I deliver pizza on Saturday nights for an independent shop, and this is my last order of the night. The counter employees will sometimes mark a slip if the customer is paying cash and will need change for a large bill, but as it gets later, they’re less likely to do so, figuring I’ll have enough cash by then. And I do, but I always keep larger bills locked and hidden in my car, with ones and fives only in my pocket.

I get to the address and have to spend a few minutes figuring out which house it is, as it’s after dark and not a well-lit neighborhood. The customer has no porch light on and no house numbers on the side of her house, but I end up determining that it’s the house a few houses up from where I parked, and I climb up her very dilapidated steps and knock.

Customer: “Who is that? Who’s there?”

Me: “It’s [My Name] from [Pizza Place]. I have your order.”

I hear multiple locks being opened, and then she opens the door. She’s a middle-aged, bordering on elderly, woman.

Me: “Your total is $72 [and change].”

She gives me a $100 bill.

Customer: *Snarkily* “I told them I would need change; just give me $25 back.”

Well, lo and behold, I only have about $20 in my small bills, so I let her know I have to go back to my car for change. When I come back and give her the change, she starts going on a tangent.

Customer: “You need to be careful out there! I can’t believe they have a woman out delivering after dark. You could get robbed or attacked!”

And so on.

So… you placed this order late at night, expecting the driver to have a larger amount of cash on their person. You obviously have concerns for your own safety, but you seem okay with me potentially falling on your s***ty, steep steps since you didn’t bother turning the light on until you had to come to the door, and you don’t even have a number on your house. Then, you proceed to lecture me about safety.

But thank you, so much, for the 3% tip.

CONTENT WARNING: Blood, Serious Injury (Mentioned in passing)
 

When I was nineteen, I worked as an attendant in a laundromat in a very poor neighborhood. I dispensed change, cleaned up, did drop laundry, and pressed military uniforms. Although the owner had a chain of stores, he did not treat them all equally. Because the store I worked in was in a poor neighborhood, even though it was very busy (and therefore profitable), the owner neglected this particular store. There was no air conditioning, and in the summer, the indoor temperature reached 120 F (48.9 C), a third of the machines were broken, and the place was generally a dump.

However, because it was a military town with many soldiers and wives of soldiers willing to work for minimum wage (at best), employees had little choice; the job market there was chronically depressed.

Then, the paycheck I was depending on bounced (four days after my employer bought a new boat).

Two days later, I was given my pay, but the damage was already done. Because I had deposited my first check in good faith and then paid my bills, my checks bounced. Everything from my rent to my gas, water, and electric bills was returned with fees. My employer’s bad check cost me over 400 dollars — 400 dollars I could not afford.

I had been making an attempt to be fiscally responsible and had not accepted any of the crazy high-interest credit cards being offered to young people in the 1980s, but under the circumstances, I took a card from the pile of junk mail and got a cash advance to cover the fees my employer had saddled me with. As a young person with a very low income, it took me a long time to pay that card off.

Of course, I couldn’t quit right away; I had too many bills and Lawton, Oklahoma has a terrible job market. In the end, I moved to New Mexico to get away from the minimum wage economy.

On my last night on the job, someone was stabbed at my laundromat. I vividly remember my employer chiding me not to leave until I cleaned the blood off the sidewalk.

I heard from friends over the years that he continued to bounce payroll checks.

Today, my former employer sits on the City Council.

While going over my credit card bills, I notice a payment for around $100 listing a company I do not recognize on the one issued by my bank; however, this is just after Christmas and I shopped online, so this could be a legitimate charge. After investigating, I manage to track down a phone number for the company and work through the “how much” and “when” with the representative.

Representative #1: “That’s for a [product].”

Me: “What on Earth is a [product]?”

Representative #1: *Laughs* “I have a sneaking suspicion this won’t match, but would you mind confirming your address for me?”

Me: “Sure. It’s [address].”

