Why Chase Bank Should Lick my Dog’s Balls (if he still had them).

I used to have a Washington Mutual Bank Account. I switched from Bank of America nine years ago. I liked Washington Mutual. I rarely had any problems with them that they weren’t willing to work with me on. But a few years ago, I opened an account with USAA and they are hands down the most amazing bank EVER.

For this reason, my WaMu usage dwindled down and then eventually was nothing. They were taken over by Chase a while ago. I haven’t touched the account in over six months. I don’t even know what my PIN is for my Chase debit card, and come to find out that I didn’t even know where the card was to begin with. The only reason I bothered closing the account is because I got a notice in the mail from Chase saying that they were going to change the type of account I have, and would start charging me $12 a month for my account. I had $14.54 in that account.

I knew I had to close the account by the end of this month. Now, keep in mind, I have USAA, which does not have any branches. Everything is online and amazing. However, in the past few months I have had reason to go into Bank of America to make a deposit into a friend’s account and to go into Bank of the West to get $60 in quarters. I don’t have accounts at either of these banks, but service was quick and polite. The teller at Bank of the West totally hooked me up with six rolls of quarters without even a thought of throwing some side eye my way. He told me I could go outside to pull out $60 from the ATM or they could do a “cash advance” on my debit card like they would a credit card. They didn’t even charge me for that service.

So I’m thinking that maybe going into Chase won’t be so bad. After all, these two other banks where super helpful and nice, and I wasn’t even an account holder.

I walk down to Chase with my 15 month old daughter in a stroller. The people were nice when I first walked in. Even the teller I talked to for 30 seconds was nice. She told me (after I waited in line to see a teller in the first place) that I had to put my name on a list and someone would help me close my account. I was mildly annoyed, but being that VINNY was there waiting for me, my annoyance washed quickly away. Until I got back to his cubicle.

I explained that I hadn’t used this account in over six months; I had an account with USAA and I do all of my business through them.

“Oh but they are a credit union.”

“Um. Yeah, I don’t know about that, but I know that I do all my banking through them and they are amazing.”

“There are so many advantages to having this account. You’ve had it for nine years.”

“Yeah, but I don’t use it.”

“It’s a free account. And there are so many advantages to having it.”

“No, it’s not a free account. I got a letter from Chase saying that they were going to start charging me $12 a month to keep it, and I think I have maybe $15 in there.”

“Oh, you just have to use your account and it will remain free.”

“Um, I don’t use it. I haven’t used it. I do everything through USAA.”

Finally, he agreed to close it. He told me I had $14.54 in it. I asked if he could please give me a roll of quarters as part of the money. Sure… no problem.

He left and it was me and the baby staring at each other in a perfectly boring cubicle. Time goes by. I hear someone that sounds suspiciously like my good friend Vinny who cares so much about my money and the advantages to having a Chase account. Certainly, it can’t be Vinny, since I don’t have my money (or driver’s license since he took it with me) and now the baby is starting to get fussy.

About 10 minutes go by, and I STILL hear this guy talking. At this point, I’m convinced it can’t be Vinny because I’ve been overhearing this PERSONAL conversation and there is no way that my money’s guardian angel would just leave me in a frightfully small cubicle with a 15 month old child.

Baby is just getting more and more fussy. She’s a CHILD and I didn’t anticipate being in a box for ten minutes. Clearly, neither did she. I get up, look around, and I think I see Vinny talking to some girl to my right. I look around, some guy who left with the same blue zipper bag after Vinny left has already returned. At this point, I don’t care about my $14.54. All I want is my driver’s license. I go up to the front of the bank and ask them to get Vinny. I need to leave. The guy goes in the back, and comes out again and says, “I’m sorry; he’s not back there. Oh! There he is TALKING TO THAT GIRL.”

Vinny, You fucking asshole.

I go over to him, and tell him I need to leave now, may I please have my license. He pulls out my license and money… in dollar bills. I look at him and he says, “We’re out of quarters.”

You fucking dick.

First of all: You want me to believe how IMPORTANT it is to have an account at a fucking bank that doesn’t even have QUARTERS? A BANK!?!??!?!

Secondly: Liar.

