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.

Coworker Cantankery

So at this point we’ve covered customer service and how no one should be subjected to offering it. I am now here to tell you that the same jobs forcing people to smile at customers who have lost their freaking minds are also forcing good people of the world to work alongside complete nightmares. 

In support of this statement, I offer you the following:

First, someone has always worked there for 500 years before you, so by the time the vacation calendar gets to you they have picked it over like roadside vultures, leaving you only the most exciting options, like random Thursdays in March. You never get any good days because CHERYL always gets Thanksgiving week and KAREN always gets Christmas and KEVIN always gets the 4^th of July.  

But who can blame them. And honestly, you have more nefarious problems in the world of co-workers. I’m referring of course to the incredibly awful people one is sometimes forced to work with who only grow exponentially more awful when given power. Listen, your friendly neighborhood bank tellers may look innocuous but trust me, the power dynamics behind the teller line are not for the faint of heart. I imagine this applies equally to other lines of work, but gotta stick with what I (used to) know.

My own personal nemesis, we’ll call her Carol, was an infamous villain and also my manager. An unfortunate situation to say the least.

Carol would lurk around with her hunched posture and hawkish nose until she caught some of her less favorite employees (a category in which I unwillingly excelled) doing anything she disapproved of. These things included:

1.     Us quietly suggesting to customers that they NOT do whatever thing she had just suggested they do. We were all in this fairly awkward position a few times a week because Carol had an alarming knack for having no idea what she was talking about, coupled with the habit of issuing wildly inaccurate statements with great authority.

2.     Us rolling our eyes when Carol told us for the 50^th time that SHE HAD BEEN A TELLER FOR EXACTLY ONE DAY AND WAS SO GOOD THAT THEY PROMOTED HER TO MANAGER SO YES SHE KNOWS WHAT SHE IS TALKING ABOUT.

Okay sorry CAROL. I will just tell that customer that they should indeed write their pin number in permanent marker on the back of their debit card, you batty old witch.

Carol once pulled me into her office to ask why I was gaining weight and not doing my makeup. I informed her that I’d taken to drinking many calorie-packed rum and cokes after work these days, and that I had in fact never done my makeup and likely never would.

It would appear that this was not a believable enough explanation because after a long pause, she narrowed her eyes over that hawkish nose and asked me in a lowered voice if I was actually pregnant.

Fuckin Carol.

Then there are co-workers like Sharon. Sharon took up smoking out of spite after no one addressed her complaint that people who smoked got more breaks. When Sharon wasn’t out enjoying straight shots of poison to the lungs, you could generally find her in the lobby, running her hands through the curly chest hair poking out of the faded plaid button-up of her much older husband, who spent his free time in retirement visiting her at the bank. Perhaps this would have been mildly (and I do mean mildly) less offensive if we had not argued on more than one occasion over her stating that she didn’t have anything against gay people, she just didn’t want their love life in her face. Now isn’t that just the curly old chest hairs of the pot calling the gay kettle black.

So, ya know, just more to ponder with the intermittent introduction of the idea that ditching life behind the teller line in favor of six years of long nights in the lab was basically the-worst-decision-ever. Upon recall of Carol's shadowy form, I generally consider the entire thing to be at least a toss up. 

The Nostalgia Games

Sometimes I get into this rut where I play the “why are some of my life decisions the worst” game. It’s a pretty good time. Perhaps you’re familiar with it.

I'm not trying to brag or anything but I was a top player throughout my entire graduate school career, having spent approximately 98.2% of graduate school kvetching about my decision to go to graduate school. 

Furrowing my brows endlessly over dreamy pre-grad days of work being over when I left the building at five o'clock.
Pining over how wonderful it was to go on vacation and then come back NOT to a pile of work, because work didn't pile up when I left my bank teller job, and neither did e-mails. I REPEAT: THERE ARE NO UNANSWERED EMAILS WHEN YOU COME BACK TO YOUR BANK TELLER JOB. 

As I remember, it was pure, unadulterated bliss. 

 

But that's how the “why are some of my life decisions the worst” game works. Listen up, people: Nostalgia = PUBLIC ENEMY #1.

