Adventures In The Asanine

One of the huge mistakes we have made in 'moving forward' is the almost inevitable consequence of 'moving backward'.

Jan and I had been discussing opening a joint savings account with the assholes that I bank with. Oh, and I'll name them CIBC. Anyway, I went to their website, and it was pretty easy opening an account, just for grins I even put some money in it. I opened the account at the same branch that I have been banking with for 6 years.

My next plan was to add Jan to the account. The bank beat me to the punchline. A couple of days after opening it, they called me. Not to thank me for opening the account, but telling me I had to get to the branch PDQ to sign a signature card. Huh? I already have an account, they already have a damn signature card.

The (not from around here) guy on the other end of the line was relieved when I explained that I was planning on visiting the branch the following day, and that I wanted to add my wife to the account. "what do we need?" I asked, "She needs two pieces of ID and it will be no problem".

So, we enter the bank at 10am, right on time, Mr. Not-From-Around-Here invites us to sit down.

Out of left field he askes me for two pieces of ID. Well this is my damn account, I opened it, and I had already spoken to Osama Bin Teller on the phone. I hand him two pieces of ID plus my bank card, and cannot resist a minor dig about how much easier banking is now the internet is here.

'None of that tedious dealing with people', the humor missed Osama Bin Teller by several hundred miles.

"So you want to open an account" he asks, "no, I already have, all I want to do is add my wife to it".

It went downhill from that point. Osama Bin Teller could not grasp the idea that when Jan was born her name was Jan x, and that is the name on her birth certificate (one of the pieces of ID that Osama had told me was OK to use). Next Jan became Jan Y, she got married, and then divorced, her current passport is in the name of Jan Y (Oh, Osama told me passports were OK).
Then Jan and I got married, so now she is Jan Z.

I had smelled a rat early on so I told Jan to bring out marriage certificate as well. We have the original, but we also have a copy, so I told her to just bring the copy.

Yes, you guessed it, Osama and his boss (some other banking terrorist) refused to put Jan on the account. Needless to say I gave Osama Bin Teller a good earful, but I suspect he didn't understand it all because English was obviously not his primary language.

The way I look at it is, if I want to give someone the run of my house, I go to the local Wally World and get a key cut, and I give them the key. It is that simple.

Banks though are a whole different universe. It's OK though, I have a plan 'B', I am going to open an account with a different bank, and CIBC can weep. I'll take my $5 and put it somewhere where they like me.