Thursday Grumblings

***I just spent the past hour trying to reset my PIN for my ATM card at Citibank - absolutely ridiculous. I primarily bank through Bank of America, but I opened this account at Citibank because they had one of those "We'll-give-you-$50-if-you-open-an-account-with-us" scams. I basically never had anything more in my account than the original $50 gift they promised, and I certainly had never used my Citibank ATM card. I kept the account open for the requisite number of months to qualify for this $50 and then forgot about the account, but I recently received a new ATM card in the mail for no apparent reason. Mayhem ensued.

So ... because I received this new ATM card, my online access was disabled until I registered the new ATM card. To register the new ATM card, I needed to enter my PIN ... but I have no idea if I even had a PIN for this card, nonetheless what the hell the PIN was. I called Citibank to rectify this and was told that they could not tell me my PIN over the phone ... fair enough security measures, I suppose ... but was told I needed to go to a branch to reset my PIN.

So to the branch I went, but was told they could not reset my PIN because I originally setup my account online. UNREAL. I was told by the customer service agent to walk over to one of the ATMs inside the branch, which have telephones attached to them. I picked up the ATM-phone and it automatically dialed someone in internet-land, where I set up the account originally. ::rolls eyes:: Then things went pretty south ...

The witch on the phone proceeded to tell me that I could only reset my PIN at a branch, and I thus proceeded to explode that I was in fact IN A BRANCH, and was told to talk to her on this clown-phone for assistance. I imagine I drew a few funny looks from everyone in the branch as they witnessed me screaming and dancing around, looking as if I was trying to somehow beam myself up to the bridge of the Star Trek Enterprise through this ATM phone. Anyhow, she put me on hold for about 5 minutes and then told me that the branch now had acccess to change my PIN. I walked back over to customer service rep #1 who pressed a lot of buttons, but was (to no surprise) unable to produce any results. I was no joke living a real-life Carole Beer skit from Little Britain.

With this, I decided that a bank that is unable to change my PIN is unfit to properly manage my $53.28. I closed the account and will take my monies elsewhere.

*** The DC City Council, or the DCCircus as Tim has wittingly coined it, has given in to Congress yet again. They moved the bar hours during inauguration back to 4am to compromise with the Senators that were upset about the late 5am hours. If you answer to criticism from these people who have no place telling us how to govern, you are unable to assert your autonomy in the future. BAH! Grow a pair, DCCircus!

*** Lastly, a little morbid sarcasm to wrap up my post. My friend Sandi (who lives and works in the burbs) came over last Saturday and happened to be on the particular Green Line car where the stabbing occured as they passed through the U Street station. The group of kids boarded her metro car fighting, screaming, and taking off clothes to apply pressure to wounds ... naturally, she was incredibly traumatized and completely out of breath by the time she showed up at our apartment. Of all the people for this to happen to, it's of course the person I give the most shit to for living in the suburbs ... now she has enough ammo to friggin' rationalize moving to West Virginia. Despite the craziness, Sandi was still able to provide some light anti-suburbs in an email to me ... haha: "I guess all neighborhoods have problems, but at least there haven't been 8 murders in my zip code this week. Somebody did throw themselves on the train tracks in shady grove this morning, but I can't say I blame him, if i lived in gaithersburg, I'd probably throw myself on the tracks as well."