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Chase Bank is Secure: And It Is Run By Morons

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I had a busy Saturday. I did my taxes, went to the pharmacy, then to the bike skeleton on bench250shop to air up my tires; then I went to the *&#&%&^$))P@@*@*T^&^%&$Y$(# Chase Bank which, I learned at the pharmacy, had blocked my ^&#^&%&$# bank card.

I was VERY annoyed.

I asked the teller what was going on. She couldn’t tell me why, but my card had been blocked. She invited me to sit down, get a styrofoam cup of coffee, and wait for a banker.  There were two on duty and both had customers. What I did not know whilst sitting and sipping my crap cup of coffee with powdered creamer was that a moronic computer algorithm had blocked my card.

I was wasting my Saturday drinking awful coffee. This is the second time Chase had blocked my card.

After about 20 minutes of waiting, one of the two bankers leaned around his bloated and tattooed biker customers who were depositing a check from some lawsuit they won, and who were setting up a checking account, and a savings account to prove their commitment to saving by safeguarding some of their windfall by depositing $100 of the over $120,000 dollar check into a brand new savings account. All of this was taking FOREVER because they needed a cash advance on the check because they’d already spent a hunk of the money but the check was drawn on another bank and funds would not be cleared for 48 hours. The banker was kissing their hairy, tattooed, temporarily middle class asses and calling everyone in the corporate structure to get clearance to give them $400 cash.

He called in my direction with a chamber of commerce smile, “We appreciate your patience!”  I gave him the kind of death stare given to US diplomats by pudgy North Korean dictators.

The other banker was busy with some stupid young woman out window shopping for bank accounts. She happened to be passing by the bank and she had nothing else to do on this Saturday. I guess her empty gas tank of a life needed a little petrol. She was ostensibly there on behalf of her stupid husband (not present) who was looking for a place to start a bank account at about age 30 (not believable) and credit cards (believable). She wanted to know every detail and permutation about every type of account and credit card. The banker appeared to enjoy giving those details and even egged her on suggesting other considerations she had not thought of yet and which I am certain he made up but which encouraged her to stay in her seat. The vacuous woman left without doing a damned thing except promising to fill her husband in on all the details. I’m quite certain he will be too busy crushing Pabst Blue Ribbon cans on his forehead and screeching, “Get in the hole!” to give a shit.

My Saturday was slipping by and I was PISSED.

I finally got to the banker ZOMBIE who gave endless meaningless details about fictional bank accounts to the stupid woman; I told him I was UNHAPPY. But nothing phased this guy, he was non-plussed and grinned at me like he was hyped up on methadone watching “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

I described the problem and the banker diligently punched keyboard keys and gave his computer screen a look of tremendous consternation. He placed a call to the stupid people who blocked my card. His own bank put him on hold like he was a customer. We sat looking at each other like we were waiting for a toaster to pop for ten minutes. My stare caused him embarrassment, but it could have been the sulphurous yellow smoke rising from each of my ears. He focused on his computer screen and watched me obliquely commenting that it was unusual to be on hold for ten minutes. Not for customers.

He finally got someone on the line who wanted to talk to me so the banker handed me the phone. “Rocky” wanted to review my recent expenses even after I explained that I just reviewed them with the banker and there was nothing unusual. I told him that I had also reviewed them at home earlier in the day before the morons blocked my card.

Rocky and I went through the transactions one-by-one because Rocky’s protocol says that no matter how inane or stupid it is, or how much more time of their customer’s Saturday they might waste, they must review the transactions in the interest of fraud prevention.

After we reviewed the same transactions I had reviewed at home, and again with my Lithium grinning banker, I ask Rocky, “So which transaction triggered the block?” Rocky tells me it was probably the ATM transaction for $20. I said, “Really? You mean the ATM transaction I completed on the front of this building where I am sitting? The bank where I set up my account? The bank where I do my banking? This is the questionable transaction that triggered a fraud alert and placed a block on my card?”

