Also, I'm not crazy about people knowing that I'm in my office actually pumping. But everyone in this building has master keys, and there's a culture of letting yourself into other people's offices, if they're not there, say to put something on their desk. (Yes we have convenient, central mailboxes. It's totally weird that we do this.)
So when pumping, I put a little post-it note that says "Do not disturb" discreetly over the lock, so if you're planning on unlocking the door, you have to actually move the post-it note aside.
Today the secretary was letting herself in, and I screeched "I'm not available! I'm not available!"
When I was done, I found an 11x8 printed out sign that said PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB taped to my door. So much for discretion.
Use police tape.
The whole conversation is even more uncomfortable if the genders are reversed.
Doorstop? If you can jam one of those rubber wedges under your door, you should be pretty safe.
Today the secretary was letting herself in, and I screeched "I'm not available! I'm not available!"
Try shouting, "Don't you people knock!"
Flip the script. Pump in the public area while everyone cowers in your office until you tell them it's safe to come out.
Bonus round: once you say it's safe to come out, have a bobcat waiting to attack them.
Back when this was my problem, our offices had transparent (rather than frosted) glass panels next to the doors. I ended up in a stall in the bathroom. And also ended up pumping the bare minimum to keep my breasts from exploding -- the kids mostly had formula while I wasn't around.
I had an officemate who would tape a picture of a cow on the door.
Try shouting, "Don't you people knock!"
Install a door knocker, so that if someone barges in, you can point angrily and say, "What?! Knockers!"
At my old firm, we had a "lactation room." It had previously been the smoking room.
10 ...and before that, the sex room.
A little squeeze of nitrogen triiodide in the door should learn 'em up quick.
My secondary office had a lactation room, briefly. Some inspector came by and said the refridgerator couldn't be where it was. The only place to move the fridge was the lactation room. The lactation room was too small to be both the fridge room and the lactation room (assuming you want to sit down while pumping), so it was gone.
12: My high school chemistry teacher kept saying he was going to make that, but he never did. He also disposed of the giant chunk of potassium.
"Flipping the script" per 6 isn't a bad approach, though k-sky's suggested implementation might not be ideal.
Is there anything you can do to reframe the situation in your mind such that it's not your job to be awkward and discreet, but your officemates' job to cope?
Blah blah blah beautiful part of nature blah nothing to be ashamed of blah blah but, also, come on, this is something that working mothers of infants do.
Sorry, should have said "office-working mothers of infants" above.
He also disposed of the giant chunk of potassium
By dropping it off a bridge, I hope.
Both here and at my previous job, there was a designated "Lactation Station", though it has since been rechristened as the "Mothers Room".
17: It was in a glass container of mineral oil or something. He made a small wooden boat-like thing and floated the container out into a pond. Once it was well away, he shot the container.
So complicated when you can just chuck it into the toilet.
My favorite awkward-pause-in-office story that doesn't retell well especially in print but here I go anyway: a friend ends up in the, whatever, water cooler room with someone he knows only by sight, and the other guy sort of looks at him like "uh, so, well then" and says "yeah...good ol'....water" and walks off.
20: He said they had half a kilo of sodium plus a smaller chunk of potassium that was still way too large to put down the toilet without committing arson.
18: was it near Conjunction Junction?
He said they had half a kilo of sodium plus a smaller chunk of potassium that was still way too large to put down the toilet without committing arson.
19: Awesome. Chem majors at Reed used to dump sodium into the Willamette during Renn Fayre, but students there are law-abiding now, I hear.
On the OP, I'm wondering what other responses might have achieved the same awkward effect. "I have an anal bleaching appointment", maybe.
Sign up for an Expression Session!
From the link at 24: "The reactions were violent enough to crack the bathtub..."
"Our grudging concession to gender equity so now will you quit bugging us about the glass ceiling because we care" room.
Breast Rest
Aureola Area
Boob Cube
Mammary Sanctuary
36: not the most obvious name for the room, but I like it.