Anyway, Vinny sucks and since Chase employs said Vinny suckage, they suck too.

Might piss a few people off with this…

Costco is a rip-off. Period. You pay $50 or $100 a year to commit to a block of cheese that you’re not going to finish before it’s a green and blue pile of mold and dust. After we had our baby, everyone gushed and creamed over how awesome Costco was for diapers, formula and wipes.

Nope.

Sorry friends, but just because you’re buying twice as many whatevers (diapers/any other baby product you can possible think of), you’re still paying about 1.5 times what you would pay for the same amount (albeit in more than one package) at Target. And you don’t need a separate 20 cubic-foot-freezer when shopping at Target, either.

I guess you’re not really paying for cheaper stuff; maybe less trips to the store? Maybe you can stock up on a three year supply of Q-tips and pencils and then you know you’re set.

And every Costco I’ve gone to, customers are super bitchy and rude. Perhaps because they’ve realized that the five cents they’re saving per every thousand Snickers bar isn’t justifying the cost of the annual membership. The point is: they are just rude. And then because Costco’s only shopping cart option is double wide (insert trailer trash jokes here), if anyone stops for a moment to deliberate whether they want full fat or 2% cottage cheese (because Costco doesn’t do non-fat cottage cheese for some reason), they hold up the entire flow of people around them. You can barely fit two carts down the isle, let alone make an impromptu stop to grab an item that catches your eye.

I really don’t like Costco. Every time I even attempt to convince myself that this time, when I go to buy toilet paper, certainly the crappy Costco generic brand will be cheaper than the Charmin brand at Target, I AM ALWAYS WRONG. But I’ve already committed the precious few minutes I have during the day to get my shopping done to parking ¼ of a mile away and queuing to get into the “warehouse” store, that I have eliminated any other option for shopping for the week.

I have tried. I have really tried to love Costco like everyone else in the world does for some undisclosed reason. I can’t. I just can’t.

Costco – you suck.

I feel 9.6% of the labor force’s pain.

That’s what the latest national unemployment rate is. Looking for a job sucks. Wait. Let me correct that: spending time looking for a job isn’t so bad. Spending time filing out on-line applications for various government agencies, despite filling out all of the same information on usajobs sucks. Then updating your cover letter and resume to fit the job description sucks. But what really sucks is not getting a gum dumping call back.

I’m not “really” looking for a job. Right now I’ve got my hands full with school, baby and dog. And a husband is thrown in there every once in a while, sort of like croutons on a salad: you don’t eat them every time. That’s horrible to say, but he’s busy with school and looking on the internet for stuff we can’t afford right now. He decided that he wanted to take Japanese and that we should move there after we’re both finished with school. It’s a very glamorous idea. So I am putting myself out there to test the whole “applying for jobs” water. Let me tell you, the water is not warm. In fact, it’s frigged and my toes are turning blue.

So what is it? Is it because I have absolutely no engineering experience? For the jobs with the FAA and Army Corps of Engineers, who specifically request years of experience, I’d have to say yes. But when I email my snazz to intern positions and entry level positions without getting a call back, I’m starting to question what is going on. I mean… come on SCAG… an UNPAID intern position and the best I get is, “Thank you for your application. It’s now on file.”

The key is, though, that obviously whatever I sent them didn’t impress. I confirmed this with the lack of response I got from another company I sent my information to at the same time. The only thing I can do is go back and adjust the resume and send it to other companies with entry level positions.

When I came back from Iraq in 2004, I had a friend who had been unemployed for almost a year. I didn’t get it. She was sending her resume out, getting calls and interviews but not getting hired. Two years ago another friend moved out to North Carolina and was unemployed for a year. He was sending his resume out, getting calls and interview, but not getting hired. My point is, that as much as it might have sucked for them, at least they were getting calls for interviews! By the way, they both eventually found work.

But as my usual thought process goes: What about ME?!?! How am I so painfully unimpressive that I can’t even get a call for an interview? The best I get is “you’re on file.”

I’m really glad I’m not doing this for real.

