Today was a rough, crazy and ultimately satisfying day. It was like the episode of the animated Superman series with Darkseid invading Earth. Everything is going pretty bad but Superman is able to save the day, with some help, and Darkseid is sent back to his dimension. Just before he departs, Darkseid sends out an energy pulse, missing Superman but killing Jack Turpin.

That was my day.

I started off leaving work, tired because I had been up all night. I had a to do list to stay on track of the things I needed to accomplish today. I hit Target as soon as they opened and got almost everything I needed to complete the bathroom. I left there and walked to my home. I did some measurements for drapes, made sure the dimensions I had for a couch would fit in the area I wanted it to fit, and confirmed a decision I made earlier in the morning that I needed to replace the refrigerator and stove.

It was 10 am when I left the house and I figured a trip to the place that had the couch and another to a shop that might have the refrigerator and stove could be finished by noon. Little did I realize things were taking a turn to the bizarre.

I started to lock up my home when I heard someone shout out my name. I looked around. It was a man’s voice but all I saw was a woman walking her dog and a car. The car slowed down and the guy in the car put the vehicle in park. As he did he said his name and that he was a neighbor of mine. You have to understand I only met one of the neighbors, the downstairs one, a week or two before the sale was final. I had no idea who the guy was in the car. The guy, just like the downstairs woman a few weeks earlier, gave me a rundown of people in the area. While it was a welcome bit of information (I found out some things about the previous owner of the home which confirmed some suspicions I had of some things I noticed in the home) it was disconcerting how much everyone was into each other’s business. I guess I will have to be on my best behavior in my own home.

I made it to Big Lots where I had seen the couch, and it was available. I made arrangements to pay and have the couch delivered to my place. At this time, between Target and Big Lots, I had spent a lot of money. I was still in budget and I knew I had the money to cover everything in my account, but I should have had some alarm buzzers going off in my head. I normally don’t have a lot of activity on my debit card and with all the work I have been doing to work on the home, my card was getting a workout. I was too tired to think about alarms that might be going off with the credit card company.

By 11:30am I made it to Spencer’s TV and Appliance. It wasn’t one of the main stores but the dented and clearance sale store. Just the type of place a HGTV show would encourage viewers to visit for low prices on appliances. I wasn’t disappointed. After meeting with Rusty the salesman, who actually listened to what I was looking for and my price range, found me a stove and refrigerator within my budget. Even with the tax, deliver fee (it was free but because I have stairs to get to my place there is an extra fee, crazy but I got the same stairs quote from Big Lots) and a warranty on the refrigerator for 4 years, the end price didn’t put a dent in my budget too bad. When Rusty went to run the total on my debit card, I had the sinking feeling there might be a problem because of all the purchases earlier.

Sure enough, he came back and told me the card was declined. I didn’t really hear the word declined in hindsight, which should have triggered something if I was paying attention to it, but feeling the card was being used too much and a hold was placed on purchases, I figured I would call the bank to explain what was going on so funds could be released.

I waited close to ten minutes on hold and in that time, I came up with a decision that would ruin my day. I asked Rusty if they took cashier’s checks and he said yes. I knew my bank branch was a block away and I decided I would go up and get a check and bring it back. I figured it would take 20 minutes tops. Rusty said no problem and I walked to the bank. There was a small line of people in the bank and as I filled out the form, I made the choice of getting the money out of my savings. I knew I had more than enough to cover the bill there. That was the domino that set of the unfortunate chain of events.

I got to the teller (I have her name but I’m not going to post it, even though I should expose her for the incompetent person she is) and handed her the withdrawal slip for the check and the debit card. She said she needed my driver’s license, which I gave to her and I made sure to tell her I wanted the money taken out of my savings account, not my checking. Almost a week ago I was at another branch getting a cashier’s check and it didn’t take too long to complete. This teller took a very long time in getting me the check and when she was done she ‘said’ she was handing me the check, my debit card, a receipt and my driver’s license. I forgot to mention, and this turned out to be a telltale moment in the transaction, that she asked if I wanted a balance receipt from the transaction and I told her no. When she gave me one I wasn’t too concerned, but as I was putting things away something didn’t seem right. I gathered my stuff and was almost ready to leave the teller when I opened up my wallet, started to put by debit card back in its slot and noticed I didn’t have my driver’s license. I fumbled a bit, double checked a few things and realized I didn’t have my card. I told the teller she forgot to give me my driver’s license. She told me she was sure she did and I did another quick check and told her she didn’t.