"Boob Cube" sounds like a bra designed at the Institute for Missing the Point.
There's a woman in my office who is/was pumping. She uses our boss's office and kicks out our female boss and our male assistant boss.
There was a big sign on the door saying DO NOT DISTURB. One of our male LMHCs came by and was going to knock on the door to get a chart. I said, "You can't go in there." He raised his brow, said, "I can't go in there to get a chart?"
I said, "No, you *really* can't go in there." He was still about to go in, so I said "S is pumping." He looked at me like I was crazy. My woman co-worker then said, "Umm, someone is doing her motherly duties." It then dawned on him what we were talking about, and his eyes opened wide. He then said, "I'm not going near THAT with a ten foot pole. I moved [rooms--to the quieter one] to get away from you people."
In context, it was very funny, but I kind of wanted to do consciousness-raising about how this was a normal thing etc.
"I'm not going near THAT with a ten foot pole. I moved [rooms--to the quieter one] to get away from you people."
I don't even understand who he meant by 'you people'. Women? Incompletely clothed women? Lactating women?
"The reactions were violent enough to crack the bathtub..."
Yes, but with five times the quantity of Na / K.
IIRC they tested smaller quantitites without destroying the fixtures.
Also, they put a hand grenade in a toilet just for fun to construct a proper control, which made me appreciate the true wonder of the medium of television.
48: Flushing K down the toilet puts heat + hydrogen in a confined area. I suppose if you just let it in the bowl, you might be O.K., but I'd assume a flush.
Maschinesaugenplatz
Niche des Nichons
Flushing K down the toilet can mean that cops can search your property without a warrant, potentially.
My high school chemistry teacher kept saying he was going to make that [NI3], but he never did.
Mine did. In fact, he not only made it, he spread little bits of it over the classroom floor, so that when we walked in, it crackled under our feet. (IIRC, he poured it out in solution w/ ammonia, and let it dry.)
He was also the one who taught us "More's Law: if some is good, more is better!" He was awesome.
Площадь Му-жества
This joke really doesn't work but it's in Russian so you don't know. Might be hilarious!
54: Ассюм makes an асс out of ю and м. Oh, damn.
My 2 years of high school Russian tell me that the first word is Square, like Red Square. I never got to learn any titty words, sigh.
It mostly doesn't work because it's just a subway station I lived by for a week, not a prominent location, so it isn't like...some pun like "Grand Central Lactation" if that weren't already sort of lousy. But it was the first thing that popped into my head and there didn't seem likely to be a second thing.
54: the 2nd word means bravery/manhood! but with a pun involving "moo".
When Tiresias was young he was a seer sucker.
Off to the bank.
Oh, so you really had to go to the bank? I tend to do that sort of thing when I'm tired and don't want to talk to someone. "No, I can't meet at 4:30, I have to, uh, run some errands. You know, the bank, ..."
Essear. Be a little imaginative.
She just doesn't want to talk to us.
What sound do cows make in Russian? I never learned that in 6 years of HS/college Russian.
Hmph. Apparently it's basically just "moo." That is not nearly as funny as dogs saying "goff! goff!" when they bark.
Одна корова говорит другой:
- Это просто эпидемия какая-то: куда ни посмотришь - то одна корова рехнулась, то другая...
- Ничего, - успокаивает ее подруга, - лишь бы это до нас, уток, не дошло...
One cow says to the other: it's an epidemic out there -- wherever you look, another one falling to mad cow disease.
The other comforts her: don't worry -- at least it's not affecting us ducks.
53: Ours did too. He did it for each class and so we got to see the reactions as the next group came in.
It's good stuff, but I really like thermite better.
44: My woman co-worker then said, "Umm, someone is doing her motherly duties."
In Witt's absence, I say Bah! I'm a little bewildered: is it so embarrassing to be a lactating mother that euphemisms are needed? What's wrong with, "So-and-so is a nursing mother, and she needs to pump breast milk in a private room." Then everyone goes, "Oh, I see! I'll drop the file off a little later, then." Yay!