Representative #1: “Any chance you have a friend or relative in Belize?”

Me: “Nope. Definitely not my purchase.”

Representative #1: “No surprise at all. Anyway, if you are willing to wait a couple of days… maybe a week… we can notify [Bank] and resolve this without a chargeback.”

Me: “That’s fine; I will check my statement then. And just to confirm, your name was [Representative #1], right?”

Representative #1: “Yes, sir. And thank you for your understanding.”

Sure enough, a few days later, the transfer is gone from my history on the website and my balance is corrected. I put the whole adventure out of mind… until my next statement comes in, and the charge is back.

This time, I call the bank and explain the phone call, complete with the product, the representative’s name, and the date and time of the call.

Bank: “Yes, we got the request to withdraw the charge, but then we got the request for the same charge a few days later. If you want, we can do a chargeback to resolve this.”

Since the first person was helpful, I decline, instead giving the company another chance. I get a different person, but I relay the entire interaction.

Representative #2: “I can see from our notes that [Representative #1] did push everything forward. However… without getting too specific, the person who did make the purchase is a frequent buyer of ours, and this is the first dispute on the account. I can’t tell you what I’m thinking, but based on the notes, if it’s not malicious, I think I know exactly what happened to cause a second charge to you. If you’re willing to give us another chance, we can resolve this without the nuclear option.”

Me: “I’ll give you guys one last shot. After this, you can fight [Bank].”

Once again, it is all fixed. Once again, the charge come back. This time, I do file the dispute and then request a new card. Despite this, the charge is once again reapplied.

This time, I go to my bank in person and demand the manager.

Me: “How the h*** did they charge a card that’s been canceled?”

Manager: “This is the charge from the old card. They challenged your chargeback and won.”

Me: “And what did you guys do to fight back? Did you list my calls with [Representative #1] and [Representative #2]? Give them all the details to look it up? Prove my address doesn’t match? Go over the actual buyer’s history? Anything?”

Manager: “Um… it looks like we didn’t appear.”

Me: “‘Didn’t appear’? So, you knew they challenged it, and you did nothing?”

Manager: “…”

Me: “Here’s what we’re going to do: you’re going to dispute it again, and if they challenge again, you’re going to fight.”

Manager: *Spins the monitor* “There; all done.”

Me: “Now, you’re going to cancel the card and close my accounts.”

I settled into a new bank fairly quickly after that. But the tale did not end there, as my old bank sent me a notice that there was still a $100 charge unpaid. That led me to a lawyer to get this mess cleaned up. The fun started when a lawyer representing the company reached out to my lawyer and spoke of cooperation. I learned the reason for the second charge was the result of auto-complete and an inattentive worker.

The interesting reveal was that the company never challenged the formal dispute; they got hit with the full weight of a chargeback and sought to rectify it by pursuing legal action against the recently fired individual who caused this mess by thinking a client’s credit card information could be stored through their web browser. That left us with the question: who was demanding my $100?

The bank very quickly agreed to pay everyone’s legal fees and waive the charge, and they gave a few tens of thousands in compensation to each of us provided we withdrew the case and kept quiet.

I am an insurance agent. Most of my colleagues knew about my plight and that this bank was not being helpful. A lot of people like to refinance and use electronic transfers for automatic payments. I may not have told the full conclusion of my story to anyone and did not start it with anyone new, but we did tell anyone looking for a mortgage that a certain bank had been giving us a lot of problems.

After about two years of needling people away, this stopped being a personal story; this became the only bank unwilling to check the integrity of the policy or notify anyone that they did not receive the new declarations page or invoice.

Sadly, they are still in business, but pretty much everyone we know is aware that this bank is not the sterling company it used to be.

