Nextdoor tea spillin

I recently downloaded the Nextdoor app and signed into my new neighborhood, thinking perhaps I’d find some friends since my immediate neighbors appear very uninterested in being friendly. Turns out that my kind of people just don’t live in this kind of neighborhood. 

However, the kind of people that do live in this kind of neighborhood are the best kind to make fun of, so I’m really sorry if my quarantine has been better than yours.  

There is nothing more entertaining than the airing of grievances, unbridled entitlement and occasional fit-throwing of people who do not appear to have one real problem in all of the world. Allow me to share some of that entertainment in the midst of these troubled times: 

One particular Nextdoor stew, which began with Tammy complaining about bikers spitting their virus-packed saliva onto the city’s bike trail, devolved pretty quickly when Tom hopped in the comments to tell her to walk on another trail if she didn’t like spit. 

Tammy: Well well, I was wondering when the first negative comment would be made. WiNnEr WiNnEr ChIcKeN dInNeR, TOM.  

Tom replies about 30 minutes later: WhAtEvEr, TAMMY. 

This pot was further stirred by Faith, aka supreme stirrer of our Nextdoor community. She jumped in with her usual air of superiority mixed with a clear lack of both awareness and punctuation to say: 

“Gotta get the kids and dogs out sorry I live in a neighborhood where I don’t expect nasty people to be outside like some guy smoking hacking spitting had to grab my children and run into a yard to avoid him.”  

Such an eloquent, yet harrowing, tale.  

Last week, Chris posted about the “mafia squirrels” out and about, accusing the neighborhood at large of accommodating them too much. He is VERY upset that the squirrels are showing no fear of dogs and he posted a picture of one in a tree that he insisted was trying to “square off” with him. 

More recently, some lady posted about how someone needed to “remove the dark man” loitering in front of the dollar store. Someone named Jacob replied, “Lady…this is the Nextdoor app. Not your Privileged Daughters of the Confederacy meeting.” My only regret in the prompt removal of her post is that we didn’t get to see her reaction to Jacob. My guess is she would have hurried to inform him that her best friend is black, meaning she couldn’t possibly be racist. 

This week’s most aggrieved post was from an individual who found their bank statement dropped off at their door. Apparently it had been mis-delivered and the individual who received it had taken the time to bring it to the correct residence. The residents in question, however, did not interpret this as kindness. They went on a real bender about how their account information could have been stolen for “nefarious purposes”.  

Honestly, the only thing nefarious here is that the Karens and Kyles of the world still haven't switched to e-statements.

So far the real MVP is Pam, posting her disdain about the local Kroger. It was approximately two weeks after the pandemic had begun and those poor souls working at grocery stores were being crushed under the weight of a billion instacart orders. Apparently they had cancelled Pam’s order because too many of the items were out of stock. Well, Pam had gone right down to that Kroger and was able to buy most of what she needed, and she was posting the picture of her overflowing SUV trunk to prove it. 

Pam then announced from on high that she would no longer be spending $1000 per week at that Kroger like she had been for the last 30 years.  

Stick it to ‘em, Pam. You probably don’t need to grocery shop for a long time anyway if you’ve been spending $4000 a month for almost a third of the last century. That’s a lotta fat-free snackwells, girl. 

Retirement Rage, Adulting part 2

Hello and thanks for coming to part two of my two-part series on how utterly impossible adulting appears to be. We left off with our joyous departure from George, whose entire being may have inspired the mediocre-white-man-prayer. I don’t know who is responsible for the creation of this prayer, but it goes something like this: “Lord grant me the confidence of a mediocre white man”. That’s it. So simple, yet so layered.

Side note: If that prayer ticks you off, you might be a mediocre white man. Sorry ‘bout it. But don’t go and get too worked up because today we’re shining the light on female mediocrity. If you’re surprised female mediocrity exists, you should be, because it usually doesn’t.

Just kidding, JUST KIDDING. Like I said, don’t get yourself all worked up. 

Let’s begin.

So we move to Indy and I spend a few months drunk on the joy of novelty and the power of putting “Dr.” before my name in every possible context (ma’am, this is an Arby’s). This honeymoon phase led me to believe that all things in life were not only tolerable, but almost happily tolerable. It was a wild ride. Before it ended, I was like, let’s deal with this retirement b.s.! I was certain we would encounter better things from Merrill Lynch and Bank of America than had been delivered in the past, because surely even these foes would fail to vanquish me upon my mountain of new elevation.   

Ignorance truly is bliss, folks.

We made an appointment online for 9 am on a Saturday. As we stood outside the doors waiting for the branch to open, a harried looking woman came rushing up to the door and was let in by another employee. The time was approximately 8:58 am. We swept in as the doors opened at 9 and discovered that this still-breathless woman would be our financial advisor.

She welcomed us into her office, where we sat in an awkward silence waiting for her computer to boot up. Only god knows why this computer needed more time to boot up than I need to get ready every morning, but after like three minutes of staring at each other without saying anything, she pulled out a little notebook and started asking us questions. What follows is a rough transcript of baffling conversation that rivaled George in all but his hatred for democrats in Florida:

Channa (for short): Okay so you’re here to talk about retirement.

Me: Yes. We have an account that we opened like 18 months ago. Long story, but we need to finish setting that thing up.

Channa: Oh okay, so um, so you haven’t set this up?

Me: No. No we have not.

Channa: Oh okay, so um, do you know what you want to do?

Me: Yes.  

I proceed to give her very specific information on what we would like to do with the current account.

Channa: Hm, okay, well um, here’s a spreadsheet on the kinds of accounts we offer.

I take the paper she’s offering, somewhat confused because I have not asked for options, but I don’t want to be rude.

Channa: So do you guys have any children?

Me: No.