Also! Heebie, this business of people letting themselves into offices to drop things off is for the birds. Sheesh. Mailbox, anyone?
Katie Graham's in there with her tit in a wringer. </Watergate humor>
I agree with 69. One of the many situations in which the use of euphemisms only serves to embarrass the person not familiar with the euphemisms.
embarrass the person not familiar with the euphemisms
Seriously. "Doing her motherly duties"? Uh. Changing a diaper? Harassing her daughter about her outfits? Making dinner? Signing a permission slip for a school trip? What, what?
there's a culture of letting yourself into other people's offices, if they're not there
This is why I fear the word the power of that awful word, "culture".
Also,
Blah blah blah beautiful part of nature blah nothing to be ashamed of blah blah but, also, come on, this is something that working mothers of infants do.
"You know how you and the other guys will quite happily stand next to one another at the urinals with your dicks in your hands, maybe even talking about stuff? Well think of me alone in an office discreetly trying to feed my child as being a lot like that, except not really weird and gross."
"You know how you and the other guys will quite happily stand next to one another at the urinals with your dicks in your hands, maybe even talking about stuff?
We don't put it in a cooler and bring it home. Not anymore.
I thought of you, Dad, but Mom's motherly duties don't really have to do with you. Sorry!
Slightly tangentially: anyone have a family in which the Mom and Dad referred to one another -- in direct address, not when speaking to the children about Mom or Dad -- as "Mom" or "Dad"?
Weird.
you and the other guys will quite happily stand next to one another at the urinals with your dicks in your hands, maybe even talking about stuff?
I admit that I think that's weird, but it's not because I'm uptight or anything! It's just kind of weird. I have the tiniest sneaking suspicion that that's because I was raised female.
If the patriarchy has reared its head in this discussion, it's totally Gonerill's fault.
47: I didn't get it either. I find him kind of odd, in general. I ran into him walking down the street one day, and I didn't even get any acknowledgment--not even the sort of smile which says "I am acknowledging your presence, I don't have time to talk or necessarily want to talk, but I do know who you are."
The room I work in is full of people who talk loudly and engage in dark humor. We talk about music (and what we're streaming on Pandora) and occasionally semi-off-color things, because some of the situations we have to deal with are so bizarre. See this deadpan animated video "Mental Health Practitioner." They packed a bunch of stuff into one short clip, but basically every single thing in that video have happened at some point. So, my team's response can be colorful.
The other two rooms are quiet and intense. I don't blame him for wanting to go to the quiet room. (Our room still has the sign up saying that it's a quiet room which is hilarious.)
Having said all that, I really don't get why he found it so very bizarre.
What's the bank thing? My co-worker just has an insulated cool pack that she takes home.
80: Once I was at a bar where the urinal (the kind built into the floor) was broken so that the drain was blocked and the flush valve kept open. Water was flowing in a steady stream across the bathroom, out the door, and into the bar. Except it wasn't just water because the line for the toilet was too long and the sink was too close to the door.
76: only really feasible if you have a detachable penis.
||
My housemate has just acquired a satellite radio, and has the house tuned to some station with a soft spot for Frank Zappa.
I was just putting dinner together, and a "Going to Montana" song came on ... who's this? I mused: oh, clearly Zappa, I explained to myself .. and I swear, listening to Zappa is like being instantly stoned or something. I was giggling within a minute. And you know I don't giggle.
|>
69: He didn't understand what I was saying when I said "pumping" and we couldn't think of another verb. My now former co-worker is not a euphemism kind of person. She's a blunt, African-American woman from the inner city. She's the kind of person who, when told that she had to come back to deliver her baby because her blood pressure was dangerously low, told them that that wasn't happening that day, drove home and went in the next day.
We said about 3 different things first. He was slow on the uptake. We mentioned the mother by name, and everyone knew she'd had a baby.
He was slow on the uptake.
Just shy of where you'd need to note something in Axis II.
OT:
Apparently Harper's Magazine is falling apart? I knew nothing of this. There's some information with other links here.
