The first painful experience occurred sometime in the early 21st century, precisely when I don’t recall and, to be honest, I don’t care to recall as it is not really important to me. Anyway back to the tale: I had taken a job with the Research Foundation, SUNY, the State University of New York, a research arm of an educational system that is larger and substantially more mediocre than the demographically larger state of California. The Research Foundation decided to close my TIAA-CREF account rather arbitrarily, something bureaucracies, like monarchs, do constantly, of course. It took me three days of a painful series of emails and telephone calls, and associated headaches in order for me to have the monies accrued—a couple of hundred dollars at most, if memory serves-- from the Research Foundation SUNY account folded into another TIAA-CREF account I had taken out, this one with another SUNY bureaucracy, the State University of New York with which the Research Foundation, SUNY twain did not, and intentionally so, meet.
After I retired from SUNY in 2021—a forced retirement since SUNY was not going to give me two classes and the health care that came along with those two classes--I decided to close my TIAA-CREF SUNY account a year later in 2022. I called the labyrinthian bot based TIAA-CREF number and was eventually transferred to the relevant bureaucratic department and bureaucrat. I was told I could close my account that day via the phone if I wanted to. I, however, decided to do it via a form which I assumed TIAA-CREf would ultimately need anyway. Moreover, I did not feel well, something that has become quite common in my retirement. I was sent the form and closed the account taking mental note that in the period between the phone call and the time it took the form to reach me and for it to reach them my account went down in value. But then that is what happens with modern capitalist stock markets. They go up up up thanks largely to casino capitalist speculation, and they go down down down thanks again largely to casino capitalist speculation, which is what happened to my no more than $3000 dollar account in the short interim.
2021 was also the year 1 I took a part-time job at the Albany College of Pharmacy Library. In retrospect I wish I hadn’t done this since ACP was one of the worst paternalistic and adolescent bureaucracies I have encountered in 69 years of life. I also—stupidity at work here again--took out another TIAA-CREF account when I took the job at ACP thinking that I would work at the college for more than three months I did before I quit because I could not stand the paternalistic nature of those administrative bureaucrats who ran the place.
In March 2024 I decided to close the ACP account, an account kept open in case I wanted to put more monies in it for me or my son. So I did what I did before but only after trying to do it via my online accoun—I also needed to update my email and phone number--an account which I had not used more than once or twice since I set it up and which would not accept my user ID and password, despite the fact that I had not only written down both and had saved my user id and password in my computer saved passwords page. Needless to say this is just one more of the many banes of life in the brave new digital pain in the arse age in which we are all now forced to live. So, I called the TIAA-CREF number, waded through the press x's for the y’s. When I got to an actual human I asked to be transferred to the account closing bureaucracy. My request was denied. When I asked for a form to be sent to me at the address they had on file so I could close my account that request was also denied too. I was, miracle of miracles, provided with an address that I could write to in order to request the account close form. And that is what I did. I even sent this request on one of the original pages of my quarterly earnings report to them requesting the form so I could close my account thinking that might help.
Long story short it has been awhile and I have still not received a response from this Orwellian meets Three Stooges bureaucracy even after sending a second letter. As a consequence I am now proceeding to the next step. I am going to contact the New York Attorney Generals’s office and contact a lawyer though paying my lawyer really to contact them probably isn’t worth the $72 bucks in my account as of the end of March or the hassle. Hiring a lawyer to deal with the absurd TIAA-CREF bureaucracy would no doubt set me back much more than what is in my account. But hey, $72 smackers is $72 smackers and I am retired on a limited monthly income from Medicare and the pension fund of the state of New York. Hmm, I really probably should rethink that last shouldn’t I?
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