What is it Really Like to be a Debt Collector?

Well, if you’re reading this on insideARM.com, you probably already know. So a better question would be, “What does the media think it’s really like to be a debt collector?”

Credit.com addresses that very question in an interesting piece in which four debt collectors are asked to tell their stories. The piece, (“True Confessions of Debt Collectors”) which originally ran on the specialty site, is being widely distributed on other media sites.

Rather than giving a “day in the life of” account of debt collection work, the Credit.com piece seems intent on ferreting out horror stories from the collector side, similar to consumer horror stories in dealing with recovery agents.

For example, one collector recounts a time when someone “mailed us human excrement in a box,” and noted that his company (a third party debt collection agency) “always had lots of bomb scares.”

Debt collectors are threatened with guns, creepily told that they will find out where their kids go to school, and other manners of horribleness. In fact, one collection manager said that he “had an employee break down on the floor and start crying.”

The piece is notable because it’s a rare instance of the actual work debt collectors so being put on display. And with the piece being picked up by the likes of FoxBusiness.com and HuffingtonPost, maybe more people will start to get the message.

Read it.