I didn't get that from reading McMegan directly! And I know a number of people here don't like Harper's. But jeez. It's a damned good magazine, and I'm sort of bummed.
86: If he were doing diagnosis and therapy, it would be a problem. I have seen people who are able to do good clinical work when sitting down as a clinician. Anyway, he does groups and stuff, but he's mostly there to sign off on paper work done by other people.
Plenty of our people probably have Axis II disorders, but they all have an Axis I diagnosis, and that's the really important one to get.
Apparently Harper's Magazine is falling apart?
Try Scotch tape.
Axis II would have been a good working title for Robert Ludlum to have used when writing The Holcroft Covenant.
Axis II would have been a good name for the Tea Party.
93: I'm pretty sure that parsi is just expressing her heretofore secret Lady Gaga love. And, really, who can blame her? Shout it from the rooftops, babe.
I have to be off, because I'm really bummed about Harper's, and I cannot fucking stand McArdle's sneering about unions.
69: He didn't understand what I was saying when I said "pumping" and we couldn't think of another verb.
How about "pumping breast milk".
Are there other people who you enjoy seeing sneer about unions?
Interesting. I recently checked to see if there was a Kindle version of Harper's, thinking that maybe I would read more of it there than I do of the print version. There's not, and I let my subscription lapse.
96: The sneering about unions is bad enough. But the coy, insider-y puffery about "our progress towards corporate goals" is insufferable.
See this deadpan animated video "Mental Health Practitioner."
That's so great. The "I would like you to take me in your personal vehicle..." reminds me of a screwy woman who called us from a truck stop saying she'd been "abandoned" there by a guy and knew nobody in town and had no money. Turns out "abandoned" meant "picked me up in another state as a hitch hiker and took me exactly as far as he said he would". According to her it was now our responsibility to drive her around town to the various shelters and hostels until we found her a bed.
Crud. I traditionally treat myself to an issue of Harper's, if there's one on the stands I haven't read, when I take a train trip.
Wow, for all the talk of McA/rdle here, I hadn't read her much. She's a piece of work.
mcard/le is perfectly nice in person but a) genuinely advances the cause of evil with her just-good-enough sophistries b) is dumber than a box of hammers, while believing--and this is the source of the intense, nuclear rage she inspires--that she is an unparalleled genius.
also, 35 wins.
My secondary office had a lactation room, briefly. Some inspector came by and said the refrigerator couldn't be where it was.
... leaving us with only one option if we wanted milk in our coffee.
maybe even talking about stuff?
THIS NEVER HAPPENS.
104.last prompts me to say that 11 deserves a belated shout out.
Do you lactate after sex? I don't know, I've never looked.
I tended to leak, yes. just messing with them at all generally got that response; thus they remained somewhat unsexy for a number of years, despite being huge and fun-looking.
Do you lactate after sex?
Some people do, several months after the event.
"Do you smoke after sex?"
"No, there's not usually THAT much friction."
they remained somewhat unsexy
BLASPHEMY! HERESY!
107: Just leaking would have been a plus. Mine would occasionally get stuck in full lawn-sprinkler mode for a bit. I ended up with an absorbent bra on pretty much all the time.
How long does pumping take per day or whatever? Honestly, call me stupid, but just by reading the original post I thought the problem was simply that you had blown him off for whatever reason and you were embarrassed that you didn't have a large enough "to-do" list to justify it. Then I read the comments and, hey, no, apparently you really couldn't meet with him and you hadn't wanted to talk about why.
I'm kind of baffled by the resistance to the idea, like in 44, although I suppose I shouldn't be surprised; we live in a sexist glass-ceilinged patriarchy and all that. Personally, though, I try not to stare at nursing mothers mainly just because I assume they want the privacy, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be offended or anything if I stumbled on one.
