LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Thank you South Boston Social Security

I wonder how many of us understand what difficult circumstances they work under. It has taken me five months to come to that understanding myself. As a result, I have gained tremendous sympathy and appreciation for them.

My husband and I recently became eligible for Medicare (Yay!) but we are having a terrible time getting SSA to bill us for it correctly. I have called our local office repeatedly over the last five months and while I have always been dealt with courteously, the matter is still not resolved. Each time, I’ve been told they are understaffed and they will get to it when they can. After five months of essentially the same response, I have gotten pretty cranky. I called for the seventh time last week and heard the same response. 

This time, something was different though. This time, I actually got past myself and listened and put myself in their place. You don’t have to look very hard to find a news article or radio story about how understaffed Social Security is. Most of these stories focus on the members of the public who are being underserved and they are important. 

But last week, I thought about the members of the agency who are overwhelmed and who have to talk to angry, sometimes hurting people all day who have problems the staff can’t solve in a timely manner because there simply aren’t enough people in the office. It’s hard on the public but it’s hard on the staff too. That finally pierced my consciousness and it made me want to say thank you to the people in our Social Security office and ask my community to recognize how hard their job is right now (and will be for quite a while longer). It’s not their fault people’s needs are not being met and they are doing the best they can.

While I was writing this, I received a call from the last person I talked to at Social Security to let me know my issue has been resolved. Thank you South Boston Social Security.

Laurey Solomon

South Boston