Related:
Cash Back Attack, Part 18
Cash Back Attack, Part 17
Cash Back Attack, Part 16
Cash Back Attack, Part 15
Cash Back Attack, Part 14

I had a wisdom tooth taken out on a Friday. On Saturday, I had trouble opening my mouth, and the pain was getting worse. At the time, I thought it wasn’t that bad; surely it wasn’t unusual to have pain after removing a tooth. During the evening, I couldn’t eat, I could barely drink, and all I wanted was to go to bed and sleep as I waited for it to get better.

Come Sunday, I woke up with a large swelling under my chin, pushing in toward my throat as I lay down. I had difficulties swallowing my saliva, which disturbed my breathing. After some quick Googling, I knew I was supposed to contact my dentist, but they weren’t open on Sundays. I then searched for dentists to contact for an emergency; all of them were only open on weekdays.

The next step was to call a healthcare clinic that was open evenings and weekends. I explained my situation to the receptionist.

Receptionist: “You know, you are supposed to go to a dentist.”

Me: “Yes, but they are closed today.”

Receptionist: “There are emergency dentists.”

Me: “Yes, well, where do I find those? Because all emergency times I found for dentists were on weekdays.”

I heard the receptionist tapping away on her computer.

Receptionist: “I suppose I’ll have to book a time for you here.”

After that, the conversation went as normal and I got a time not too far away.

When I met the doctor, I could see her shock as she saw my swelling. After questioning, she said she’d call a specialist for advice, so I went to wait. When she called me back in, she had good news! At least, so she said. It is common to be swollen after removing a wisdom tooth. They decided to give me some antibiotics just to be safe and said to visit my dentist during the week if it didn’t get better.

Me: “Can I get anything for the pain?”

Doctor: “No, I’m sorry, the regular painkillers you are already using are all you can get. The only thing stronger I could give you is morphine, and it wouldn’t work for this kind of pain.”

I felt tears streaming down my cheeks at that point, as I didn’t know how I’d survive another day with this.

Doctor: *Looking sympathetic* “It will get better soon. This is the worst part.”

I couldn’t handle it, though. My husband had to wake me up if I rolled onto my back as the swelling otherwise hindered my breath, and I never slept more than half an hour before I was awoken by the pain, having to let saliva drip out of my mouth (I couldn’t swallow or spit properly) to clear the way for air, or just because of coughing, as if the rest wasn’t enough.

So, I got up in the middle of the night, called the national number for medical advice, and waited for my turn.

Medical Advisor: “Hello. How can I help you?”

I recapped the whole situation.

Me: “…I don’t know if I can do this anymore. It hurts.”

I was crying my eyes out at that point.

Medical Advisor: “I see, but you met a doctor today, and I know you have no issues breathing. You can say several words to me without pause. You can probably go and see your dentist tomorrow; it isn’t many hours left, after all. Take some painkillers. There are fluid versions.”

Me: “I only have pills, and I’ve taken those already.”

Medical Advisor: “So, you can swallow pills.”

Me: “I have to. I have medicine I cannot miss.”

Medical Advisor: “It sounds like you are going to be fine. Just try and get some sleep.”

I stayed up and got an emergency time for my dentist’s clinic in the morning. I did not meet my own dentist but a coworker of his. She could see that I had a very hard time, and she had to take some pictures. You know those pictures and X-rays they take at the dentist? You have to get this thing into your mouth which cuts into the top and bottom of your mouth. In normal cases, they are uncomfortable. At that time, they were torture.

The dentist took the smallest ones she could find, and as I was unable to open my mouth much, she had to get it in and then turn it in my mouth before running to the button, taking the picture, and then running back to let me free of it. It was a whole ordeal, and I’ve never been in so much pain at the dentist. I was crying and screaming.

Dentist: “Well, there is nothing there that I can help with. I’d say you should get to the emergency room. Getting you on antibiotics was the right thing, but I believe you should get a few of those doses directly into the vein. Tell them I said that.”

