Failure to pay attention
I did my Saturday run to the supermarket, and parked, as is my occasional wont, roughly halfway between the door to the store and the ATM on an outlot; the idea was that I would walk through the ATM’s drive-up — I never can seem to reach the darn thing from an actual car without coming too close to the concrete pillars protecting its edges — and then ambling up to do the shopping. There is an ATM in the store, but it belongs to Some Other Bank (Member FDIC), and I figured I could walk a few yards to save two bucks in service charges.
I withdrew my cash and looked at the receipt just long enough to check the balance, which was about a third what I thought it should be. Passers-by might have noticed the storm clouds forming on my brow.
I bought about two-thirds of what I’d planned to buy, got back in the car, and contemplated the upcoming Highly Denunciatory speech I’d be making to the bank for this grievous offense. I’d even figured out what had happened: payday was Wednesday, which means, technically, after the close of business Tuesday, and Tuesday afternoon I’d paid a metric buttload of bills through the bank’s online service, having noted that the funds were already marked as “available.” Something happened to the ol’ Direct Deposit, I reasoned, and since all those bills were sitting there in the Pay queue, the bank duly paid them, and then slapped me with a series of overdraft charges for the ones that exceeded the balance already in hand.
Arriving back home, I put away the groceries and then fired up the browser. The bank site reported that, after the ATM transaction, I had exactly as much left as I thought I was supposed to have. This spawned some incoherent babble along the lines of “holy flurking schnit,” at which time it occurred to me that maybe I should read the damn receipt again.
Which wasn’t even mine. Card number — last four digits, anyway — was different, amount withdrawn was different, balance remaining was different. A mixture of Saturday sun and accumulated bile evidently had blinded me.
I duly called the bank and informed them that their transaction processor and their receipt printer had somehow gotten out of sync; the young lady duly took down the report. (Who knew there was anyone named “Colleen” in Bangalore?) And with that, I retreated to the smallest room in the house, verifying the truth of that old “scared spitless” business. Of course, it’s not really “spitless,” but it rhymes with it.