That lead to 10 minutes of me pulling out everything in my wallet to make sure I didn’t have the card, and the teller doing what I thought was a halfhearted effort to look for the card on her end. She essentially told me she had given me the card, she didn’t have the card and I must have lost it. You have to understand all of this happened in front of the teller. It wasn’t like I went outside claiming to have not had the driver’s license. To me, it seemed that she dismissed me and wasn’t going to help me out. After another 10 minutes of looking and finding nothing and getting no help from the teller or the bank staff, I figured I would walk back to Spencer’s, pay for the appliances then go back to the bank to try and resolve things.

I went back to the bank where another 20 minutes of no real help occurred. The bank staff felt very sorry for me but since they didn’t have the license there was nothing they could do. I asked a number of times if they could review the footage of the teller to confirm she didn’t misplace it but I was told that would be ‘a breech in security.’ As anyone who knows me would attest to, I was pretty mad about the service I was getting. There was no acknowledgement, other than canned responses dug up from some corporate seminar on customer non-service, they had dropped the ball in losing the card. No, they did nothing wrong and implied I lost the card. They told me if they found the card they would call me, still not doing any real search while I was there, and they shooed me away.

In the hour I was at the bank trying to get them to look for the card, when I had taken papers out of my wallet I saw the receipt for the transaction. I thought the amount in my savings account was off, but in a good way. There was a lot of money left in it I thought should have been gone because of the transaction. I was too concerned about the driver’s license to take a second look on it.

I left the bank and walked to the bus stop. By then my phone rang and the teller from the bank was on the phone and she said she had found my license. I was relieved that it was found and I walked back to the bank while on the phone with the teller. Just as I got to the bank, something happened that caused me to drop my phone. It landed hard and when I picked it up, the bottom half of my screen was messed up. Just as felt joy about one thing, something bad slapped me in the face.

As mad as I was I was happy to get the license so I walked back to the bank and as the manager handed me the license she said a customer found it on the floor where I must have dropped it. Her telling me that made me mad because I knew it was a lie. I was in three spots in the bank. Two of those spots, the deposit slip box and the teller’s window, had a lot of traffic in the time I was there. When I was at the customer service station, the third spot I was at in the bank, I kept my eye on the area of the teller and deposit station. The bank manager wanted me to believe that in the hour I was at the bank asking about my missing license, even counting the time I left to deliver the check to Spencer’s, not one customer or employee noticed my license on the floor, the table or wherever they claimed it was found, yet less than five minutes after I raise a stink in the bank about it being missing, it was found. I can’t buy that.

By the time I got home, I was beat. No sleep since yesterday and a longer day than expected, I was too tired to do anything but fall asleep. The thing about the odd balance in my savings bugged me so I logged onto my account. What I saw made me angry and made me realize why the teller had taken so long in getting the check out. In my checking account there was 50 cents! For a few seconds I thought the spending I did before Spencer’s was more than I thought, but I realized the teller, instead of taking the money from my savings drained my checking account first then got the balance from savings. Yeah, I should have called the bank to complain but I was more concerned about the rent check I knew was going to pop in at any moment and an auto-withdrawal. I took money from the savings and transferred it to checking to make sure the bills were covered and called it a night. I figured I could deal with the bank when I woke up later.

So here it is later, coming off of a strange dream I know was inspired by the events of the day and I checked my bank account. Guess what? Another surprise. The transfer I made isn’t registered anymore. Now there are two transfers for a similar amount to my checking account. The strange part is that the money left in my savings account is the actual estimate I came up with as to what would have been left after the Spencer’s sale. So it looks like the numbers switched, with my savings fund in checking and checking funds in savings.

I had to take a deep breath and realize at least the money is there that should be. With everything that happened today, a messed up smartphone screen, while a setback, is something I can maneuver around. I got my appliances and hopefully all will arrive at the house within the next few days. It’s also a positive I didn’t get into a shouting match at the bank. I joked with someone a few days ago that having a home means I have roots in the community, like they say on Law and Order when determining if a criminal is a flight risk. I have to be mindful that if I go crazy about some foolishness I don’t have an apartment that I can sneak out of.