So, cue waiting at the emergency room. For some reason, first, I had to take a number, and then I had to explain the whole thing to the receptionist in order to meet a nurse. The nurse said I needed to get another number and tell the receptionist I needed time with a doctor but that I might not be put in the hospital as the dentist wanted. So, then, I had to start over with the whole waiting process.

Finally, I got to meet a doctor, who examined me.

Emergency Doctor: “We’ll get you a bed. I think you should get one dose directly into your vein, and our specialist wants an X-ray just to be sure there isn’t anything else before we send you home.”

They took their tests and gave me some antibiotics, and I got to go in one of those CT scan tubes. Eventually, the specialists came in to talk to me and my husband.

Specialist: “So, we’ve been looking at your scan, and I understand you’ve been fasting?”

Me: “Yes. The last time I ate was Saturday, and I had some to drink yesterday.”

Specialist: “That is good. We will need to operate, and we’ll want to do it as soon as possible.”

There were a lot of details discussed about why and how, which I won’t bother you with, but suddenly, everything went fast. I had to do the pre-operation shower, and they got a room to operate in after only a few hours. As soon as they got the green light, I was rushed over there. It is still a bit of a blur, as I wasn’t really prepared for the urgency after having been shot down so many times when trying to get help.

I spent the next day on a respirator to protect my airways, and I spent a week in the hospital, during which I went from only drinking clear fluids to slowly being able to eat. Several weeks later, I still have difficulties opening my mouth for bigger bites.

One thing that still bugs me, though, is that call in the middle of the night, where I was told that I had no issues breathing since I was able to talk. Shortly after I was back from intensive care, another girl close to my age arrived at the hospital. She couldn’t speak, she was swollen in the throat, she had difficulties breathing, and she could only swallow pills with a lot of help. Of course, I don’t know why, but it turned out that she only needed a couple of doses of antibiotics to get a lot better. Perhaps her issues were worse while the source of them was less so, or perhaps she allowed herself to be just as weak as I felt.

So, to the medical advisor: not all issues manifest in the same way or with the same signs of urgency. Also, some people, like me, fight through the pain to communicate and receive medication in order to, hopefully, make it better. People are different; please understand that if you are to advise them!

In June of 2022, it took us three days to get to Cadiz, Spain, from Denver… which was the plan… and it sucked.

When searching for plane tickets to Seville (which has the closest international airport to Cadiz) in January, prices were $1,400 and up. So, when I saw it was cheaper to fly into Lisbon, Portugal, and out of Malaga, Spain, I went for it. I was thinking that Lisbon was closer to Seville and Cadiz than Madrid was, and there would be a train straight to Cadiz — a short ride, I thought. The tickets ended up being $1,250 each.

If I could do it again, I would fly into Madrid, maybe stay overnight there, and then take the high-speed train to Seville and on to Cadiz. Flights into Madrid were cheaper than into Seville. I can’t remember how much, though. And I didn’t know much about the trains in Spain at that time. They are excellent.

Remembering my thought process is a little fuzzy, but after I bought our plane tickets with [Airline #1], I remember looking at trains to Seville from Lisbon, and it was going to be like an eight-plus-hour train ride — not direct, nor fast. So, then, I looked at flights from Lisbon to Seville, and on one low-cost airline, [Airline #2], the flights were like $50. There we go — perfect.

Well, we had two checked bags, and later, my wife decided to bring her bodyboard, so there was a third. The initial purchase of the [Airline #2] tickets with two bags was $256. The bodyboard added another $50 or so. I paid for that separately a few days before we left. So, buying the tickets to Lisbon didn’t save us any money.

On the day of our flight, we had our housesitter drive us to Union Station to drop us off so we wouldn’t have to pay for parking at the airport. The “A” train to the Denver airport was great — the start of our adventure.

When we got to the [Airline #1] counter to check in and drop off our bags, the guy at the counter immediately got a very puzzled look on his face, and after a few minutes, he got a woman to help him. She also got a puzzled look on her face.

Airline #1 Employee: “Were you originally flying through Montreal instead of Toronto?”

