What a Ridiculous Fucking Day!

I woke up today with a plan of attack. My federal tax return was sliced up as follows:

New 4G Cell Phone
New Washer & Dryer
New Wireless Modem
New Wireless Printer

As per my usual morning routine, the first thing I did was check my phone where I found an overnight text message from my daughter, young Galadriel Tanqueray Onassis.

She got her first traffic ticket last night.

16mph over the speed limit in Sugar Creek. HAWESOME!

Insuring her and her vehicle has already driven my monthly payment up from $76 a months to $176 a month. And that is with Good Driver and Steer Clear Discounts. With a ticket, we not only lose the discounts but the premium increases. So I need to engage a legal ninja to make that go away.

That was before my first cup of coffee. I was still in bed.

Once I'm up and about, my first stop was the bank to make sure I had as much money to do all of the things I had planned. I did.

Next stop was T-Mobile. All of their 4G phones were FREE. One Day Only. My goal was the HTC Amaze. The store opened at 10am, I got there about 10:18 and there were already 4 people in line ahead of me.

After 45 minutes in line, I get to the counter. The sales guy had gauged ears but he had taken out the plugs for the Big Day. So he had these gaping holes in his earlobes that I could see through.

Distracting.

Turns out my bill was past due and I needed to take care of that before they could ring up my free phone.

Fine. No problem! Paid the bill. $147.00 NEXT!

Next was they had to wait for the T-Mobile system to update and reflect the payment. So we waited. And Waited. And Waited. The line behind me was piling up with people wanting free phones. And we waited.

The gauged ears guy finally promised he would hold my phone, check the system every 10 minutes and text me as soon as the system was updated. Deal!

Now I was off to Best Buy for the washer & dryer! The combo was $757.00. Ring it up!

Swiped my card...not accepted. Swiped it again...not accepted. I assured the clerk I checked my balance and I had sufficient funds. Swiped it again...not accepted.

She decides it's a faulty card reader so we go to Customer Service.

Customer Service does a magic trick and accepts the card, but only for $353.00 of the $757.00 purchase price!

WTF???

They ask me if I have another card. No, I don't.

They try to cancel the transaction and credit my account.

But they somehow fuck it up and and credit me for the full $757.00 purchase price instead of the $353.00 they actually charged me.

Now "David", the Manager is freaking the fuck out over the fucked up credit and I'm freaking out over the locked up card and a debit for which I have nothing.

I race over to my bank to find out why my card wasn't accepted. I spoke to "Brad", a very helpful Financial Services Representative.

Turns out some merchant had issued a CAMS (Compromised Account Management System) Alert to my bank which resulted in my daily debit limit being reduced from $2000 to $500 and a new Debit Card being sent to me to replace the compromised card.

Did not know that! Did not recall receiving any such notification. I generally assume anything that comes from my bank is a monthly bank statement and I file it away unopened. Which you would think I would pay more attention since I work for a bank!

Oh well!

The $147 at T-Mobile and the $353 at Best Buy had maxed me out. I withdrew $250 in cash just to make sure I had gas and grocery money to make it through the weekend.

I returned to Best Buy and explained the situation to "David", the Manager.

He was sympathetic, but he had no way of forcing the credit through. He was waiting for another manager to come in at 3pm who could change the $757 credit to a $353 credit and make everything all rainbows and unicorns.

My daughter, young Galadriel Tanqueray Onassis texts me that our underpowered wireless modem (that I was hoping to replace today) needed to be rebooted.

I needed to take a shit anyway, so I stopped by the house to take the Browns to the Super Bowl, reboot the modem and check the mail.

As luck would have it, my replacement Debit Card was in the mail box! All I needed to do was call and activate it and I was back in business!

But... I had a credit pending on my old card. If I called to activate my new card and it deactivated my old card, I might be stuck with the $353 debit on my account and Best Buy would be stuck with a bogus $757 credit and there would be no way to sort this shit out!

So! Back to the bank! Brad was gone for the day. Now I was dealing with "Jean", another very helpful Financial Services Representative.

After re-explaining all of the bizarre and tedious details of my ridiculous day, she was able to get someone on the phone who assured us that activating the new card would not hinder processing of the Best Buy credit on the old card.

Having sorted all of this shit out, I was done. I needed a break. So I grabbed a quick bite to eat and took a road trip to Excelsior Springs and back just to calm down and clear my head.

On the way back, I realized that my gauged ears T-Mobile guy hadn't texted me so I decided to swing by and see whats up.

There were no organized lines of customers getting free phones at the T-Mobile store.

Oh, no. Not at all.

Where there had been 3 T-Mobile employees this morning, there were now at least double that number. Customers were scattered all over the store, willy nilly.

I spotted my gauged ear dude. He explains that the entire "One Day Free 4G Phone" sale thing has been a disaster of Biblical proportions.

They can't even access customer accounts. The entire T-Mobile system is under the equivalent of a "denial of service attack" by every other T-Mobile store attempting to process new Free Phone orders.

It's fucking chaos. Dude tells me average customer interactions take about 90 minutes and most of those result in pissed off customers storming out without phones.

At one point I'm approached by a T-Mobile dude with a clipboard asking if I'm "on the list".

The staff has been compiling lists of customers waiting to be waited on and customers who have been waited on but didn't get a phone because the whole day was a fucking disaster.

At this point, no one knows if they will extend the sale another day or just tell us all to go fuck ourselves, no free phones to you!

My gauged ears dude promises to call me tomorrow and let me know what's going on.

End of the day, I'm exhausted. But I still manage to fix a special dinner for a very good friend. It was mostly Sauteed Scallops with cherry tomatoes, green onions and parsley. I added a couple of bacon wrapped filet mignon's, some Spanish rice, a French loaf with honey butter and a Ceasar salad into the mix.

We enjoyed a lovely dinner and watched 3 episodes of "Breaking Bad".

Pretty good end to a bizzare fucking day.