112: I try not to stare at nursing mothers mainly just because I assume they want the privacy
The code-switching part is what always trips me up. I am militantly pro-breastfeeding (and anti-circumcision, but that's a story for another time) and when I'm around my radical/bohemian/artist friends, it's considered a bit over-nice if a mother doesn't leave her breast hanging out for awhile after the kid has stopped nursing, just in case they want some more. On the other hand, among my more upright, middle-class friends, there's the whole production of finding the special blanky to make the little nursing nest, and indicating with body language that You Had Better Not Be Looking, Mister! Obviously, I'm not about to stare in either case, but the degree of casualness that one is expected to manifest in any given social context is confounding.
[N.b. I was raised in a household where nursing was considered very prosaic and not worthy of comment or fuss.]
I try not to stare at people who are eating in general. It's rude.
I read McCardle on mental health parity. I wanted to kill her. She said that people with schizophrenia can't work, so they'll be on Medicare anyway, but some of them can work and getting into the social security system makes it hard to go back to work, because you're so afraid of losing medicare. Some of them probably wouldn't have to get SSI except that they need the insurance during gaps or the private cover is inadequate.
Fuck her.
I am militantly pro-breastfeeding
Political power grows out of the nozzle of a breast pump.
McArdle writing about the decline of a once-great magazine is pretty fucking rich.
115: Grrrr! One of my huge pet peeves -- people who think mental illness must mean drooling lunatic. Which, I suppose *is* more likely to be true for people who are mentally ill without access to the proper medical care to manage their illness... Fuck our mental health system.
For that matter, fuck our health system generally. I smashed my thumb in a car door Tuesday and by yesterday the excruciating pain was 10,000 worse. But the scheduling desk hung up after telling me my doc had no openings yesterday and the nurse message desk took an hour to call back. At which point I informed them that I had fixed it myself by burning a few holes in the nail to drain the bleeding and relieve the pressure. Thanks internet. No thanks doctor's office.
How long does pumping take per day or whatever?
As soon as I've got my rhythm down, I'd budget 30 minutes to hook it all up, pump, take it down, rinse out the parts, and throw stuff in the fridge. I budgeted 45 minutes yesterday because it was the first day of school and I was over-planning. Aside from pumping, I had a hour and a half class that afternoon, and then the trip to the bank.
At which point I informed them that I had fixed it myself by burning a few holes in the nail to drain the bleeding and relieve the pressure.
See? The free market makes everything efficient.
117: No kidding.
Not that we need to belabor this, but I considered alameida's 104: is dumber than a box of hammers, while believing--and this is the source of the intense, nuclear rage she inspires--that she is an unparalleled genius
and that's not quite the source of the rage for me. I was surprised that I was so deeply, incredibly irate last night after reading McArdle's piece: in the past I've been annoyed, or disgusted (often), or impatient, but not enraged to the point of imaginatively launching every insult in the book at her, summed up by "Fuck you, and you should have been fired long ago."
It's her failure of nuance and of context-driven self-awareness. That could be glossed as stupidity, I suppose, but it's worse than that. I think I should stop now, though, having already edited out a few unseemly remarks.
The Harper's subthread was here, so I'll pass along this hilarious send-up of Lewis Lapham.
118.last: You are my new medical role model.
It's not exactly a send-up of Lapham. Exactly. More a hilarious send-up of those who get their panties in a knot about Lapham -- who is of course not at Harper's any more anyway.
How do you burn a hole in your nail? Heat a needle over at match or is there a special tool.
Cigarette lighter and a can of Lysol.
Oh, nail. I thought you said wall.
I produced a run of college newspaper opinion columns that suffer horribly from Lapham imitation. It's debatable whether Lewis Lapham should be allowed to write as he does, but anyone else attempting it should be banned from self-expression of any kind for a cool-down decade.
123: awesome. This especially: I met him at a Calhoun College Master's Tea
Wow, Lapham's Quarterly still exists. Although I guess in a way it has always existed.
McArdle writing about the decline of a once-great magazine is pretty fucking rich.
Fixed.