Rocky offered, “We’ve had a lot of ATM fraud lately.”

Yo Adrian! So Chase Bank thinks that fraud protection equates to watching out for thieves who steal ATM cards with the grand felonious purpose of withdrawing $20 at the home bank of the card owner?

I ask Rocky if he does not think this is a little stupid? Rocky giggles but immediately reverts to the company line, “We take your security seriously sir.”

Driving My Aggravation

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steering wheelI drove to work this morning. I usually take the bus and prefer to so I don’t have to drive. I find that my natural crankiness turns me into a muttering lunatic behind the wheel. Don’t you agree that other people are aggravatingly bad at driving?

I try to stay calm by reminding myself that I have plenty of time (I am early 99% of the time) and that traffic isn’t meant to part for me like the Red Sea for Moses. But I forget and soon I’ll spot a driver who fits one of my categories, each especially bad in their own way.

Trunk Magnets – These are the aggressive people who ride right on my bumper when I’m in the # 2 lane. They ride my bumbern even though there’s a lane to pass in. But these people hang back there staring me down in the rear view mirror. They just sit there trying to will me into moving over like the bully at school who cuts in line. I tend to slow down by 5 mph and frustrate the crap out of them so they change lanes. The funny thing about these people is that I know that I am not their problem, it’s everyone who is their problem. When they finally go around me, they zip ahead to the next car in the lane and ride on their trunk for a while.

Clogs – Then there are what I affectionately call, “the clogs,” and these are people like me who refuse to change lanes to let people pass. I’ll move over if the passing lane is clogged and I have room to the right, “the clog” won’t. They usually travel about 10 miles per hour under the speed limit and sit in the fast lane – or any lane – and they let the traffic pile up behind them for half a mile. It doesn’t even seem to bother them. I see people flash their lights honk, do everything but push them forward with their bumper. I don’t understand Clogs.

Nervous Nellies – These people are easier to spot on the streets of Sacramento than on the freeway. Maybe Nellies don’t go on the freeway, it makes them too nervous.  These are the people who slow down by 20 miles per hour a half mile before their exit. On the city streets they’re the ones suddenly turning right from the left lane on a four lane blvd, the ones who realize they’re at the street they want and put on their blinkers and stop rather than bypass and go two blocks to make a u-turn.  I guess they think if they pass the street city workers will shut it down in the 45 seconds it takes to go down the block to return.

Lost Children – I have to be careful not to get killed on my bike by these Lost lunatics. It’s a funny thing in a car how once it is rolling, many of us don’t want to stop until we get where we’re going, not for food, not for water, not for bathrooms, and not for directions. This works OK unless you don’t know where you’re going or you have someone in the car with a weak bladder and who refuses to pee into a Gatorade bottle. It doesn’t work well at all if one doesn’t know where they’re going. I see these people in Midtown all the time peering around for street names and addresses or a restaurant. Some are talking on their phone to a person already at the restaurant who’s giving directions as they plow on down the street scattering pedestrians and bicycles like a snowplow.

LaMans Truck Drivers – I’m not sure who gives out trucking licenses for panel trucks but it must be the same people who run LaMans. I must say that most big wheel truckers are great drivers and I’d much rather share a road with a bevy of 18 wheelers than a bunch of Toyota Prius driving yuppies looking for the natural food store while taking on their i-Phone, I think the drivers who do deliveries in these big box trucks are mostly lunatics. They drive those things like they’re in a BMW sports car cutting in and out of traffic and speeding while they’re at it.

Fearful Mergers – These people have a lot of unused play in their accelerator. They creep onto the onramp and try to merge at 25 miles per hour under the speed limit. They cause accidents and emergency braking situations and worse, they think that they are entitled to merge at any speed. Fearfuls have a Moses complex and they are indignant when the Red Sea resists them. I got flipped off by one of these a few years ago. She was one of those who wanted to match my speed, these Mergers try to bully me into slowing down for them.

