To my previous employer's medical flex account third party administrator:

What exactly do you have to DO to become a third party administrator? I'm guessing you rented a shack somewhere near Wausau, Wisconsin, slapped a hand-painted sign on your door, incorporated, and voila! You became a third party administrator. Shortly after that, you had to learn what third party administrators actually do. (Say this in the voice of Rex the dinosaur from Toy Story when he's asking Buzz, "But Mr. Lightyear, what do space rangers actually do?" with the whole high pitch at the end there - that's what I'm going for.) Gosh, you discovered that third party administrators have to talk to BOTH the company whose business they dubiously win AND that company's high-maintenance, whiny employees. Sheesh, this was going to be more work than you expected. And, wait! You have to keep track of people's accounts, too?! Oh for the love of god! Why is it so complicated? Why did you get involved in this line of work in the first place?

Oh, right. The money. It's so convenient, isn't it, random third party administrator? Once you get through all those pesky proposals and presentations, and your huge company clients have picked you to oversee their employees' vast flexible spending accounts, you can watch the money roll in, glance half-heartedly at employee claims as they come in, make sure they don't say anything outrageously fraudulent, like "eye exam and new contacts: one MEEEELLION dollars!" and send the check out. Double checking the employee's account? Who needs to bother? The company sent the money in, and you're getting paid a hefty fee to worry about the administration for them, so you might as well just let those overpaid executives golf in peace assuming your professional expertise is in complete control of this whole "money thing" while you IM your boyfriend and file your fire engine red tap-tap claw-nails.

When you get a call from a previous employee, though, who is telling you that she's trying to be honest, and that someone has made a mistake and continued sending money to her account as if her paycheck is still being deducted, even though she no longer gets a paycheck from that employer, you should really perk up and take note. The proper, and profitable (money! we like money!) answer here is, "Oh, you want us to send you less money than we're willing to? OKAY! That sounds nice and legal!" The proper and profitable answer IS NOT you telling this previous employee, through bored smacks of your bubble gum, no less, that even though you realize she hasn't contributed the money, you're authorized to go ahead and send it to her anyway. Maybe they didn't cover this in your training, possibly because you're still in 8th grade, but that is called "fraud" and it is - say it with me - ILLEGAL. Yes, that's right. Veeerrry good. Illegal. Illegal is bad. We don't want to do illegal things. Illegal will land us in jail, where they don't have fire engine red nail polish. Only candy apple red. The horror.

Repeat after me, third party administrator girl who answers the phone and who probably created this bogus company in her parents' basement at 4 a.m. when she was sick of prank calling her algebra teacher: Illegal is BAD. More money is GOOD. When honest people call, take advantage of them and assume they're trying to keep both of you out of trouble.