These washing machines are really starting to piss me off…

Actually, it’s more like the driers. My apartment complex decided to change out the washers and driers. Front loading washers, very nice.
The driers allegedly have three settings: regular, permanent press and delicate. Last time I checked, delicate was not blazing inferno, shrink your jeans and shirts beyond what you thought they could be after owning them for years. See, but the thing is if you actually DO dry them on delicate, it won’t shrink them, so now I’m stuck with a bunch of tiny shirt and skimmy shorts.

No thank you.

Why does this apartment have to be such a pain in my asshole? It’s Earth Week or Green Week or whatever… shouldn’t people be wanting to save electricity instead of blow drying my clothes into oblivion? Will someone PLEASE think about the children? (and my budget, since I’m el stinge-o and do not care to have to buy new clothes).

Update: Um. I’m embarrassed about the terrible grammar mistake I made in the original title of this blog. I’m going to chalk it up to frustration and lack of sleep. Yeah. that’s it.

I love my husband

I’m not this lovey dovey sort of person who likes to post pictures of my wedding. Actually, I had a friend over recently who commented that most people who are married have photos of their weddings all over the place. Maybe if we spent more than $28 on the wedding, I’d be more likely to want to cherish the moment and make my walls into a stagnant slide show. But the truth is, my husband and I agreed that cheap was better (oddly, I’ve come to find out that this is about the only thing that he’s willing to go cheap on… this guy loves to shop for stuff. It’s hilarious.)

This past weekend, as you may or may not have heard, was Coachella, an annual music and art festival held in the Indio Desert. This is the fourth year my friends and I have gone. It was a slight bummer because usually there are four of us and this year it was only three due to the random and still unexplainable disappearance of our fourth compadre. Bear with me while I set the story up about why I love my husband. He’s in Afghanistan right now, so obviously, he wasn’t going to join us in the grooves.
Morrissey played on friday night. I’ve seen him a few other times. With EJ, my exboyfriend. We dated for five years, he was my first love. BLAH BLAH BLAH, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. We saw Morrissey perform at the Universal Amphitheater waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in the early 2000s. This particular night, Jeremy decided to get shit faced and really excited that he was at this concert. After the show, he wanted me to call one of my best friends, Michael. As Michael has a life, he was unable to answer at midnight or whatever time it was, so Jeremy proceeded to talk over me while I left him a message saying how great Morrissey was and we wished he could have made it. In the background: “Michael! Michael, are you JEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAALOUS? Ask Michael if he’s JEALOUS. Michael, are you jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeealous?”

This was hilarious at the time and still is hilarious to our group of friends. So while Morrissey is playing, Michael and keep asking each other if we are jeeeeeealous. Inside, I’m contemplating if I should call the douche rag I haven’t talked to in over a year for shits and giggles to leave a message asking if he was jealous that Michael and I were at the Morrissey show. Of course we didn’t. But the reason I say I love my husband is not because I didn’t call EJ, but because I even thought about calling him.

Right now, I realize that I am married to the most amazing man in the world. He totally does not get me, but he tries and that is more than a lot of people. I know that I’ve found the best person for me, and so it makes all those lame nights I spent crying over EJ and Roy not even seem that bad. I actually laugh at myself because I was so hurt over those two guys. But now I see that they are decent guys and I’m glad to have had them in my life. I am super glad to have my husband in my life. He is amazing. And has a huge penis.

I hate paypal.

I absolutely, 100% hate paypal. Ok, that may be an exaggeration. Maybe I only hate them 75% because they do offer a service which I happen to use often. Usually while buying most-likely-copyrighted material like solutions manuals from people with names that make me wonder what they are doing with the solutions manual in the first place, unless they wrote it themselves. Then I guess it’s not copyrighted, is it?

So it takes me fifteen minutes to pay this guy for a solutions manual. Now, just as a defense to my own ego, this particular class does not use homework from the book. The teacher writes his own questions, which I have had very little experience with. He has this strange thing about him, where he’s really excited about the subject and actually very concerned that students learn the material. It’s almost like that first year teacher, fresh out of doctorate school, all bright eyed and eger to show the world that math is FUN! But he’s not a new teacher. He’s been teacher almost longer than I have been alive. It’s refreshing and quite enjoyable. But the point is, this text book does not have the answers to any of the end of chapter questions, which are not on the homework, so I’m not cheating. So what I do, since I’ve been out of the game for a year, is I do this crazy thing called extra problems. What a loon, I know. I need to make sure my shit is straight so I order the manual.

