Get It Right. Or, not. . .

[immod mood at time of entry: stupid]

So there are flub ups and there are Flub Ups. Capital ‘f’, capital ‘u’, capital ‘i.’ As in idiocy.

I thought about buying something to eat earlier today while at work to tide me over until I got home. Well, following my instinct, I called the automated service and checked my account balance. It turned out to be overdrawn by $97 and some change, which I knew had to include Overdraft Fees.

It did, two of them.

Well, I started thinking back on all of the things that I had purchased and flashed back on some money that I couldn’t place and the Hotel Incident from more than a week and a half ago.

As I was pondering all of this, I couldn’t help but come to the conclusion that I had either gone crazy shopping or something was wrong here. As soon as I did the last check around the old work station to see if I had left anything behind, I grabbed my bag and headed off to the bank several blocks away from my job.

I had the clerk check my account for any charges on a specific day on a specific freeway here and it led to several charges at the same location. I freaked, because I put everything together in my head based on what the clerk had said and instantly pointed my finger at the foreign wife/owner of a hotel I had stayed at on Friday, April 27, 2007/Saturday, April 28, 2007.

Why that particular hotel and those charges came to mind mostly had to do with the fact that I had SUCH a difficult time with that woman (Apparently, she has a difficult time with everyone) and that she had taken down my debit/credit card number to charge me via the phone later on. I know that she was acting rather suspicious/oddly when myself and one of her employees were talking about financial theft and the like. I was telling the employee, Shanon, that I only used my debit/credit card, because it helped me curb the chances of someone stealing my money. If they took the card, fine. I could cancel it at any bank branch I happened upon. If they took my cash, I was well and thoroughly screwed.

Well, that conversation, the way I was treated, the fact that the owner/wife started calling my card’s number out into the open in front of her clients in the hotel’s lobby and huffed a bit when I asked her to lower her voice, and just the overall vibe of the situation, led me straight to accusation. Mental accusation led to a legal one.

Yes, you read correctly, a legal accusation of wrongdoing. After I received a list of the charges from the bank clerk that assured me the charges were in the area and on the date I was suspicious of, I went straight to the police headquarters and filed a financial theft police report. Those programs, articles, and the like on how to protect yourself from identity theft ALWAYS say to act quickly and take care of the essentials: cancel the cards, get hard copy proof, and file a police report.

I did all of that. I did everything right, but I am pretty damn sure now that I was wrong. I wouldn’t have jumped to such a conclusion if the bank teller hadn’t confirmed my suspicions. And I wouldn’t have had those suspicions if it weren’t for the bad experience I had at the hotel. And I wouldn’t have had that experience stay stuck vividly in my mind, if I hadn’t been quite as prejudice.

Prejudice, you ask? How did your prejudices come into the matter?

Well, it comes into the matter, because people are naturally this way. As such, I am a flawed creature just like everyone else. My established experience of theft happening with people not from this country made me believe that it had happened again, despite my best efforts not to have it happen. My own ingrained mistrust and admitted hatred of ‘foreigners’ made me easily believe that I had been taken — again. Well, that and the shadiness of the dealings I had with this woman.

It really just shows that a person can be unplesant, shady, suspicious, and not be trying to rip me off. Now, how is it that I am supposed to correctly identify the bad guys from the good if the evil sorts look like smiling, old, Mexican women who steal cheap radios and the not-so-evil sorts look like crotchety, old, Hindi women? How am I to know when to let my hackles go up and when to back to fuck off and not panic when a situation seems to be a tad bit off?

Yes, my prejudice and general suspicions of other people had something to do with this situation getting as far as it did, but my nagging need to go over to that hotel one more time to ask them for further proof should I need to sue them for my funds and the overdraft charges “they” caused ended up being just the thing that kept me from having sicced an official police investor on, as it turns out, WalMart and its ajoined McDonald’s. Because of a few pieces of misinformation, I blew the whole thing out of proportion.

Now, I have to go back down to the police station first thing in the morning and tell them to cancel the police report and hope that they don’t slap me with a ‘Filing a fasle report’ charge, even though what I honestly believed to be true at the time turned out not to be quite as I was told. I do feel stupid. I will admit that much, but I am rather proud of the fact that I was conscientious enough to mobilize and gather the information and do the things that I needed to do to stop a thief in their tracks. I am happy to see that I know what to do in a situation that warrants immediate legal/financial institution action.

I’m just not proud of the fact that because of one bank teller, I let myself go on a mental rampage and take things to that level by going to the authories. Mostly, I went to the authories first, because I remember how I had been told one thing by the owner/wife and then would have another happen. I figured that if I had had that hard a time when I was just trying to get a room, there was NO way that she was going to be nicer once I busted her charging rooms and whatnot to my card.

Well, you do live and you do learn. And I certainly did. I learned the correct process in which a citizen can file a police report and collect a copy of it. Let’s just hope that I never have to use this knowledge again. I never know, I might not be taken seriously next time. . .

Oh, and there are a couple of back entry-type things that need to go up, but things are a mess right now. Not just this, but other things. Everything. I really should get around to letting it all out, instead of bottling it up. Mostly, it’s being bottled because I literally don’t have grand amounts of time to sit and write it out. It’s not anything to worry about, but more the work hours and electricity and whatever other new offline problem that arises each day. Throw in the fact that I did a sped up version of the Chris we-are-dating-we-aren’t-dating one-two waltz (Yes, I did just write that) over the weekend and you see where all of the latest stress is comming from.

Man, I could use a spa day right about now.

Danielle