OK. I will openly admit to being irresponsible with money. It’s a long-standing problem that I swear I’m working on. I am so much better now than I used to be. Really. I have never been the girl with the balanced checkbook, but not for lack of (failed) attempts.
I have an application on my iDevice that is essentially a check register. I can schedule recurring items, and I try to keep track of all of my debit card maneuvers, but it’s not foolproof. The problem is that if I don’t write it down the moment it happens, I forget to do it. Then there’s the stupid little shit that I forget about every. fucking. month. Like the damn SuperPoke Premium bullshit that I thought was going to be so much fun on Facebook. That $4.99 each month was not only wasted, it also fucked up my account balance more than once. And that’s another problem – I live so close to overdrawn the week before my next paycheck that even five bucks can make or break my life.
So, yesterday when I deposited my first paycheck from my new employer, my account was overdrawn by about $150. The majority of that balance was because I forgot about a check I wrote for Kierstin’s book order from school, so a bunch of small transactions from Starbucks and Safeway and the like caused me to have multiple overdraft charges. At thirty-five bucks a pop, that shit gets expensive in a big, fat hurry.
The policy at BofA is apparently that if your account is overdrawn and you deposit a check – the same does not hold true for direct deposit, mind you – they hold the funds for two business days, with the exception of $100 that they release out of the goodness of their hearts. I’m not a math major, but negative 150 plus 100 still leaves a negative number. So their hundred bucks is so very much NOT useful, and the account remains overdrawn. So, there I sat with a hold on my money until 5:00pm on Friday night.
I fully understand that this is MY fault. I’m not blaming anyone else – I’m irresponsible, and forgetful, and I have issues that I’m all too aware of. But would it not be so much more helpful if they could release, say… another couple of hundred bucks so that the account is not in the red?
I went into the branch this morning, after looking at my account balance online and seeing that they had charged me yet another $35 “extended overdraft charge”, so that puts me at -$85 now. Stellar. So I spoke with the branch manager and explained the situation and asked if they could please release another couple of hundred dollars so that I might be able to put gas in my car, and pay to get my car out of the parking garage this evening. She did so, which is the nice part of this story, but when she showed me the screen detailing what she had done, I noticed that the new hold date was set for 4/12. That would be … three days longer than the original hold. Um… huh? So, I asked why the hold date was another three days. I asked calmly, I swear. I will fully admit it when I get all snotty or nasty or whatever, but I was totally calm. I could have been categorized as confused, for certain. But not hyper or bitchy or anything else. I swear. So, she says to me, “you need to calm down, it’s just a date the system puts in”.
There is no surer way to piss me right the fuck off in an immediate and biblical fashion than to tell me to calm down when I’m being perfectly calm.
I stared at her for a couple of seconds, took a deep breath, and said (very calmly, I might add): “Lady, this IS me being calm. I asked a perfectly reasonable question, and you telling me to calm down when I AM completely calm is the absolute best way to make me anything BUT calm. You won’t like me very much if I decide against remaining calm right now.”
Blink.
Blink.
Then I smiled at her.
She stood there, stunned, then shook her head and informed me that she was going to call the small, local bank that the check was drawn on tomorrow and make sure that the check clears, which it absolutely should, and that she would personally make sure that the hold was cleared if it did.
Here’s where this story ends for now. But I’m telling you that if there’s some sort of problem that prevents her from following up with her promise, and my funds end up being held until Monday because of this, I’m going to go so colossally fucking batshit crazy in their lobby that they’re going to have to call security to shut me up.
Calm, indeed.
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