A tale of four digits (pearoast mix)
“Sex Museum or coffee shop?”

“You what?”

The six foot seven, blond, dutch policeman sighed and pushed a piece of paper towards me.

“Sex Museum or coffee shop? When tourists get their wallets stolen, it’s usually in one of these two places.”

“Oh, I see. Sex Museum. I was so busy watching a raddled old Russian hooker getting anally fisted by a dwarf that I didn’t notice my bag was open. Plus I’m really rather stoned.”

“Yes. Happens a lot.”

So there I am, in Amsterdam, with no money, cards or train tickets and a boyfriend who is so clueless with cash that his bank have actually forbidden him from having a debit card. Through the miracle of the phone, tears and the Royal Bank of Mother, I arrange for a Western Union payment to pick up at the station the next day. And I managed to get my mum to cancel all my cards. Phew, all sorted then.

The rest of the holiday passes without incident (unless you count the boyfriend projectile vomiting in the hotel room) and I return home to find that my bank, Twat West, have delivered me a new card. It’s the Friday of a bank holiday weekend, my housemates are away, so I decide to pop to the local petrol station to buy tobacco and snack food products and spend a couple of days lounging around on the sofa.

Snacks duly selected, I ask the nice chap behind the counter for a pack of Drum and hand over my spanking new card for payment. It swipes, it beeps, it… Oh. It’s been reported as stolen and has to be cut up? Say what now? Sheepishly, the chap snips my card in two and asks if I want to use the phone to call the bank. I surely do, and when I manage to navigate the computer system to finally speak to a real person I am informed that instead of cancelling my stolen card, they had cancelled my new card instead, mistaking it for the stolen one. So not only do I have no card, but my stolen card could have been used by anyone for the last week. I’m appalled.

I realize that not only have I no money on me and more worryingly I have no access to money for three days. And I have no food in the house and more importantly, no fags or booze.

Then the unexpected happens. The guy behind the counter rings up my shopping, throws in an extra packet of baccy, hands me the bag and £20 from his wallet and says “It’s okay, I know you’re good for it, you can pay me on Tuesday…”

The morals of the story are: people can be unexpectedly nice; if you make enough noise to the bank and the banking ombudsman, they’ll apologize, give you £50 and the phone number of the branch so these things can be sorted out quicker in future and that whilst standing gaping at a film of a Chinese woman pissing on an amputee, it is a good idea to keep an eye on your wallet…
(Rakky (forgot her password) The muffin maverick, Fri 10 Feb 2012, 10:53, Reply)