Me: “Yes. I responded to an email that said we’d been moved to a later flight through Toronto instead of Montreal. That email said I had to confirm this change, and I did.”

The process to do that was confusing, but I thought I had completed it successfully. 

It took probably thirty minutes to get that sorted out. The woman had to get on the phone with somebody and wait on hold, during which time we were holding up the check-in line for this flight. This included the “Priority” passengers, who were complaining and getting pissed. There were only two [Airline #1] people checking people in at one counter.

Eventually, one of them got on a different terminal to help other people check in. They told us it wasn’t our fault, which made me feel a little better. And the airline ended up not charging us for the additional checked bag (the bodyboard), which we considered a big win. Now, for some reason, they put us in middle seats about ten rows apart, but luckily, no one was in the window seat next to me, so my wife was able to come back and join me. 

The rest of the flight to Toronto was uneventful. We were supposed to have an hour-and-a-half layover in Toronto, but our flight was delayed almost an hour, so we ended up flying out of there at midnight East Coast time.

I think it was a seven-hour flight from Toronto to Lisbon, but when we landed we had to wait on the plane for a gate for about an hour. That sucked.

Then, we got off the plane and walked down about three football fields’ worth of hallways until we got to this massive line of humans waiting to go through passport control (immigration). It ended up being almost three hours before we got through that, had our luggage, and were ready for transport to our [Homestay Rental] in Lisbon. 

I had very prudently lined up a taxi-type service that had English-speaking drivers; we don’t speak Portuguese. Shortly after we got in the passport line, I suggested that we contact that company and/or our driver to tell him our situation.

Driver #1: “I’ll wait for an hour, and that’s all I’m required to do. But let me know when you’re almost out of immigration, customs, and all of that.”

When we were almost through, we contacted him again.

Driver #1: “I’m like forty-five minutes away. It’ll be faster for you to just get a cab.”

When he asked, he said we wouldn’t be getting a refund. Thank you very little — $29 lost.

So, we waited in line for a taxi for another twenty-five minutes. I asked our driver if he spoke English, and he said he did, but he barely did. He drove us through the winding streets of historical Lisbon and then stopped.

Driver #2: “You can get out here and walk down these stairs, and your place will be down there somewhere. It will be easier to walk down with all of your luggage than up.”

Wife: “No, you need to drive us closer.”

She showed him where it was on her phone. He drove us down below, took a left turn, and stopped a little later.

Driver #2: “You can walk from here.”

Wife: “It’s over here.” *Show him her phone again* “You can get us closer by going this way.”

Just then, the band started playing REALLY LOUDLY in a park across the street. I couldn’t hear anything they were talking about. I was so f****** tired, so sick of traveling, and so sick of being in this guy’s cab. I was losing my mind. I had to get out and walk away from them for a moment to try to keep it together.

Eventually, the driver took us up over the top again and back down to where he had taken a left before, went straight about thirty feet, and stopped.

Driver #2: “It’s up this alley.”

I had no confidence that we’d find our homestay, but my wife thought it was close. We walked up that alley maybe another fifty feet.

Wife: “Here it is!”

She found the key and we went inside.

This was the end of our second day of traveling. Holy s***!

We spent kind of a fun evening exploring central Lisbon, walking around, having some drinks, eating some Portuguese food — and hardly bickering with each other at all.

By the way, I should have bought our train tickets from Seville to Cadiz that night, but it totally slipped my mind. And after what happened with our travels the next day we likely would have missed it.

That night was the first night that we had to deal with jet lag. We needed to go to sleep when our bodies thought it like 4:00 pm. I took some Dramamine and eventually got to sleep. My wife chose to wake me up only thirty minutes before our driver was coming to pick us up. This was not good for me. I was flustered and stressed and not awake. We fumbled through figuring out how the coffee machine worked and got a couple of hits of coffee. 