Channa: Oh okay…  

she glances at her computer, which still appears to be booting up like we aren’t in the 21^st century and it's still attempting to dial into AOL 

Do you have pets?

Me: Uh, yes.

Channa: writes down and boldly underlines “pets” in her notebook 

Okay great what kind of pets??

Me, confused about the note taking: …a little maltese yorkie thingy…

Taylor interjects for the first time: HE’S A SILKY YORKIE (Taylor once heard that this is an actual thing and finds it so funny that he insists we tell people that our dog is a silky yorkie, like we even know what that is)

Channa: writes down maltese/silky yorkie in her notebook 

Uh huh, great, and what is the dog’s name?

Me: getting more confused …Lemmy

Channa: writes down ‘Lemmy’ and underlines it 3 times

At this point Channa’s computer beeps, and thank god it’s time to get to work because this is really starting to get weird.

Channa starts typing away and I’m thinking this is great because all I need from her is like 13 keystrokes, max, to accomplish my goals and get on with my Saturday.

I open my mouth to repeat our demands but Channa interrupts me to ask Taylor if he’s ever considered making his account Gold status.

Here’s the thing. Taylor and I occupy very defined roles in our relationship.

I have close-to-zero skills when it comes to fixing literally anything in the house or on my car, and also when it comes to driving anywhere outside of my narrowly defined comfort zones. Thus, Taylor fixes most of the things and drives most of the places.

On the flip side, Taylor has close-to-zero skills/interest when it comes to most financial intricacies, including the formation and execution of profitable, long-term financial decisions. Thus, this is where I jump in to happily boss it all around.  

So, much like Taylor takes the reins in complicated matters of home improvement and vehicle maintenance, I moved to relieve him of the financial reins that Channa was offering him. But Channa was too quick. She maintained aggressive eye contact with Taylor and said, “all I have to do is push this button and your account will be gold which means you get SO MUCH STUFF FOR FREE”.

Having previously worked for Bank of America, I was painfully aware of the nuance to all this, but Taylor was like “sure whatever” and she clicked that button with such speed that superman himself could not have intervened.

Okay fine, whatever, I could deal with that later. All that mattered is that we left that damn place with the retirement account settled. So I try to get back to this, but Channa interrupts me again to print something out. It the most recent statement for our retirement account. The same one sitting in front of me because I had printed it before coming.

Channa: There you go! There’s your retirement account.

Me: Yes, thank you. But like I explained before, those funds are sitting in cash, we need to change that.

Channa: Oooohh it's sitting in cash??

I start to scream something like “LISTEN, WOMAN” but I’m interrupted once more by Channa, who is now locking eyes with Taylor again and asking if he would like to open this credit card that he’s super eligible for.

Oh girl no.

This time I jump in quick and squash her sales goal dreams. 

Channa is quiet for a moment and then says we should do some research to decide what exactly we would like to do with this retirement account.

She says we are welcome to come back when we decide this.

Channa then notices what I imagine was a look of unadulterated rage on my face because she paused for a confused second to ask if she hadn’t answered all of my questions. As I left the office I heard her promising Taylor she would call the next week to check in on the situation. She did not.

Though I have since transferred all things to Fidelity and had fairly good luck doing so, I have updated the mediocrity prayer to this: Lord grant me the confidence of literally any financial advisor on this godforsaken planet. The End.

Retirement Rage, Adulting part 1

I have been trying for approximately one year and 5 months to set up a single retirement account for Taylor through Merrill Lynch at Bank of America. I have hence come to the conclusion that Taylor will work until he dies, because the only other option is me dying long before retirement age from exploding in the middle of one of these banking centers.

One day back in July of TWENTY-EIGHTEEN I was like hey, Taylor, you need to get your chit together on those retirement accounts. And by that I mean tag along with me to Bank of America so I can direct the proceedings as you sign the papers.

So we make an appointment at a branch in Delaware with a guy named George. Because what else would an aged, pot-bellied white guy who manages finances at a big corporation be named? Men like that are bound to go by one of approximately five names. You know it’s true. How they've come to rule the world is a mystery to me. 

My goals for this appointment were very straight forward. I informed George of these goals. 

George proceeded to spend the next hour bellowing about democrats in Florida in between opening up the account I requested and telling me I had to “call the back office” anytime I asked for anything else. I remain uncertain as to the identity of these presumably swarthy characters in the “back office”. 

Some other downtime was spent chatting about his 22-year old son who has no job and lives with George rent-free. But fear not, George was taking him on a cruise in a few weeks. That should fix things right up.

So we left that day with a new but entirely useless retirement account because there was no time to call the back office to fund said account or to allocate those funds in any way, mostly because much of the extra time had been taken up talking about those damn Floridian democrats. Honestly I thought Florida was made up entirely of retired republicans, but either way, this was no time to be discussing it.

This was annoying to say the least, and I said as much when I filled out a customer service survey a few days later. This turned out to be a grave mistake because when I sent Taylor back a few weeks later to try and sort out this account, George greeted him by saying, “I read what Tiffany wrote about me”. Perhaps this is why Taylor’s visit that day still resulted in exactly not a damn thing. 

All of this amounted to me being more irritated than usual and completely unwilling to do anything about it. I have an excellent habit of avoiding things that piss me off, so that’s precisely what I did for approximately one year. The retirement account and the funds intended for it remained in flux for the rest of our time in Delaware and through our move away from there and George the terrible.

After like 4 months in our new city I felt that I was ready to stop avoiding the situation, buoyed by the fact that we were in a new place with a new financial representative that couldn’t possibly be as inept as the santa-bellied George.

WELL I WAS WRONG. So thanks for coming to part one of my two-part series on how utterly impossible adulting appears to be. BRB with part two.