I'm not so sure about that. she pulled the trigger and bought a house in an allegedly up-and-coming neighborhood which is, in fact, structurally flawed by surrounding highways and train tracks. she wicked overpaid to live in that shithole. I am a bad person for wishing her actual financial ill, my sponsor will just go and make me pray for her. fucking AA is a drag sometimes.
126: Heat needle over open flame (I used the stove) until it glows red. Touch to fingernail. The trapped blood will gush right on out. Entirely painless, and more importantly, instant relief of what had been really fucking intense pain.
Sure, but it turned out to be, in fact, entirely non-horrible. There was admittedly a degree of desperation necessary to my willingness to try it, though. If I could write my own prescriptions, I'd never go to a doctor again.
132: I am not sure 131 was intended as a literal statement.
134: I doubt McMegan needs your pity, Jackmo, whatever her housing situation may be.
If I could write my own prescriptions, I'd never go to a doctor again treat every ailment with percocet.
139: You could mix percocet with sprite and call it "urple drank".
136: next time just call this number
http://www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk/
- to avoid arousing suspicion, put on your best Helen Mirren accent.
My own housing situation, on the other hand, is looking up: I received word not half an hour ago that I had been approved to get on the lease of this rather nice apartment in Crown Heights/Prospect Heights. I'm moving at the end of the month!
treat every ailment with percocet
Nah, what you want is Roxicodone, which delivers the sweet, floaty oxycodone goodness without the added liver-damaging, dose-limiting acetaminophen. And it's instant release instead of prolonged release like OxyContin. Win-win!
Which is not to say that I ever turn my nose up at Percocet. Just that if you're going to treat *every* thing with it, you can decide whether to add the acetaminophen on your own.
I guess that's why they don't let me write my own prescriptions.
They should let me write your prescriptions!
I have never been able to get all the way through a McMegan piece. I can't even make it through excerpts. It's always quite clear by...I want to say the third sentence? That she takes herself very, very seriously, and yet is smug about it. Something in the tone that, perhaps for my own self-preservation (I am young to have high blood pressure, but there it is), tells me to just close the damn window.
Happens every time.
I am young to have high blood pressure, but there it is
I know just the drug for you!
143: I'd go valium, I think. Sure, it hurts, but wev.
Totally OT:
So I just got a weird email from a student I had maybe three years ago during a summer class, so this is someone I knew for like 3.5 weeks, and was in a full class. He stood out and did well, and I really enjoyed reading his work, but the whole thing seemed to mean a great deal to him; he's an older student, late 30's, immigrant, entrepreneur, and I think it felt really good to be told that he's a good writer, etc.
Anyhow, I got an email from him that looks exactly like a scam, but it's totally his style--he has a peculiar way of signing his name, for example--asking for help because his family was mugged abroad and they can't pay their hotel bill. If it's genuine and he's gotten to asking me, I figure that's pretty much the bottom of the barrel. But also, wtf? Who asks an adjunct instructor they had three years ago for financial assistance getting out of a jam? Obviously I'm not sending anyone any money--I can't afford anyone's London vacation and I really can't imagine they wouldn't "allow" victims of a crime to leave, or wait until the embassy comes through--but do I have to respond to this email? It's really weird.
153: Could be from a hijacked email account.
...although "totally his style...peculiar way of signing his name" would militate against that explanation.
154: That's what I thought, of course, but I checked it against other emails I've gotten from him, and it's definitely him. It's the same punctuation style, signature, etc.
153.---This is a pretty common email hack. Someone I know had her Facebook account hacked, and because she used the same password for her email, the hacker was able simply to get in, drop details about spousal name and whatnot, and email it to everyone in the address book.
156: unless he regularly signs emails that he sends from the account that way
Do you have any other other contact information for him? You might use that, to ask if the email was legit, so at least he knows his account has been hacked. (The email definitely wasn't legit.)
Seconding 158 -- this is a really, really common scam from compromised email and FB accounts.
158: If that's true, they've reached a new level of sophistication now that they're learning to imitate styles.
it's definitely him
I don't buy this. Could you post an example of what's convincing you? (Googleproofed, of course).
they've reached a new level of sophistication now that they're learning to imitate styles.
