As part of my relocation to the US, we found ourselves going through the usual steps; visa, housing, utilities, etc, etc. Large companies and governments all seem to struggle with the same issues – no body really talks to anyone else.
I was instructed by my new employer to use my Canadian SIN as an SSN as a temporary measure. No problem, so I did, in their systems I became instantiated – Richard Lapenna … setup payroll, healthcare, benefits, and so on.
After about a month I finally received by US SSN – Yeah! If I only could have forecasted the trouble I was about to experience.
I informed H/R, they immediately made the changes in SAP. Next thing I knew, my pay started getting deposited NOWHERE, apparently the SSN for which I was assigned be the US government belongs to a DEAD GUY!!!!
I am not sure what that means, they say that only death and taxes are NOT optional – guess I finally found a way to combine the two to a new feature-set. Now this started me down a whole new journey – multiple concurrent identities ALIVE and DEAD …
Because I changed my SSN (from temp to perm), I started receiving 2 of everything from my employer, two health plans, multiple health cards, badges, etc, etc … while this may appear on the surface to be a bonus – trust me, it isn’t. Some cards work in some situations while the older cards do not and vis-versa. Joy, Joy … In addition, when you are dead you start receiving other benefits, such as revocation of other ID’s such as driver licenses, credit cards, and so on.
Sort of got the later sorted out, my driver’s license now says temporary until they figure out how long it takes to schedule a road test for a dead guy, locations for the test and the vehicles are difficult to schedule. For now, it all remains valid for 1 year instead of 5, guess that means I could be in limbo (literally) until this all gets resolved.
Comments 2
Want to borrow my Social Security number?
Only if you pay the taxes:)