Mo' money, mo' problems, my ass!

This September has not been my month! I just went through a hellish week of dealing with banks and credit unions. I'll start this story by saying that I just refinanced my car, and my first payment on this new loan was this month. The credit union that I got the loan from (referred to from here on out as "The Lender") included a Savings account to go with my loan. I doubt that I'll be able to add anything to it, since I need every bit of money I get. I got a decent check on the 10th, most of which was going to go to the car payment, most of my bills, and groceries. I was not aware that The Lender was going to automatically take the amount of my car payment out of my bank's checking account (referred to here on out as The Bank) every month, in fact, their welcome letter mentions how to set up loan payments. So, I made a car payment on the 11th.

Right after I woke up on Thursday the 16th, my first day off since the previous Saturday, I checked my bank account to see how much I had. Instead of seeing a few hundred dollars, I saw -$137, $36 of which was overdraft fee. As I said earlier, I didn't know that The Lender was taking it out every month, so I ended up making my car payment twice. I called The Lender to see about having one of my payments refunded, and they said they'd do it. I checked my bank account frequently that Thursday and Friday to see if it transferred. I called The Lender late Friday afternoon to see if there was any progress on the transfer, and they said that it was transferred. The problem was that they transferred it to The Lender's Savings account instead of The Bank's Checking account, where I actually fucking needed it. I don't know why they couldn't transfer it from the Savings account to my proper Bank account, because you'd think that if they can take it out, they can surely fucking put it back in! What I ended up having to do was add my bank account as an External Account that I could transfer money to, but I couldn't immediately start transferring money to it, it had to be verified first. They did this by sending a couple of micro-transactions to the account, and once they posted, I had to confirm each amount to verify it. The micro-transactions hadn't posted by Saturday morning, so I borrowed $200 from a friend to get my bank account back in the positive.

The micro-transactions posted on Monday, but I couldn't verify them until I got off from work because The Lender's mobile banking app didn't have the option of verifying it, and their website didn't seem to work on Safari. I probably could've done it on my computer in the warehouse, but I was afraid that either The Bank or The Lender's web sites would want to text me a verification number so I could sign on from those devices, and I'm not privileged enough to be able to take my phone to the warehouse floor. Oh, and I don't typically get off from work until 6:30. All this wouldn't have been a problem had my automatic car insurance payment not posted that same day, putting my bank account back in the negative along with adding another $36 overdraft fee to my account. By the time I was able to get home and verify the micro-transactions, it was too late to schedule the transfer of funds for that day, so the transfer was scheduled for the next day. Thankfully, the transfer was posted by Wednesday morning, letting me breathe a sigh of relief. I then messaged The Bank on Thursday morning to see if they could refund me the $72 of overdraft fees, seeing as that it wasn't my fault that The Lender refunded the wrong account, and that I had to wait all god damned weekend for the micro-transactions to post so I could transfer the refund to them. I was afraid that I'd have to give them more bad publicity on social media if they didn't refund me, but lo and behold they did it! More relief! As for the friend that I owed $200 to, I paid her back when I got paid that Friday morning.

You know, I've always though that The Notorious B.I.G. was full of shit when he said, "Mo' money, mo' problems!" I prefer Al Jourgensen's take via Surgical Meth Machine, "I want Rich People Problems!"

It kinda sucks that for the majority of jobs out there, you don't get to see your hours of labor translate to cash at the very end of the day, or even that week. Some jobs you can, but that's some real under-the-table stuff that I'm not sure I'd want to deal with. If you're lucky, you'll get it towards the end of the following week. But a lot of us poor bastards get paid bi-weekly, so we have to wait two weeks to get the money from that first week. Take for example, the fucking Labor Day that I had to work. Labor Day was on September 6th, and I got paid on Friday of that week, but that pay was for the work I did the previous two weeks, not that week. I didn't see the hours that I worked on Labor Day translate to money until this past Friday, the 24th. That's two weeks and five days, just two days shy of a whole three weeks! And then there are people who get paid monthly. I'm sure it's fine if you bring home about 3 or $4,000 a month, but any less than that would suck.

