Grey's Journal:
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I was just trying to buy groceries when it happened. I went into my local supermarket (Safeway) to pick up some food. This for me consists of microwaveable meals, cereal, and tubes of Pringles. I need to take a cooking class. I stood at the checkout counter waiting for the woman ahead of me to grab her bags and leave. But alas, she was one of those people who likes to hold up the entire line while she checks the prices on her receipt. She found a mistake, and the rest of us were going to pay. With a detestable hint of pride she told the checkout girl "You overcharged me two pence on this wedge of cheese." Because I had a lot of time and not much to do during this financial debate, I did some math to keep myself occupied. If this woman made minimum wage (about £4.10 an hour), her time was worth 7 pence a minute. So even if we assume she is on the bottom of the economic ladder, which, by the look of her high quality clothes and her plastic face she was not, it is not worth her time to argue over 2 pence. She would have to get the situation resolved in 16 seconds to break even. I won't even mention the value of everyone else's time she wasted. After 10 minutes she got her money refunded and it was my turn at the counter. As the checkout girl tallied my purchases, I thought about writing this week’s journal entry on how inconsiderate some people are of others. This is not that journal. To quote Morpheus: "Fate it seems, is not without a sense of irony." The checkout girl swiped my HSBC debit card, and the machine beeped angrily at her. She swiped it again. Angry beep. She called over the manager. A heard everyone behind me sigh. Two in a row! They must have thought. The chubby, average looking female manager pressed some buttons, swiped my card (angry beep) and then said: "I'm taking your card." "Excuse me?" "This is your fault," she proceeds, "It's a stolen card." Before we continue, I want to tell you that I am not a debit card thief. Also, so you understand how upset I was, you need to know that all the money I have (had) is (was) on that card. Without it, I can't pay my rent, my tuition, my food, or get the haircut I'm two weeks overdue for. "That's my card." I told her. "The computer tells me to take it." She raised her eyebrows in a you-want-to-try-and-take-it-from-me-thief-boy expression. Now I understood this woman was just doing her job. She is a low-level cog in the machine. But that certainly didn't stop me from getting angry with her. I should have directed my frustration at the large faceless corporations of Safeway and HSBC. But, that's difficult to do precisely because they are faceless and amorphous. And it's especially difficult to get angry with something faceless when there is a very unpleasant face right in front of you. The manager didn't express the slightest bit of sympathy for my situation, and I could feel her enjoying her sudden power and authority. I began to argue with her. You may notice the hypocrisy involved here. Moments ago, I was rolling my eyes at the woman ahead of me for taking up everyone else's time, but now, here I am doing the same. But, the math works out very differently for me. I'm unemployed. I took my income (£0/hr) and divided by 60 minutes and discovered that I had an infinite amount of time at my disposal to defend my savings. "Can you tell me why you need to take the card if it doesn't work?" I asked "No." "Will you let my call the bank from here?" "No." "May I copy the number on my card so I can talk to the bank about this?" "No." I was proud that I restrained myself from asking the next question that came to mind: Can you do anything but be a huge bitch? But, nonetheless, I did lose it. I cursed out of frustration. I realized that the only money I had outside that card was a small cup of change in my room. Perhaps £7 at most. Now she threatened to have me removed from the store. Despite the intensity of my situation, I found this amusing. I've never been kicked out of anywhere. London has all sorts of new experiences waiting for me in unexpected places. More yelling. The woman said something else that got me angry. For one crazy moment, I was filled with the desire to grab my card from her pudgy little fingers and run out of the store. I judged the distance from the checkout counter to the door, looked for employees who could block my way, and estimated an 80% chance that I could make it. The manager suddenly switched gears. "Would you please come this way sir?" I realized this woman now placed me in the crazy-and-potentially-dangerous category. Now I was a sir. Now she said please. A bit startled at the sudden change, I followed her. (After I apologized to everyone on line behind me.) But it was a trick! On the way to the customer service counter, a swarm of identically dressed, average looking employees surrounded me. Finding the manager in that crowd was like trying to track a single zebra in a herd. When I got to the counter, I discovered that the pudgy manager had disappeared (with my card) during the confusion. Meanwhile, no one at the customer service counter knew what the problem was or offered help. After ten minutes of trying to find the manager unsuccessfully, I wandered out of the supermarket in a daze. When I got back to my apartment, I wanted to call HSBC. But, there was a problem. The phone in my room refuses to work, so I was forced to use my cell phone. However, the cell phone is pay-as-you-go. I need to put money on it before I make calls. I had five pounds on the phone, so that gave me 26 minutes to resolve my problems with the bank. My first thought was ‘Buy more minutes’. My second though was ‘With what?’. On the phone and counting my time, I waded through the automated call center. "Press one if you would like to report a stolen card." I chose this option, because I thought that the manager had stolen my card, but this was not how HSBC meant it. Five minutes lost backing out of options that didn’t apply to me. Eventually, I connected to a real person and told him my situation. Now came twenty questions... "What's your name?" "What's your account number?" "What's your sort code?" "What's your bank code?" "What are the first and third digits of your PIN?" This one stumped me. I blanked out. Without the machine in front of me, I couldn't remember. The HSBC guy grew suspicious. "Umm.... give me a minute" I stalled. I tried to visualize the machine before me and moved my hand over the imaginary panel. "3 and 5. No wait! 3 and 7!" "Hmm. I'm going to need to ask you more questions Sir." Apparently, getting my pin wrong did not increase the banks confidence that I was me. I checked my watch. 10 minutes left. The questions got stranger and stranger. My favorite one was: "What was your last purchase, and how much was it for?" I imagine they must get some interesting and embarrassing answers to that one. I'd hate to be the guy who bought Back Door Sluts 9 just before his card was stolen. Fortunately, I'm a boring guy and my answer was much more benign: "T-Mobile Top Up." and "20 Pounds." With three minutes of cell phone talk time to spare, we got the whole thing sorted out. Because I moved five times this summer, HSBC lost track of me. Exactly how this translates into 'stolen card' I'm not sure, but one thing is clear: it was my fault. I should have been more diligent in updating my address. So now I have 3 to 5 business days to wait for the new card to be sent to me, and £7 to live off of during that time. Wish me luck! Leave a comment, send an email or join my
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Copyright © 2003 Wellington Grey  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License. |
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