Everyone has old friends. People from years ago who stay in touch and occasionally visit. These good friends appear infrequently to compare notes on life.

One such old friend visited me recently. She is someone I went to college with and who now lives in a major northeastern city. I have known her for more than 30 years. She is one of those gentle souls who has chosen a path that seems to not subject her to the stress and the strain that a collections lawyer like me sees on a daily basis. She now spends her time living a low-impact life, eating food which I am unfamiliar with which she tells me is macrobiotic, and working part-time for things that interest her.

Among the things which my friend has been involved with in the past was a job at an alternative newspaper. Her responsibilities at that newspaper included collections. Conventionally, collectors have been thought of as the meanest, nastiest buggers that could be around. Plainly, my friend does not fit that mold.

When she came to visit me most recently, we discussed the types of debtors that I, as a collections lawyer, have come across. I have dealt with plenty of cases which allow me to adequately describe the categories of debtors that we meet. In reviewing these cases with my old friend, we noticed that they seem to fall into four easy categories.

There are always debtors who view collections as a simple process. They owe the money and they need to resolve this matter as quickly and as painlessly as possible. For a collector, this is the easiest of all possible cases. My friend and I labeled these "the payers". Payers realize that whatever the problem or issue is, it has gone too far and it is time to fix it. They pay their bill and move on. Sometimes these people need a little extra time to pay, but they just want to pay and be done with it. "The payers" are always a pleasure to deal with, even though they still require minor attention.

While I, an old collections attorney, saw the payers as the simplest and easiest of the four categories, my old friend had an insight, as it is her good fortune to often have. Although these are the debtors who are not psychologically invested in their cases, they do need some "crazy" attention. "Crazy" attention is a bit of hand-holding and a bit of listening. While in some cases this is an inaccurate depiction, my friend's insight is still valuable.

The next category of debtors we discussed were debtors who ignore their problems. We called these "the hiders." The hiders ignore process. When dialing for dollars for the newspaper, these were the people who simply refused to be flushed out. Inevitably, they all need to be dealt with by a lawyer. That would be me, the old collection lawyer.

My friend's insight on "the hiders" was that, frequently, they are scam artists. Equally as frequently, they are just simply people who do not know what to do to run their own lives. It is, unfortunately, left to the collections lawyer to distinguish between the two of these. My friend's tactic to deal with these "hiders" was to offer them a prize in a contest. The first delinquent bill that was paid each month would get a prize. Her most frequent prize was a recipe for a dairy-free, lactose-free, microbiotic (or is it macrobiotic?) something. As much as I admire my old friend and the path she has chosen in life, I can simply find nothing for myself in this. Just as soon as I learn to cook passably, I might consider this. I suspect, however, that the state bar might have something to say if I used this tactic.

This brings us to the next of the four easy pieces, the truly plagued. As an example, I once had the unfortunate pleasure of talking to a debtor who had just gone through a series of complex medical operations. My client knew her personally and she was, at least as we all believed it, an honest debtor. She admitted to owing the money and would send a small amount; however, she was unable to address the debt, and would be unable to address it for a few months. She asked me for a little bit more time and so I continued the case to a later Court date.

Sometimes I am wrong with these, but often I take my chances anyway. This category is frequently blurred, unlike the final category, "the strugglers".

"The strugglers" are those who have, unfortunately, misunderstood the entire issue. They have deeply invested their ego in their financial obligations and therefore turned this into a metaphor for their entire life. While my friend and I have diverged in many ways since our college days, on this point we stand completely unified. And mystified.

Life is certainly hard enough, so why would anyone invest their ego in a financial obligation, of all things? To paraphrase Colin Powell, one should avoid having one's ego so close to one's position that, when the position falls, the ego goes with it. It is, after all, a debt we are dealing with-an unpaid obligation-and no great roadblock on the highway of life. These are the people who argue vociferously with traffic cops and others in the position of authority. Frequently, they will attempt to present themselves as the honestly plagued. They will try and haggle a debt far beyond any reason. But it is glaringly obvious that the problem with these people is their ego.

Why is this struggle so important to these people? Neither I nor my friend was prepared to answer this question since neither of us took studied psychology other than in the basic college course . But these folk are truly the unfortunate ones. They do themselves no service and turn their simple problems into tremendous operatic disasters. Whether the debt is a personal one or one for a business, the result is almost uniformly the same. Disaster. For them.

My old friend was able to shed some light on this type of debtor. Some time ago she had spent time with a gentleman who worked in corrections, from the non-public employee side. He had a lengthy criminal career. This person seemed to be focused and centered on his ego. Any slight, offense or even non-mastery or domination of a person or situation was a diminution of this individual's personhood. In short, this is a creature of pure ego driven by a lack of self esteem.

Unfortunately, many of this type (although, luckily, not those criminally inclined) appear as debtors in my practice. I recall a deposition years ago in which one lawyer (who had been collecting debts even longer than I had) pointed out to the swaggering, but struggling, debtor that this was only about money and that the debtor should simply relax and just answer the questions. The debtor was unable to do so. In this particular case, I was able to shed a little light for my old friend. I have, on occasion, allowed these people to 'put me in my place' by paying me. This is always a difficult struggle as it is necessary to achieve the proper sense of humility at having been beaten, while this struggling debtor "teaches me a lesson" by giving me money.

Nonetheless, it is remarkable how consistent these patterns of debtors are. When an old friend who has traveled a different path in life and I sit down and compare notes, it seems that certain things seem to come to be consistently. These patterns of debtor behavior always appear, regardless of the place and time.

There is truly nothing new under the sun.