Don't Pat the Belly

Tuesday I had a job interview.  It went great and then a few hours later, the interviewer called and said “we need you to come back in, your social security number came back as invalid.”  I flipped.  I have a mortgage in that name.  I’ve applied for credit cards and jobs in that name.  That’s the name on my son’s birth certificate and inportant documents and now mysteriously, that’s not my name.

So I call the Social Security people who boast that you can reach them anytime via this magic 800 number.  They, however, fail to disclose that you will spend forever on hold, and they can’t really discuss personal details due to security concerns.  So after an hour of:

Them: Can you please spell your name?

Me: G-E-N-E-V-I-E-V-E  Married Name

Them: I’m sorry that doesn’t match, can you try again?

Me: G-E-N-E-V-I-E-V-E  Maiden Name

Them: I’m sorry that doesn’t match, can you try again?

Me: G-E-N-E-V-I-E-V-E  Hyphenated Name

Them: Is is possible that you got divorced and submitted a name change?

Me: No, I think I would have remembered getting divorced.

I finally learned that there were possibly some spelling errors in my account  and they must have been caused because I misspelled my own name when I applied for a name change OVER 5 YEARS AGO.  So the only option I had was to go to my local Social Security office.

So yesterday, I take my pre-marriage Social Security card (which thankfully I hadn’t shredded as instructed) and head to the local office.  They look at all of my documents and say.  We’ll since the DMV (in Missouri and then Illinois) hypenated your last name, it doesn’t matter that you have a home loan, several major credit cards, and master’s degree in your married name, we can’t fix it until the DMV fixes it first.   I did, however, learn that after I had submitted a spelling correction 4 years ago because they spell Genevieve like this: Genevieveve , they had also mysteriously changed my last name back and misspelled it at the same time.  All of this, of course, they claimed was my fault.  Clearly when I was filling out the form, I decided that I wanted to be called Genevieveve Misspelled Last Name.

So I drive all the way across town to the DMV and wait there for at least an hour before I had a wonderful conversation that ended up with “we can’t change anything without a corrected Social Security card or a court order.”

Exhausted, I come home for the evening.  This morning I headed back with the following in tow: driver’s license, old social security card, home loan paperwork, major credit cards, university picture id, Capone’s birth certificate, marriage license, car title, voter registration card, library card, paystubs, and the last 4 years of tax returns.  If  anybody had mugged me would have hit the gold mine of identity theft.

I get to the social security office, show the security officer my completed forms and small mountain of documentation, promise that I’m not carrying any concealed weapons and am allowed to take my number.  30-45 minutes later, it’s my turn.

I recap yesterday, plop down my info and tell her that the DMV won’t change my license (which has an unwanted hyphen in it) until they process the change first.  We go through the information and discover that not only is my name misspelled (both parts) and has the wrong last name, but that my address is wrong and I was born in Alaska not Arkansas.  She, of course, does not have the authority to fix all of these things because it essentially involves changing ALL of the information on record which the system thinks is creating a fraudulent person.

She calls her manager, who tries and doesn’t have authorization, but offers me an out if I will just agree to have a hyphenated name for the rest of my life.  I debated, but pushed on.  I’m sent back to the waiting room while they work on it.  They call another manager who realizes that they have to fix all of the errors in one sitting or I could possibly eat up my maximum number of change requests for the rest of my life (3 per year, to a maximum of 10 per lifetime).

I’m taken to a back room where they ask me 10,000 additional questions to verify my identity.  Mother’s maiden name, middle name.  City of birth.  Last 5 jobs.

They call a regional manager to see if they can fix the issues over the phone and avoid me having to drive to a larger office.  Finally success.

5 years and 13 days after I got married, I have a legal name which both not hyphenated (that’s a story for another time) and has includes all vowels.  I am also no longer a former resident of Alaska.

The scary thing is that in the last 5 years, not a single person before today has ever caught the mismatch on the social security card.  Not the mortgage company, bank, employer, IRS…  If I’d only known that I was a ghost for the last 5 years, I might have had more fun.