This is my personal rant for the week… I swear these banks and their generally crappy, arrogant and out of touch employees need to be deep-sixed once and for all. The only problem is you and I. We need to pull our accounts, pull our deposits and just seriously put pressure on everyone we know to do same. Here goes… make sure you’re sittin down.
So I get a personal check from another person today. Her check was written from Regions Bank where she banks. So Regions Bank is close to me and I drive there to cash the check… of course, I park and walk inside to do my deed because I know I’ll get ugly stares from the teller at the drive thru if I try to cash the check being a non-Regions Bank account holder along with being told to come inside anyways. For the record, I used to have my accounts at Regions Bank but they nickel and dimed me to death and I swear every employee of theirs goes through “How to Piss Off Customers” training while riding those stupid green bikes.
So anyway, I walk in to cash the check and walk up to the counter, give the teller my drivers license and signed check. He comes back to me in about a minute and says, “sir, are you no longer a Regions account holder?” I say yes, that’s correct I left your shitty, thievin bank two years ago. No, I didn’t really say that… I just nodded and said yes, no longer an account holder. He says, “sir, you’re gonna have to go see that lady over there at the desk so she can fingerprint you before you can cash this check.” No foolin, he really said it just like that. I guess I had that look of criminality but I was clean shaven and I think I smelled alright.
So I go see this fingerprinting bank policewoman. Her name is Rosaria. I say, “hi, the teller said I need to come see you to get my fingerprints to cash this check.” She says, “sir, I’m busy I’ll be right with you.” So much for that nice, warm fuzzy feeling…So I sit down in the chair at her desk area. She looks at me like I’m invading her space and then says “sir, you need to remove your hat inside the bank.” (I was wearing my Tampa Bay Lightning hockey hat with pride). I said, “what?” with, I’m pretty sure, a look of WTF did this lady just say to me? Not a question… no, it was a demand.
She says in a more stern peed off tone, “sir you need to take that hat off inside the bank.” I said, “are you kidding me? I have have NEVER been inside a bank where I’ve been told to remove my hat.” She says, “sir, you need to take the hat off now for your security and mine!” What? Do you think my hat is going to assault you, you crazy woman?
I said “this is freakin ridiculous I cannot believe you’re actually serious.” I take my hat off in compliance and protest while trying to rub out the hat head I know I have. She must be feeling really good about herself now, embarrassing a potential customer.
So now, as if this isn’t enough, she now says, “I’m gonna have to call the account holder to see if she has authorized this check.” I said, “what? are you kidding me? I’ve cashed checks at banks for decades where I’m not an account holder and I have never been told to remove my hat and then you gotta call the account holder to see if this is legitimate. I’m giving you my stinking license, I’ve removed my hat as if I’m some criminal so you’re bank cameras can get a good shot at my hat head and now you want to call the account holder? What if she doesn’t answer the phone?”
She says, “sir, if you’d just be patient, let me make the call..” So she makes the call, gets voice mail, leaves a message. Then she calls her colleague in crime in the next office over on the phone and wants colleague to see if there are any other phone numbers on file for the account holder. Nope, only that one phone number. So she looks at me with disdain and says, “sir, I’m sorry but I need to talk to the account holder before I can cash this check, if you’d like to wait out there…”
I interrupted her mid sentence and by now I’m sure my face looked criminal and I about leapt over the desk to grab the check and my license and stormed out saying “forget it lady, I’ll go to my friendly community bank where I have an account and cash it there…”
True story. Could NOT believe it. Still don’t. Leave Regions if you bank with them, PLEASE! They completely suck ass. Bank of America too… Wells Fargo and Chase too now that I think about it.
Seriously, go to a local credit union or community bank. Just pull YOUR money out of these suck ass institutions, let these shitty employees get laid off when they start to go under and give your business to a bank and employees who actually care and don’t treat you like a criminal. Un-flippin-believable.
No, believable now that I think of it. I’m going to go into that suck-ass branch once a week with the biggest damn hat I can find and just walk around for a few minutes and tell Rosaria how much she needs to get a life – and a new job.