Pacers – Have you seen the drivers who come up behind you on the left, speeding, and then slow down and pace you in your blind spot and apparently try to run you into the 18 wheeler you’re overtaking? They pace you until you have to hit the brakes. I’ll never understand where they’re coming from in such a rush until they get behind me. Then, like a paparazzi stalker, they sit there waiting for you to pick your nose so they can get a picture.

These are a few of the driver types I’ve identified. There are more out there, do you have one you’d like to share? Leave me a comment!steering wheel

In Which I Buy A Phone

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While I like Metro PCS phone service, they suck at selling phones.

cell phone image

I ordered a phone from you on December 22 and paid for overnight shipping. I did this because one of your employees in one of your stores said it would save me a $15 fee they’re required to collect if you buy the phone in a store.

Since Monday the 24th was not a holiday, the phone should have shipped on the 24th and would have then been delivered on the 26th.

It did not ship on the 24th.

Santa did not bring it on the 25th. (Made the bad list again this year)

The phone did not ship on the 26th.

So I called Customer Service. More precisely, I tried to call.

My first call, I was on hold for 45 minutes before I gave up.

I checked the order online. The web site reported that the order was submitted. I already knew this because I received an email confirming my order was submitted. I wanted shipping details but none are there.

I called Customer Service again. This time, I wait another 45 minutes and about to hang up when someone comes on the line. I am not elated, it’s more of a grudging acceptance that the next level of frustration has now been reached. I give the young man the order number and he puts me on hold.

I wait in the virtual lobby with the Montovanni music and some woman repeating over and over how much she appreciates my patience. She must be on acid. Carlos comes back and tells me that the order has been submitted.

I tell Carlos, I don’t actually know #6596’s name but given his masculine voice and Mexican accent I decide he is Carlos, perhaps because it’s has the same letters as Carols, it may a holiday Freudian thing, but whatever. I tell Carlos that I know it has been submitted because I have read this on the web site and I have a confirmation email that tells me the same thing. Carlos asks me how he can help me. I say that I want to know where the phone is and when it will be shipped and arrive at my home with tick-tock precision like that parcel shipped to Russia by Tom Hanks in Castaway.

Carlos puts me on hold. I can imagine the panic in the room on the other side of the line, “He wants to know …!”

I am losing faith in Metro PCS as I wait and listen to the elevator music.

Carlos is back. He tells me that he does not know when the phone will be delivered. He says the order is at the warehouse and only the warehouse knows. So I ask Carlos if I can contact the warehouse. No. Can you contact the warehouse? Only by email, we can’t call them because we don’t have a phone number for them, in fact – Carlos tells me – they do not even know where the warehouse is located. I am thinking even Fort Knox’s location isn’t a secret.

I express my frustration at this state of affairs and Carlos gives me a well scripted apology. I can tell this gives him assurance that he is doing a good job of providing customer service and I can hear him grinning with pleasure at his competence.

He asks if there is anything else he can do for me?  I ask him what he thinks he HAS done for me.

Carlos repeats his apology.  I say if you can’t tell me when I am getting my phone then no there is nothing else you can do for me.

Carlos hangs up.

I drive to the local Metro PCS Corporate store (after I visit an affiliate store and am told they can’t help me) where I am told by a nice young lady with a Russian accent that she cannot tell me when the phone will ship or when it will arrive because they cannot see orders in the store which are made online. But she can email the warehouse for me and inquire. She promises that she or her manager will call by 3PM that afternoon. No, they do not know where the warehouse is located and cannot call there as they do not have a phone number.

I leave feeling like a Russian orphan lost in an archaic system.

On the morning of December 27th I check the computer to find that the phone has not shipped. I know this by looking at the web site again to see the status and it says, “submitted.”