Anyway, I have the unfortunate situation of actually having a paypal account. I opened this thing YEARS ago and every time I’ve tried to use it, it gives me issues. Usually with my password. So I’ve had to use several other email addresses to use them because I cannot handle their shenanigans. Tonight was pretty amazing, though. I reset my password (which has never worked in the past, so maybe this not being drunk all the time thing is working out for me). I go to the link the book seller sent me and it pops up an invoice. No where from this screen can you do any sort of change to your account. Nor is there a link to the main paypal site. So I open a new tab, and try to find the profile information. Seeing I can’t change my name, I have to try to find the FAQ, which I couldn’t, so I select “Contact Us” They have this thing called ask a ho, or whatever, so I type in my question, only to be told by the ho that she is not a real ho, just basically a search engine for the FAQ and my question was too long because it included a bunch of platitudes like thank you.

So I get to the point with the name change and the FAQ monkey tells me that you have to fill out an official FORM for that kind of stuff. Ok, whatever, I’ll just use a credit card and see if I can change my name on the billing information.

Guess what?

You cannot! So if you want to use a credit card, using your paypal account, you have to use your own credit card. What sort of anti-shaddy shit is this?!?!??! I know this has its merits. Identity theft, blah blah blah. But dude, I just want to buy a $15 solutions manual to a book so that I am not the stupidest person in the class. I should not have to battle for 15 minutes before being able to GIVE someone my hard earned cash. GAH!

But paypal is like tickemaster… it’s this huge beast that you have to use for some many things, but you always have to pay the “convenience” charge. In this case, 1/4 of an hour of you precious life!

Losers who invent new emails to post more negative comments…

Some douche rag a couple of months ago apparently had a problem with my Mouth Breathers blog.

Evidently, he is a mouth breather whose mother never had enough common sense or common couresty to shut his trap while he was steaming up everyone’s glasses.  I imagine him as having cronic halitosis, thus having the double punch of mouth breathing and disgusting breath.

So this guy (girl…?) has made up a few other email accounts… even one as lame as “email@promouthbreather.com”  Which, at least I’ll give it the credit for taking the time to create an entire email address just to harrass me on my own blog by leaving comments about how I shouldn’t breed.  It’s now just getting to being harassing and pathetic on his side.  Trust me, there are not enough people in the world willing to defind mouth breathers for it to be more than one person.

This guy also did not get the difference between having a GENETIC reason for breathing with one’s mouth open and a mouth breather who is too lazy/stupid to close his mouth while simply breathing.  Again, though, I suspect that his cronic halitosis combined with his stunning looks and personality have driven a few people away in his life.  If he does have some sort of cleft problem, I can only say that I have found many people still attractive with them.  Prime example: Joaquin Phoenix circa 2004 (hubba hubba), not the current attention hungry disaster you can now see gracing the “singing” stage with hot-ass re-re Casey Affleck in tow making a “documentary.”

The point is… now this guy has nothing better to do than just be a douche bag to me.  Get a life, loser.

bastard.

I sold my car recently.  It broke down for the last time on me and I found some sucker… er, nice guy to take it off my hands.  I’m without wheels.  I currently live with my brother, who happens to live 3 miles down the road from a Trader Joe’s.

I am in love with Trader Joe’s.

Unfortunately, I also used to be “in love” with one of the managers that currently works there.  I won’t bore you with the details, but just suffice to say that he is a total choad, on whom I wasted five years of my life.  Of course I realize that ultimately *I* am the idiot since I chose to stay that long, but this is why I tell dudes to snatch up the chicks with the low self-esteem.  Confidence, shomfidence.  Think about it… it’s a two for one deal: Door mat and girlfriend, all rolled into one!

Anyway, I’ve been living here since march and I haven’t run into douche biscuit yet. I’d like to keep it that way.  I do, however, miss shopping at TJ’s.  So I’m without car and stuck in suburbia until thursday when I (da-da-da-daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa) plan on walking from Irvine to Long Beach and then Long Beach to Los Angeles.  I decided today that I would walk to the movie theater, which happens to be near that Trader Joe’s.