We walked out of our homestay, and within twenty feet, a wheel broke off of the brand-new roller suitcase that I had bought for this trip. Really? It was still attached by about a two-by-four-inch strip of the material the suitcase was made of, so it was sort of dangling and flapping as I pulled my bag. I was off to a bad start… and this was the start of day three.

The cab took us to the airport with no problem, and the driver was interesting to talk to.

We got to the Lisbon airport, went to check in, and gave them our bags. The representative there working for [Airline #2] was a contractor who didn’t actually work for [Airline #2].

Airline #2 Employee: “You just missed checking in online by twenty minutes. You’ll have to pay $55 each.”

F-word! F-word! F-word! That was $110 down the toilet. Total trickery. Total scam. Intentionally designed to suck more money out of people. We had to check bags, so we were going to have to talk to one of their people. There was no justification for it.

One thing did make me feel really good. The lady checking in in front of us left her Brazilian passport at the [Airline #2] counter. I was able to catch up to her and give her back her passport. She was very appreciative.

The flight was around forty-five minutes late leaving Lisbon, but it was a short flight to Seville, and it was uneventful. And apparently, because we were already inside the EU, we didn’t have to go through immigration or anything like that again. Also, nobody asked to see our vaccination cards or anything. We had done this online thing with the Spanish Department of Health that was kind of a pain, but oh, well. That felt like a win.

We got our luggage and then found the line to take the bus to the train station.

With hindsight, this is where we should have just taken a cab — and we should have stopped in the airport and bought our train tickets to Cadiz online. It ended up that we basically took a public bus to the train station. I thought it was going to be a shuttle-type thing that only went back and forth to the train station, but no. I thought had I paid for tickets just to the train station, and I told the bus driver we wanted the train station, but little did we know that it was going to be the second stop in his route. I was studying the map of the stops on the wall of the bus, and I concluded it was going to be the second stop.

We may have heard the announcement for the first stop, but we definitely missed the announcement for the stop for the train station. I also thought it was going to be a big, obvious, visible train station. And did I mention that the bus was packed, standing room only? And we seemed to be the only people with a ton of luggage. And it was hot on the bus.

When we realized we had missed the second stop, we asked the driver to let us off. My wife told him we didn’t hear the announcement, and he rolled his eyes. We jumped off the bus with all of our luggage, not knowing how far back the train station was, and my mood went black. I couldn’t believe we’d made another mistake. Am I too hard on myself? Yes, I am. It was still disappointing. I immediately wanted to take a cab, but my wife looked at the map on her phone and said that it was only a few blocks away.

We started rolling our bags on the sidewalk, which were made of thousands of little tiles, which the wheels on our bags didn’t like — especially mine. I noticed that there was a bike lane that ran parallel to the sidewalk, and it was smooth, but it was used by bikes. We proceeded up the oncoming bike lane, and when we saw a bike coming, we pulled our bags out of the bike lane back to the sidewalk until the bikes passed.

And did I mention it was over ninety degrees?

We continued with this process until we got to a restaurant that was across the street from the train station. We decided to stop there to get something to eat because we hadn’t eaten anything that day so far.  

And here’s where, if I had thought of it, I would have used my wife’s phone to buy the train tickets online or gone over to the train station to buy tickets while my wife waited at the restaurant. Or, we could’ve kept going on to the train station to buy our tickets, where we would’ve found out that there were a bunch of restaurant options at the train station. But I didn’t think to do any of those, so the earliest train we could get to Cadiz was at like 7:45 pm. We got to the train station around 4:00 pm, so it was almost a four-hour wait.

My wife was really mad at me because I was in charge of transportation. She proceeded to look into any and all transportation options while I was stressing hard that if we didn’t buy the train tickets right then, we’d be on the 10:00 pm train if there even was one. Eventually, she exhausted all of the options she could find to get us to Cadiz sooner, and I was able to buy our train tickets.

She’s still mad at me about this.