I call again to customer support. I almost immediately get through this time, only five minutes on hold, and this time I get Jesus (#3026) this time with a thicker accent but sounding more self-assured than Carlos, I have hope.

Where is my phone, I ask him. He says, let me check. He does and he tells me the order was submitted. He reads the stock apology and tells me that he does not know when it will ship. He asks me if I want to cancel the order.  I say yes, I want to cancel the order and then I will go buy one from the Russian lady at the Metro PCS store who never called me back and pay the $15 charge. He says I can’t cancel the order. I say well why did you ask me if I want to cancel the order. He says well my computer won’t let me cancel it and he walks me through the steps of cancelling the order as if he is training me for his job and says, “See, it says unable to cancel.” I tell him that no I can’t see but while I know he is trying his best to help me I want a supervisor to speak to. I am going to get some action by gawd.

I am put on hold for fifteen minutes and then Jesus comes back on the line to apologize for the wait and to express his appreciation for my hold and to tell me that the supervisor is with another customer and will be with me shortly. I say thank you.

Another 15 minutes on hold. Jesus is back to say that his supervisor is too busy to talk to me and will have to call me if I would leave a number. I give Jesus the number and he says she’s going to call in 20-30 minutes.  I ask who will be calling and he says that he can’t give me her name or phone number or tell me if she was born female or is transgendered as they cannot give any identifying information about another agent and all they can give me about themselves is their booth number.

Jesus hangs up.

Several hours later she calls while I am talking to the Metro PCS store so I miss the call. She does not even leave a voice mail with a stock apology.

The Metro PCS store called me to inform me they got a snarky email from the warehouse. It read something like this, “This order was placed on a holiday weekend. It should have shipped on the 26th but did not due to a blizzard, it will ship today.” Technically, the phone was ordered on December 22nd which was loosely a holiday weekend, but not really because neither Friday the 21st nor Monday the 24th were holidays. Plus, the weekend before Christmas is not a holiday weekend at all for retail businesses like Metro PCS phone retailers, especially when Metro PCS sends out a special phone deal by text message on December 21.

At about 9PM on December 27th I received an email announcing the shipment of the telephone and giving me a FedEx tracking number. I learned from looking at the Fed Ex web site that the warehouse is in Indianapolis, IN, and the phone has been sent to Memphis, TN. The FedEx web site also tells me that the phone will be delivered by 3PM on the 28th.

I sleep blissfully in the knowledge that the phone will come the next day.

On December 28th, I make coffee and tell my son that his phone is being delivered today. We go to the Fed Ex web site to track its progress across the country from Memphis and we see that the timeline has not progressed but that the delivery estimate is still the same, today by 3:00. Because I live in a locked community and delivery is therefore blocked causing them to leave “We Tried” stickers on the gate. This usually causes one to have to call them and have the package held at some remote facility and then you’ll have to schlep into a seedy industrial area of town and risk having your windows knocked out to steal your cell phone that you forgot on the front seat because you were trying to get out of the car and across the parking lot quickly without being mugged.

Shipping to my building is a nightmare.

So I call Fed Ex and get a lady who has a Memphis accent. She tells me that she does not think the phone will arrive today because it missed the plane to Sacramento. I ask her how a phone misses a plane. Was it held up in security, was it carrying a box cutter, did its box have the word “bomb” written on it by the person at the warehouse who writes snarky emails? She says she doesn’t know why it missed the plane but that there is usually only one plane each day and none on the weekend (holiday or not) and so it will arrive on Monday, maybe.

I tell her to hold it for me at a Fed Ex location rather than try to negotiate the locked gate. She says IF the phone makes the plane on Monday, it will be in Sacramento on Monday for pickup. But she isn’t sure it’s going to make it yet.

Of course my son flies out on Tuesday so if the phone doesn’t arrive in time, it will have to be re-shipped to him in which case I will have the role of the warehouse and I will finally be in control of the situation. I may have to drive the phone to Phoenix myself.

NRA Can’t Justify This

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And today another school shooting in Connecticut and I can already anticipate the NRA-bought politicians and Fox News saying, “You can’t justify getting rid of handguns because of 20 dead children.”SONY DSC

Yes, I can…20 times today, plus 7 adults, 27 dead innocent people…I can justify it every day because the truth is that without a heavily armed populace,

  • Nobody needs a hand gun to be safe or to hunt except law enforcement.
  • Nobody needs an assault rifle except the military
  • Nobody needs a 50 caliber semi-automatic rifle except the military
  • Nobody needs body armor except the military
  • Nobody needs thousands of rounds of ammunition except the military

And what about the insane people doing this?

  • We need to be able to lock up crazy people until they’re safe, they should not be on the streets.

And what about media?

  • Nobody needs violent video games
  • Nobody needs to see movies that depict savage killing

Nobody can justify this to me under the smoke and mirrors that someone’s freedom to make money selling guns, selling violent media, or just the freedom to be crazy as hell. Nobody can justify the slaughtering of innocent children by some twisted right to be free. It has to stop. I am writing to my elected officials to demand immediate action.

The NRA and the RIGHT be damned 20 times today, enough is enough. Sign one of the petitions about gun control -

http://wh.gov/RRkn send an email to your Senators and Congress people. Keep the pressure on until WE are louder than the lobbyists.

Oregon Beavers Paid to Monitor Hawaiian Ducks

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beaverswbinocsI found another cool grant. There is a $25,000 grant from the Fish and Wildlife Service to the Oregon State University (Beavers) to monitor endangered Hawaiian Ducks, in Hawaii…

So not only do the Oregon Ducks get passed over, Beavers are sent to Hawaii to monitor ducks…are there no Universities in Hawaii? Well of course there are, but perhaps their fraternities are the reason that the birds are endangered…

There has to be better reason than Beavers wanting to go to Hawaii…right? Let’s face it, the University of Oregon Ducks would bring a built-in bias to the study and the Rainbow Warriors of the University of Hawaii probably would scare off the duckies…so maybe Beavers are the best choice. These choices are beyond me.

Read more about this excellent grant here.

 

Federal Grant for Speakers in Kandahar

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As we speed toward the budget cliff and need to cut back the social security and medicare and military spending to balance the budget, I am not at all comforted to know that some Non Governmental Organization (NGO) in Afghanistan will receive a grant for $300,000 that:

man with schnozzz“will arrange for speakers from throughout the Muslim world to speak at multiple locations throughout ‘Loya Kandahar’ (including Kandahar, Helmand, Zabul and Uruzgan)… on issues revolving around civil society, religious tolerance, the role of religion in today’s world and religious leaders’ involvement in societal betterment.”

What are the requirements for receiving the grant of $300,000?

“The program would have a minimum of two speakers per month who would address audiences at pre-determined public venues.”

So two speakers per month, multiplied by six months equals twelve speakers (12), divided by $300,000 = $25,000 per speaker.

It sounds more like splitting a lottery prize in Afghanistan where, according to World Vision, the average annual income is $250.00 (http://www.worldvision.org/content.nsf/learn/world-vision-afghanistan, accessed on 12/11/12).

NGO’s may apply by going to http://grants.gov (should be .giv) and searching for this grant number – SCAKAB-13-CA-003-SCA-12102012.

But we have a revenue problem, and not a spending problem? Anyone have some speech topic suggestions?

Bring On the 7 Horsemen (or to be PC, 3 angry Women, 3 raging Men, and 1 Flaming [or extremely bitter] Trans-sexual)

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This has been predicted before but the end is near. Apocalypse Now! Let’s end this and rise up into the clouds and be reunited with our Creator. Let’s face it folks, we’ve made a mess down here on Earth and someone better save us soon or it’s going to become pretty darned uncomfortable, and I enjoy my creature comforts. What evidence is there that I could possibly – perhaps in some cosmic slip of the inevitability of my fallibility - be WRONG about everything?  In such a time warped, worm hole, could I be right about the end of civilization as we know it is about to come to some horrific end?