So here is more of the deal… we sort of, kind of were still friends until Feb 20 of this year.  That’s when I realized that this guy is a major chunder whistle and I needed to stop talking to him.  At this time I knew he had tuesdays and wednesdays off.  Today is tuesday.  Score.  tit-crust should have the day off.

I had the unfortunate experience of realizing that they eventually change these days off, for whatever reason, when I walked into Trader Joe’s to get a damned bottle of water after my three mile walk.  I don’t think he saw me, but I saw him, walking away looking like that hairy beast from the Bugs Bunny cartoons, Gossamer.  How the hell did I ever bang that beast?  Oh yeah, he was 10 years younger and 40 pounds lighter.

I had to ask some kid where the water was and he, being the good TJ’s employee he is, walked me over to the water.  Lucky for me, shit-nug wasn’t around for the rest of my stay.

The point is:  the fat bastard still pisses me off.

customer service.

This is just a rant.  I used to be completely in love with priceline.  I am now on hold with them.  It’s already been three minutes of holding and the lady just came on to say it would be another five minutes.

The result of all of this waiting is going to be that they will not refund me for their mistake of booking a hotel twice.  Of this I am certain.

The first lady I talked to started out with a bad day.  Never mind that it was 5:30 am for me.  I don’t even know what time her day started and let’s face it, customer service is pretty much the shittiest job you can have.  People get bitchy when they want their damned money back.  I can imagine it’s bad for priceline because right off the bat you know that these people are too cheap to pay full price for a hotel room (like me), so they are going to fight for every last red cent.

I just want the $143 they are stealing from me.  I’m calm about it because I’m just going to call my credit card company and say I did not authorize this transaction if they don’t refund the transaction.

It’s kind of a very confusing situation, so I tried to explain it to the first lady I spoke with.  My life is always very confusing and I only just realized (!) that people are pretty much half mentally retarded, so I need to include every detail a numerous amount of times.  Unfortunately, I don’t know if it was too early or too late for this lady, but she just wasn’t getting the situation.

I guess most customer service people with whom you speak the first time don’t have any authority to do anything.  Maybe that is why they are just so frustrated.  They probably know that either you’re right or you’re a complete idiot, but either way they can’t do anything and they know that you’ll just ask to speak with their manager.

Which I did.  Not like that.  I said, “I don’t think you’re understanding what I’m saying, can I please speak with someone who will listen to what I’m saying?”

Ok, on second thought that was sort of a bitch comment.  No wonder she was pissed when she transferred me.

Eh.  Ok, the second lady has come back on and is refunding the money.  I can’t blame either of them for the situation.  It was my fault.  Actually, it was the internet’s fault. Had it not given me a false error, none of this would have happened.

The point is, this really would have made my mind up about priceline.  You pretty much hand them your money with the understanding that there are no cancellations, barring your own death (and this is true even with the “cancellation insurance” they try to hawk on you for another $14 a day).   So what happens if there is a mistake and you book the same room twice?  Not as in charged twice but were told one transaction didn’t go through, so you leave your computer for  a couple of hours and try it again, using a separate card because you realized that you needed the reward points on that one.

Boom.  You’re fucked.

Unless you talk to the supervisor.  I hate that.  Why can’t the peon just give me my money back?

Verdict:  Priceline is still a viable resource for hotel booking at, hands down, the lowest prices.  Shatner, you randy beast… you’ve led me in the right direction again.

I fall for propaganda

I’ve been on the “Tom Cruise is a freak show, possessed, closet homo” wagon for a while. I’ve been to the Celebrity Center for the Church of Scientology and laughed my ass off through one of their recruitment videos. My friend and I laughed so hard and loud that they came to get us without asking if we had any more questions. It was outstanding.

So my reaction to the snippets of the Tom Cruise/Oprah interview that recently aired was surprising. He’s not all insane. Maybe it was just a phase… that or Hubbard came to Cruise in a vision telling him he needed to clean up his act at the risk of losing the entire scam… er, church.

Judge for yourself: