Maybe it's just me, but recently I've noticed that when I withdraw money from my TD Bank (nee Commerce Bank) account from ATMs at the bodegas near my apartment, the machines display my total account balance on the screen for what seems like an inordinately long time. Like I'll go to the machine, make sure no one's spying on my PIN, check "withdrawal," press the button for $80 and then as my piles of money are spitting out of the machine, the screen will change to my total account balance and will stay on the screen for 30 seconds before it kindly thanks me for the transaction, so that I'm forcibly confronted with the terrible news of my balance even when I purposely do NOT select "View Account Balance." I'm not sure who at the ATM company thought it would be a good idea to humiliate and enrage ATM users by forcing them to see their balances upon each withdrawal when it's pretty clear that people who do not affirmatively select "View Account Balance" would prefer to not ruin their days by having their balances thrust in front of them for 30 seconds which is an outrageous amount of time to be confronted with bad news. The only sense I can make of this entire situation is that the people who own the ATM machines are disgustingly wealthy and want to revel in their balances and brag to bystanders who might accidentally see the screen, while at the same time making everybody with low balances feel bad, which is a strategy I can respect and strongly agree with.
So last week, Above the Law sent me a check for my VERY excellent work as a guest blogger for the week I filled in. I had big plans to deposit it and then squander it immediately on clothing, but the night before I was planning to roll up to TD bank, the tv in the cab had a story about how there have been a string of robberies at TD bank in the past week, and how someone named Ray Kelly says that they're the most unsafe banks in NYC where you are most likely to be shot. They then SHOWED THE INSIDE OF THE TD BANK WHICH I GO TO, which I recognized due to the green TD logo and leftover Commerce Bank furniture and indicated that that was the bank in which one of the robberies took place.
This is just my luck - pretty much the first time someone pays me for writing I get a check that I can't deposit because there's robbers in my bank. And while they may not be there now, I actually don't feel like getting shot today or worse, having the robber take my check from me. This is exactly why I don't working any more, because even when someone tries to pay me the banks are broken. I literally cannot win.
R.I.P. Commerce Bank Inc., 1998-2008 Always in our hearts "Gone too soon"
A few days ago I was in Penn Station doing my usual browsing at Elegance and then texting people from Tiecoon when I noticed that the Commerce Bank had been replaced by something called "TD Bank." It was weird because some of the Commerce decorations were still there, like the red stripe and the slogan "America's Most Convenient Bank" on the wall, but it was all green colored and looked like a boring bank that people who have $5 dollars go to, and not millions like myself. No big deal, I thought to myself, Commerce just closed here and this weirdo bank that is CLEARLY NOT America's Most Convenient Bank took over. But then two days ago I was walking by the Commerce on 12th street and 3rd Avenue but something was off - the giant red blood drop that is their logo was gone, the cheerful blue walls with the cartoon figures that I had known and loved had vanished, and the angelic glow of the Penny Arcade was missing. But yet this TD crap also had the old Commerce red stripe on the window and also had the America's Most Convenient Bank" logo on the back wall.
Horrified and alarmed, I marched in with my Jamba Juice and H&M bag and asked the armed guard where the hell Commerce went? He replied, "TD Bankbought out Commerce, so it's now TD Bank." I asked him what he meant and he said "Commerce is now part of TD." I then asked him if he was joking me and he said no, so I asked when this happened and why I wasn't notified, and he said he didn't know. I asked him what was to become of the Penny Arcade and he said, and I quote, "It's now the TD Bank Coin Counter." I then asked him if TD stood for Total Devastation because I had signed up for Commerce Bank, had been a loyal customer of theirs for five years, considered it FAMILY and joined it BASED ON THE PENNY ARCADE AND THE FREE PENS, and now they were just pulling the rug out from under me, making me go to a bank that is painted green and looks like its on the verge of bankruptcy and that ruthlessly stole Commerce's logo despite the fact that TD is lying because it has not been number one in customer service for THREE YEARS IN A ROW. The armed guard then said I could speak to a manager if I wanted, but I said no thanks, I'll just go home and punch my pillow and buy my own pens and own dog biscuits and count my change myself because if TD Bank thought that they were going to get any of my future business after pulling this stunt they were actually living in Narnia.
Obviously in times like these words fail us. So I'll just say, rest in peace, my sweet Commerce. I will never forget you.