  • Israel has invaded Gaza before, but not when Syria is in a civil war and has nothing to lose, 
  • Turkey is defending its borders and is on the verge of defending itself, 
  • Libya is devolved into a tribal state, 
  • Egypt is under the control of Muslim extremists (those who want to live under the laws of their own religion – like Saudi Arabia) and who may decide to defend Palestine rather than accept billions in aid form the US, 
  • Iran is making radioactive juices, 
  • Russia is licking its lips,
  • Europe – or at least Greece, Spain, and Portugal- are all teetering on economic collapse,
  • Iraq is off the radar so who knows what’s happening in that terrorist test tube,
  • Afghanistan is a freakin’ mess because we’ve torn up their country and built a few roads,
  • Pakistan is under control for the moment but for how long?
  • India is too busy with poverty or buying gold (depending on caste) to worry about why the US is spending so much on bombs. India has nukes so who is going to screw with them? (US should get a clue here).
What to do?  Have a freakin’ martini and watch TV. It will dull the senses, lower the IQ, and you won’t feel what’s coming so acutely.

Cranky Old Guy

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I am watching the progress of the Giants v. Tigers online and I see that Matt Cain was born in 1984, a year after I graduated from college.  I hate baseball…

If the news doesn’t reach me, why should I care?

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I’m living without cable. Now that does not mean I don’t have TV. I have a ROKU box, it cost me less than a hundred bucks and it streams Internet to my TV via wifi.

On the ROKU I get television. I subscribe to Hulu+ and Netflix. Even though I get the milktoast version of the nightly news (NBC) via ROKU in short, edited clips that have the effect of watering down a broadcast even more than NBC already does. Not that a little watering down of all the disaster and despair of the world is a bad thing.

My colleague today told me about another school shooting somewhere. I wished she hadn’t told me because I may not have known about it. But then I wondered if I should know so I can care about those poor people who were shot, the poor families, the poor shooter’s family, the poor cops that have to clean it all up.

I wondered about the Japanese Tsunami, I still had cable then and I watched with horrified fascination as whole villages were obliterated in one black wave.

But I also wondered, what if I had had no cable? What if nobody told me about the Tsunami? I would not have known; I would not have donated; I would not have spent any time thinking about what it must have been like to be in the face of certain death. I would have merely clung to my childhood imaginings of what a tidal wave looked like, a tall roaring wave like the Hawaiian surfers ride on their surfboard.
I wonder if the reality of the world brought in by cable is a positive thing? I mean, as far as a school shooting in Baltimore goes, I have no impact on it, I have no power to prevent it or to help its healing. But the news of it has an impact on me. It makes me think that the world is going to hell in a hand basket as one more lunatic goes crazy and shoots a bunch of innocent people.

But should the news make me feel that way? Should I care what happens in Baltimore when there are obviously so many nice and fairly normal people all around me? Am I suffering from a creeping paranoia about the world fed by our addiction to the bad news?

Should I not be equally impacted by the people who did good things today? Surely the ratio of crazy maniacs to good people must be at least 2:1 if not 2 million to one.

Yet it is the shooting that my colleague told me about and it is that one that made me think. It is a little like the Tsunami, a day in which tragic nature wiped out sixteen thousand people. But on that day billions of people enjoyed and benefitted from nature, floated on calm water, hiked in cool mountains, farmed in fertile land.

What right do the news people have portraying the world as a dangerous and evil place, taking up so much space in our minds with stories of the evil, the tragic, the misguided, or the delusional?

Perhaps there is no need to know these things if they happen outside our sphere. Perhaps we will not experience peace until we close off the electronic faucet of bad news that many of us have open wide, allowing all the negative news of the world to flood in and wash over us in a powerful and never ending black wave.