Huh? You read that correctly. Because Speaker Pelosi cannot find enough votes to pass the deeply unpopular ObamaCare bill in a constitutional way, she is hoping you and other Americans won’t notice, or won’t care, whether she passes ObamaCare in an unconstitutional and blatantly corrupt way.
The moment the door was shut, and it was always kept locked, the room became an oven. The tall windows were shut, so that loud quarreling voices could not be heard by passersby. Small openings atop the windows allowed a slight stir of air, and also a large number of horseflies. Jefferson records that “the horseflies were dexterous in finding necks, and the silk of stockings was nothing to them.” All discussing was punctuated by the slap of hands on necks.
Ben Franklin was the only really old man. Eighteen were under 40; three were in their 20s. Of the 56 almost half – 24 – were judges and lawyers. Eleven were merchants, nine were landowners and farmers, and the remaining 12 were doctors, ministers, and politicians.
· William Floyd, another New York delegate, was able to escape with his wife and children across Long Island Sound to Connecticut, where they lived as refugees without income for seven years. When they came home they found a devastated ruin. · Philips Livingstone had all his great holdings in New York confiscated and his family driven out of their home. Livingstone died in 1778 still working in Congress for the cause. · Louis Morris, the fourth New York delegate, saw all his timber, crops, and livestock taken. For seven years he was barred from his home and family. · John Hart of Trenton, New Jersey, risked his life to return home to see his dying wife. Hessian soldiers rode after him, and he escaped in the woods. While his wife lay on her deathbed, the soldiers ruined his farm and wrecked his homestead. Hart, 65, slept in caves and woods as he was hunted across the countryside. When at long last, emaciated by hardship, he was able to sneak home, he found his wife had already been buried, and his 13 children taken away. He never saw them again. He died a broken man in 1779, without ever finding his family. · Dr. John Witherspoon, signer, was president of the College of New Jersey, later called Princeton. The British occupied the town of Princeton, and billeted troops in the college. They trampled and burned the finest college library in the country.
· Robert Morris, merchant prince of Philadelphia, delegate and signer, met Washington’s appeals and pleas for money year after year. He made and raised arms and provisions which made it possible for Washington to cross the Delaware at Trenton. In the process he lost 150 ships at sea, bleeding his own fortune and credit almost dry
· Edward Rutledge, Arthur Middleton, and Thomas Heyward, Jr., the other three South Carolina signers, were taken by the British in the siege of Charleston. They were carried as prisoners of war to St. Augustine, Florida, where they were singled out for indignities. They were exchanged at the end of the war, the British in the meantime having completely devastated their large landholdings and estates.· Thomas Nelson, signer of Virginia, was at the front in command of the Virginia military forces. With British General Charles Cornwallis in Yorktown, fire from 70 heavy American guns began to destroy Yorktown piece by piece. Lord Cornwallis and his staff moved their headquarters into Nelson’s palatial home. While American cannonballs were making a shambles of the town, the house of Governor Nelson remained untouched. Nelson turned in rage to the American gunners and asked, “Why do you spare my home?” They replied, “Sir, out of respect to you.” Nelson cried, “Give me the cannon!” and fired on his magnificent home himself, smashing it to bits. But Nelson’s sacrifice was not quite over. He had raised $2 million for the Revolutionary cause by pledging his own estates. When the loans came due, a newer peacetime Congress refused to honor them, and Nelson’s property was forfeited. He was never reimbursed. He died, impoverished, a few years later at the age of 50.
And, finally, there is the New Jersey signer, Abraham Clark.He gave two sons to the officer corps in the Revolutionary Army. They were captured and sent to that infamous British prison hulk afloat in New York Harbor known as the hell ship Jersey, where 11,000 American captives were to die. The younger Clarks were treated with a special brutality because of their father. One was put in solitary and given no food. With the end almost in sight, with the war almost won, no one could have blamed Abraham Clark for acceding to the British request when they offered him his sons’ lives if he would recant and come out for the King and Parliament. The utter despair in this man’s heart, the anguish in his very soul, must reach out to each one of us down through 200 years with his answer: “No.”