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message Commerce Is Dead, Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
Commerce was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood. For nothing now can ever come to any good.
Today I was standing in a Commerce Bank wearing black spandex, a green Old Navy hoodie, a brown puffy coat and sunglasses pouring mounds of coins from a Mango bag into the Penny Arcade and salivating as the machine kept on counting. Perry was standing next to me wearing his hooded fur coat eating a free treat that they give away to dogs at Commerce. I then took my receipt up to the front, cashed it $134, deposited a check from December 2007 for $75 that a co-worker had given to me to pitch in for our secretary's Christmas present from last year that I had completely forgotten about but that the Oprah people had unearthed, and asked the teller why Commerce was letting Capital One steal all their old locations in New York and only keeping their extremely inconvenient locations open and also why they charged me $40 to get new checks to pay other people with from the bank where my money already is.
As I walked out of there, for a brief moment, I saw myself as others (potentially) see me: unemployed, wearing mismatched exercise clothing, cashing checks from 10 years ago, scrounging around for change like some bag lady, walking with a bizarre and perfectly groomed dog in a coat, asking rhetorical questions about bank closures and most importantly acting as if this was all completely normal.
I'm just writing this to let you know that I realize that none of the above is in any way acceptable and now that I finally recognize this I will make the necessary changes or, if easier, just proceed with my back up plan which involves going directly to Bellevue and recommending to the staff that I be institutionalized with no possibility of release.
One of the reasons that I am loyal to Commerce Bank which was voted #1 in customer service 3 years in a row is because of the Penny Arcade. The Penny Arcade is basically a Coin Star machine with the exception that Commerce doesn't steal 15% of your hard earned change unlike Coin Star and Penny Arcade is actually the name of a cartoon character in the machine who introduces herself as Penny and counts your money for you while you stand there as your worthless coins are converted into ice cold cash.
When I was in law school and was deciding which bank was closest to my apartment had the best interest/exchange rates and gave away free pens, I was HEAVILY swayed by the presence of the Penny Arcade. Whenever my checking account went down to $20, rather than ordering a Gold Kit, I acted like a drug addict and hunted around my apartment, searching my couch and bags for loose change, which I then put in a bag, rolled up to Commerce looking like Santa with a sack over my shoulders, and then put in the Penny Arcade and watched as my checking account grew from $20 to $38.27 and I was once again rich. It may sound ridiculous, but Commerce literally allowed me to eat for those last days of the month until my balance once again gloriously replenished itself on the first of the following month, courtesy of Daddykins Warbucks. Commerce and Penny Arcade taught me a valuable lesson, which is that even if you run out of money, you can always find coins in your clothing, and I'm not sure why it didn't occur to anyone at like Lehman or those other places to just search their office carpeting/couches and peoples' pockets and see what comes up rather than just jumping to conclusions that they were bankrupt.
A friend and I got into a debate the other day about checking accounts. I was complaining to him about paying the $3 Chase ATM fee because I will leave Commerce Bank over my dead body, and he suggested I open up a second checking account at Chase because it's "convenient" and I could "stop paying the ATM fees." Great idea - that would just mean that I would have to find my passport, withdraw ten stacks of money from Commerce, carry it over to Chase, wait 20 days to get access to it, switch all my Ebay and online shopping accounts, have two debit cards, overdraw each one every day and generally not know where any of my money is at any time.
After I made all these arguments, my friend said that people open multiple checking accounts "all the time" because of the FDIC insurance limit. For those of you who don't know what FDIC insurance is, it means that the government will insure your money up to $150,000, but if you have $151,000.00, you will need to transfer $1,000 to the other bank to make sure you get those monies back. I asked my friend whether, if Andrew Jackson returned to office and we had a Savings 'n Loan crisis and all the banks shut down, he really believed that the first order of business of the U.S. government would be cutting him a check for his measly $150,000, and he said yes. Well, unfortunately he and everybody else who believes in this FDIC insurance lunacy is living in Narnia because if a meteor hits the earth and all the banks shut down, my last name could be FDIC and I STILL wouldn't get my money back because I'm guessing all the money in the banks will go towards removing the meteor and the U.S. government won't care that I need it for ebay. Listen, if you're going to waste time splitting money up into different banks to get FDIC protection, why not cover all your bases and purchase pieces of the True Cross and some saints medallions for additional protection, or better yet, why not invest the money in cloning technology and time travel.
