wanted to get away from this woman before she told me the details of her birth, I couldn’t leave anyone in insurance-related despair.
“I happen to know a little about insurance, miss. What’s this about a timeshare?”
“Do I have a property loss exposure for the timeshare I partly own, and, if so, how would I get the right insurance? Any liability issues I need to worry about? My main residence is covered by the 1991 ISO HO-3 policy, if that helps.”
“Miss,” I said, “what you need is a few tweaks here and there and you should be good to go.”
What tweaks were Ace referring to? Click here to check your solution against Ace’s.
Jonathan Hermann (hermannism@gmail.com) is an IA contributing editor.
I prefer to keep personal details personal, which is why to this day my mother doesn’t know my middle name. As a result, I’m very secretive whenever I’m forced to provide personal information in public.
Like at an ATM machine, which is exactly where I found myself one afternoon. The vestibule appeared vacant, so I raced in only to find a middle-aged woman standing next to the deposit slips, rummaging through a black purse large enough to lose a basketball in.
“Can’t find my card,” she said. “Probably left it at Shamrock’s last night, since that’s where I also left my cardigan and my dog. That’s what I get for drinking too many Irish car bombs.”
The hair on the back of my neck stood on end, while the hair on the back of my back curled up. This woman was the antithesis to my tight-lipped ways; she was an over-sharer—a TMI-er.
“I’ll be out of your way in a moment, miss.” I said, glancing over my shoulder and quickly entering my PIN number—too quickly, because I mistyped and the machine beeped.
“Mine is 1234,” she said, suddenly standing behind me. “Not only is it easy to remember, but it’s also the date—December 3, 2004—of the first time I saw Britney Spears in concert. She’s really talented—she dances and lip-synchs at the same time.”
Feeling her breath on my neck, I cancelled the transaction and lied, “Wrong card. This one goes to my Swiss bank account.”
“I like Swiss cheese,” she said. “I was eating some yesterday when I was talking to my insurance agent about my timeshare. Not that he was any help.”
As much as I wanted to get away from this woman before she told me the details of her birth, I couldn’t leave anyone in insurance-related despair.
“I happen to know a little about insurance, miss. What’s this about a timeshare?”
“Do I have a property loss exposure for the timeshare I partly own, and, if so, how would I get the right insurance? Any liability issues I need to worry about? My main residence is covered by the 1991 ISO HO-3 policy, if that helps.”
“Miss,” I said, “what you need is a few tweaks here and there and you should be good to go.”
What tweaks were Ace referring to? Click here to check your solution against Ace’s.
Jonathan Hermann (hermannism@gmail.com) is an IA contributing editor.
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