Let Me Get My Sailor Hat

Today I sounded like a sailor with both feet firmly planted in the gutter. I swore more in one hour than I have in the last two year total. I might have made a rap artist blush. And poor Ducky got to hear most of it.

Once upon a time, last week, my credit union decided to close ALL their branches here. And all I got was a cheery little letter a week in advance telling me that I could still do all of my banking via online banking, over the phone and at the ATM. Isn't that super. So last week I closed the boys accounts since I can't do their stuff online or at the ATM.

Enter today. I am tired, I stayed up way too late, too many days in a row. I have some errands I need to run. The main errand being depositing money into the now not-so-convenient credit union account. I call to see if they at least left their ATM open to simplify my banking needs. That would be a big, fat NO. Why make things easy for all of their customers that they just left high and dry? So, I head off to the nearest non-credit union ATM.

I think it might be important to share that I have never in all my years ever made a deposit at an ATM. I like to have a little face time and have always gone in to the branch to make my deposits. It just seems like a good idea to give my money to a human directly. So, I drive up and see that you need an envelope and they don't have any and so much for that idea.

So I drive across the street to yet another bank. I have to walk up to this ATM. I am getting seriously annoyed at the amount of time that this is taking, when if my branch was still open I would have been in and out and on to the next thing on my list. So I walk up, feed my card in the slot. I enter my pin and I cannot find the part where is says make a deposit. No envelope is required, but I cannot find the option to make a deposit. I have gone through the options twice. I have canceled the transaction and started over.

I call Ducky. He tries to help, but he hates to do tech support and he can tell that I am just about to lose it. Firetruck is flying out of my mouth about every other word. I am feeling incredibly stupid at my inability to complete what should be a simple task. I have a Master's degree in computers and I cannot operate an ATM. Couple that with the fact that I hate to ask for help or directions and I have a tendency to cry since I had kids, hello really bad day.

So I go in to find out why I cannot manage to make it work. Long story, short. Bank ATM's cannot talk to credit union ATMs. So while they will let you take money out, they won't let you put money in. I have wasted 45 minutes of my life trying to accomplish the impossible. So I waste 10 more minutes yelling at the credit union people.

Why couldn't they have left the ATM's open? Why couldn't they have sent the nearest shared branching locations with the cheery letter? Why couldn't they have sent a list of full service ATM locations with the cheery letter? Why couldn't they have sent the letter out more than a week in advance? They claim they sent it out almost a month in advance, but I didn't get it then and it has no date on it.

All in all it is the little things that can send me right over the edge. My sailor hat is back on the shelf. I shouldn't be needing it again for a while. I went to one of my other credit unions after work and deposited my checks. But it was 20 more minutes out of my day that I needed to spend on other things.

I just wish they put people before profit like they claim to. And I wish they seemed to care at all about my inconvenience. I liked them up until last week too.