P.S. Could Capital One Bank calm down and stop opening a new branch in NYC every two seconds.
I'm not sure who Chase Bank thinks it is, but I hit up a Chase ATM on Saturday, was going about my business attempting to withdraw $100 from my luxxxurious checking account because that's the way I roll, when the ATM attempted to charge me $3 to proceed with the transaction. That means that for the luxury of withdrawing my OWN hard earned cash from a machine that dispenses cash automatically, Chase wanted to punish me for not having an account with them by charging me the price of two Gatorades. This is absolutely 100% not acceptable, and I have some news for Chase, because unless it magically transforms itself into Commerce Bank and becomes number one in customer service 3 YEARS IN A ROW, I will never leave Commerce and will continue to spite Chase by paying $3 each time I withdraw cash because I refuse to succumb to their strong arm tactics.
After I had forwarded my tax forms to the offices of Daddykins Feldman for processing, my dad called me up and asked me if I had any other "investments." I asked him what he meant, and he asked whether, besides investing in shoes and makeup, I "put my money anywhere that would actually MAKE money" for me. I still didn't really know what he meant, because I was told there were only checkings and savings accounts, and someone had to me to keep things in checking and only use my savings account on pain of death, because apparently money in savings account "makes" money, and money in checking accounts does nothing. He explained that he was referring to "stocks" or "mutual funds"and not my ridiculous Commerce Bank accounts, and that he would send me some Fidelity Mutual Fund crap to look over and that I should "consider"investing my money instead of "letting it go to waste" in a bank.
So he sent me this Fidelity crap which was basically a bunch of boring documents with charts with the gist being that I hand over all my money, they apparently put it into some magical money making machine where I just put in one dollar and 30 gold coins come out. Despite 3 centuries of medieval people trying to turn turn lead into gold, Fidelity has solved the problem and discovered an easy way to turn money into more money. Incidentally, Fidelity has also tamed the elusive unicorn and solved the mystery of the abandoned settlement of Roanoake. Um, frankly I'd just rather have my money rotting in the bank and diversify my investments in lottery tickets and clothing and haircuts or whatever, because the better I look the better my chances are of marrying a repulsively rich person who will pay me to work out and watch tv.
This morning as I was putting on my makeup I was once again confronted with the horrifying reality that my upper eyelids are starting to droop. I have known this for about a year and have previously done extensive research on asian online message boards, which are the authoritity on which miracle creams help stop this affliction. However, after paying $78 on ebay for "Guerlain Issima Success Eye" and religiously putting it on every night, I have seen no progress, so the next step is an upper lid blephroplasty. Right now I'm trying to save my normal paycheck money by doing things such as buying a D&G dress at Bergdorf's last weekend and getting a full head of highlights and a haircut next weekend, so I've resorted to saving for my upcoming blephroplasty by collecting all the loose change around my apartment. In a few months I will go to the Commerce Bank Penny Arcade and get that shit calculated and I have a strong feeling it will be millions.
This premature aging process has definitely been brought on by work. Check out my professional picture on the side of this blog. My shit was pretty much out of control then. Now, every day is a fight to stay looking amazing. I have to do new eyeliner techniques to counteract the eyelid droop. I have to do running intervals at the gym for a freaking HALF HOUR in order to keep this shit at 105 lbs. Crest whitening strips, which supposedly last you for 6 months - I'm applying that stuff EVERY DAY (when I don't forget). And I'm taking calcium pills like a grandmother because I read in a reputable magazine that women start to lose bone mass at age 25 and I'll be damned if bone mass is lost on my watch.
If I had been a woman of leisure, I could devote my time to the eyelid exercises they prescribe on the asian message boards and also to lengthening my already slamming body with pilates or yoga or some other stretching garbage. I seriously cannot afford to keep on looking at a computer screen for 14 hours a day or my chances of looking good enough to find a disgustingly wealthy husband will be out the window.
I'm a lawyer living in NYC. I have a dog, a great group of friends, an inferiority/superiority complex (depending on the situation), and dreams of writing a book. I am trying to do more stand-up comedy and I will be very insulted when people don't show up because I'm pretty shamazing.
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