 
It's good to take a step back when kvetching to remember that you were probably kvetching throughout previous life decisions. too, as we humans are wont to do. Upon reading further you will witness the kvetches (is that a word? It is now) of this previously blissful life I've sketched out above.

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Being a bank teller = extreme boredom on Thursday afternoons when no one came to the bank and the clock neveeeerrrrr reached 5 and even though there is literally nothing to do, you are NOT allowed to leave.

It also = every teller except yourself calling in sick on the first Friday of the month, a day also known to every boomer on the planet as lets-go-to-the-MF-BANK day. 
This actually happened once. Fastest but most hungry day of my life.

But the overarching lesson of time served as a bank teller =  customer service is some bullshit. 

May the metaphysical hand of god strike me down every single time I neglect to address this fact when barreling down the rabbit hole of nostalgia.

In support of this claim, I offer you the following:

1.     The guy who actually filed a lawsuit against the bank branch I was working in during undergrad, in which he legitimately requested that an exorcism be performed within our building. This of course did not go far within the legal workings of Bonneville County, but losing his exorcism bid did not deter him from continuing to bank with us. He simply chose to do his business solely through the drive-through after that, and staunchly refused to look at or speak to us the entire time.

a.     Wait, no, he did look at me once. I was keying in his deposit when he turned his head slowly toward the window. Once it had swiveled enough to appropriately allow his beady eyes to rest upon me, he proceeded to snort like a pig into the microphone until I pushed the drawer back out with his receipt. Charming. 

2.     The guy who repeatedly scream-asked me if I enjoyed stealing money from old people after he discovered that $50 from his mothers account had been turned over to the state like a year previously, after five years of account inactivity.

a.     Why yes, sir, it’s one of my most treasured past times. Anything else I can do for you today?

3.     The woman who promptly strode to my manager’s office to complain that I was “loudly bragging about my drunken behavior” after she overheard me telling a fellow co-worker that I had tried a blue tarantula margarita the previous Saturday.

a.     I was soundly reprimanded for this. 

4.     The incredibly agitated man demanding to know why his account was in the negative, but who did not know his account number and stoutly refused to give me any identifying information so that I could locate said account, because he was convinced I would then try to steal his identity.

a.    It appeared to be lost on him that if I was in the identity-stealin’ mood, I would be much more inclined to steal the identity of someone with positive account balances. #justsayin

5.     The woman who came barreling up to my window in extreme panic because the ATM had refused to give her any money. Upon looking up her account I was able to inform her that the ATM could not dispense money from an account that was approximately ten thousand dollars in the negative. The outrageous state of her account was the result of a previously deposited $9000 being removed due to the fact that it was someone else’s $9000 tax refund.

a.     Rather than questioning her suddenly inflated balance, it appeared she had instead made a series of large cash withdrawals before the mistake was discovered, thus leaving a devastatingly negative balance when the deposit was reversed.

b.     As I began to quietly explain this to her she simply backed away from my window while screaming hysterically, “I AM NOT A THIEF GODDAMMIT”, as an entire lobby of people stared at me like I was kicking a dog.

6.     The woman who lectured me sharply for several minutes on the importance of maintaining a professional appearance at work, while several people waited in line behind her, because she did not like what I was wearing.

a.      I was wearing the company-approved t-shirt all employees were given to wear on Fridays.  

7.     The guy I knew from high school who was mad at me about something and took his revenge by telling my manager that I had given all of his account information to his ex-girlfriend.

a.     The best part about this is that I met his ex-girlfriend a total of one time when she was my cashier at Target. I probably told her I thought he was an idiot, but trust me, girl did not need confirmation from me that all of his assets were equally unimpressive.

8.     The savage children in the drive-through savagely demanding tootsie rolls. Some of them would just stare at me with the intensity of an axe murderer throughout the entire transaction. This was unnerving, but since I am also given to staring like that at people who have food that I want, I was generally tolerant. However, those screaming ones with the bulging eyes that would sometimes actually hang their weird little bodies out of the car windows were not getting tootsie rolls from yours truly. This was met with great disapproval from the people who had birthed or otherwise parented those weird little bodies, but I remained steadfast.

a.      I realize I could think differently of this if I ever have a little weirdo of my own, but we’ll just cross that weird little bridge if it’s ever built.