You said he's an immigrant. ESL? Because a lot of these hacks are from overseas and maybe what looks like style imitation is just similarities from non native English speakers.
he has a peculiar way of signing his name, for example
If somebody has hacked his email account, they can see all his sent messages.
Is your friend's family in London? For some reason it's London a lot. But the scam is heavily written up on the interwebs -- for example -- and apparently when the bad guys dig through the email account they've hacked they do look for and add authenticating info.
Hm, yeah, it's strange. Order of thoughts I had:
1) Oh no, A's email account got hijacked.
2) Wait, isn't that really his typical signature and style? (Check: yes.)
3) That's kind of how he writes, too.
4) OK, but why would A ask me for money?
5) This is a scam, right? But how would scammers get the money from his email account?
6) I haven't had coffee yet. I will ATM.
"The original e-mail, entitled "HELP", was an appeal to send money to me, as I had been robbed by gunpoint and roughed up in London, my credit cards stolen, and I had to pay a big hotel bill."
So what happens is you offer to wire money to them and they claim they need your bank account info, or whatever, but I don't see how that all happens on this person's email account without them knowing. Most of the phishing scams come from genuine emails so there can be correspondence, no?
(A note: I am not sending anyone any money, so don't worry that I'm stupid. I'm just inquiring about the sophistication of shit like this.)
how that all happens on this person's email account without them knowing
They change the password so the real owner can't get in and see their email.
168: Yeah, and I feel like I've gotten that one several times before. And the whole scenario is too stupid to be believed. (If I had never seen it before and genuinely thought it was from A, I would send him a long diatribe on how to deal with the hotel himself.)
And getting you to wire money is probably sufficient reward without trying to defraud an actual bank.
re: 170
You log in to their email account and change their password? Person-X might take a while to sort that out, especially if it's an account they don't use much. I can think of lots of mechanisms for getting the money.
For a start, the account details they give you don't have to be that person's account, surely?
171: Oh, that's sad. So I shouldn't bother writing to inform him his email is compromised, either.
So what happens is you offer to wire money to them and they claim they need your bank account info, or whatever
They ask you to send it via Western Union, which can be picked up at pretty much any Western Union kiosk. Or they just give you a destination account and routing number to wire the money to knowing you're not going to check and find out that you're in fact wiring money to some lawless eastern European paradise rather than London.
See, the problem in this case may be that my former student is from a lawless eastern European paradise, so it's possible that what I see as distinctive features are actually national habit.
I could see this being quite an easy scam to mount. Keylogging at some dubious internet café, hacking the email and bank accounts of travellers who may not check their email regularly at all while on the go anyway.
Well if AWB's student is from a lawless EE paradise, and may be there now, it's even easier for the scammers, who just have to spam their local email providers with a plausible phish. As apo and ttaM describe it there's no reason for anybody to be anywhere near London in fact, it's just a plausible sounding destination.
I got a scammy-sounding call yesterday from "the legal department" threatening dire consequences if I didn't convey a message to someone who the caller claimed had used me as a reference. It was all terribly vague and had that feeling of trying to get me to let my guard down and provide personal information. I tried to get concrete information out of the caller (the legal department of what?) but failed so I vented all my frustrations on him in florid language and felt a lot better.
If anyone (not AWB, as she's made clear) out there on the internet is pondering sending money to a relative stranger, allow me to position myself as the relative stranger of first resort. I also accept free coffee.
I recently got an e-mail scam but they screwed up the identifying information. As my name is not "mail ID", I figured it wasn't really meant for me.
I may have mentioned this before, but the geniuses at NatWest Bank have decided that the way they'll handle potential fraud on your account is to bombard your mobile phone with automated voice messages telling you to dial a number that isn't the usual fraud reporting number and give it your bank account details. You know, precisely the thing that the bank tells you not to do to prevent fraud in the first place. No wonder they had to be bailed out, the fucking morons.