The Labor Day that wasn't

 I'm still working at the shithole. I ended up working on Labor Day, the first Labor Day I remember working in years, but it didn't surprise me. What did surprise me was that we worked all god damned day, all twelve hours! And this was after having B-Shift come in for overtime on Saturday along with my shift, who was scheduled to work Saturday as a regular day. The only reason I can think of for them having overtime that weekend and working all day Labor Day was because one of our clients is dealing with a product recall, but that client has nothing to do with a lot of us. My company should've just said, "Fuck the customers, it's Labor Day!" And of course, most of the people who haven't had to work the previous two holidays (all of B-Shift, the QA woman who works Monday through Friday, my supervisor, 2nd Shift Shipping, Inbound, and the warehouse manager) didn't have to work. Also, I ended up working that Wednesday due to B-Shift QA still being short staffed. That was the worst Labor Day and Labor Day weekend ever, and I've had some real doozies! Hell, all that working Labor Day really did was make it easier for B-Shift when they came in on Wednesday morning. I was there, they had fuck all to do.

Hypothetically, A-Shift should be getting Thanksgiving off, but I'm sure they'll find some way to screw us.

This overtime has made for decent checks. It helps that they recently started paying us an extra $2 an hour, which I'm pretty sure is just going to last through the Peak season. But it really pisses me off that I have to work all these extra hours just to be able to pay the rent/bills and have some money left over for groceries with no outside help. I have quite a few friends who surely aren't rich, but can still afford to go to plenty of concerts, festivals, conventions, or even go on vacations. Like, I don't need to be rich, I just want to make enough to go to all those places.

As if having to come in and end up working twelve hours on Labor Day wasn't bad enough, my Labor Day started with the news that my absolute favorite coffee shop would be closing for good the following Thursday. I was already angry, then I was heartbroken. It's not it like it was the only coffee shop I go to, but it had a really good vibe to it, and had the best frozen blended coffee drinks I've ever had, even better than Starbucks' Frappuccino. They basically said that the place couldn't survive another Covid Winter. They did have some indoor seating these past couple of months, but it was severely limited compared to normal times, so you couldn't have tons of people hanging out inside during the Winter. I figure that not having a drive-through, or the ability to even have a drive-through, probably hurt them more than most coffee shops. Rents in the Highlands being sky high probably hasn't helped, either.

I finally got to visit the coffee shop on Thursday morning. The line was pretty ridiculous, but I was determined to stick with it. I got my favorite drink, took a lot of pictures, and even got to sit and soak it all in for a little while. I really didn't want to go to my mom and dad's to do laundry afterward, but with my weekend being compressed into one day shorter than it should've been, I figured it was the best day to do it. My parents watch a lot of news, mostly local, possibly anywhere from four to seven hours worth, depending on how early or late they get up in the morning. I stuck around for dinner, and they typically watch the news during dinner. They had a segment about the coffee shop closing, and I thought, "Maybe, just maybe, Dad won't say something stupid." Sure enough, he did, saying, "Well you can thank the n-----s." I told him, "Bullshit, it was Covid!" Then I went into the number of ways that Covid could've affected this particular coffee shop compared to other coffee shops. Then he said, "What about the crime?", and I said, "I don't know!" I should've straight up told him that crime had nothing to do with their closing. But he's a fucking idiot, and never believes the truth. Crime is up in Louisville compared to years past, but as someone who actually goes out into the city, I still find it reasonably safe most of the time. I don't think this is a problem exclusive to Louisville, but typical of the small town/rural-city divide, but people from outside the city seem to think that the city is like Mad Max, or to reference a more obscure movie, Death Wish 3, where the amount of crime and the amount of firepower used to fight that crime is utterly comical. I ended up going to the Highlands that Friday evening, even taking a lengthy walk from around Longest Avenue to Morton Avenue. It was pretty busy out, especially for the Covid era, and what I saw was all different kinds of people out trying to enjoy life.

A friend of mine recently said that racists must be profoundly fucking stupid. I told him that as the son of a racist, I can confirm that they are indeed profoundly fucking stupid. I don't see how someone can hate or find themselves superior to an entire race of people, other than stupidity, especially when you see the particular people who think they're the superior race, like my dad. What's odd to me is that while my dad seems to hate Black people indiscriminately, he seems to tolerate the Black guy who works for his brother's lawn care company just fine.