11/29/14 - 5:06 p.m.

Oh god, how angry I am. I've been cut off from my money. You go through all these holidays, feeling like people have a place for you in the world, that maybe it won't be an endless parade of strangers who don't care about you. And then the bank cuts you off.

Oh, they'll let you slide your card into the ATM then punch in your PIN number. They'll even then give you that menu that says "Account Balance? Withdrawal?" I think that's the worse part about this -- that they'll actually lure you into thinking, "Well, today I'd like an account balance." And that's when they say "Ha! You're not getting one! You're not getting anything! Ah ha ha ha! You're bad people..."

"We shun you! Your ATM card's no good. And you know what you're going to do about it? Nothing! You're going to sit there like a little b*tch. Ha ha ha ha ha...."

Ya know, you can say diplomatically, to absolutely no one, since you're standing alone in front of a machine, you could say on your display screen "Please contact customer service to reactivate your card." Except you can't. You can do nothing. You sit there -- and it's over. No money for you. Customer service isn't available until Monday.

Or Tuesday, if it's a three-day weekend. They'll keep your own money away from you for more than 48 hours. Again, what do you do? The answer is nothing!

It might be nice to know why this makes me so angry. Possibly because I was having such a nice holiday weekend. I'm trying to focus on some computer programming homework. I didn't even need the money. I was just trying to fill my wallet while I happened to be at the shopping center. Since my bank has so few ATMs that are actually near my home...

And to be fair to me, their handling for these situations is about as frustrating as it can possibly be. They let you slide your card in again, let you key in your PIN one more time -- the correct pin -- and then present you with a menu of 8 choices (none of which you will actually be able to use). When they spit out your card, they don't tell you what to do. Is it 5 minutes you wait, or a half an hour, or 24 hours? Or do you have to call customer service?

"They probably tell you on their web site." No. They don't. I know this because I checked. It's like a pretend bank, that gives you your money sometimes and sometimes they don't, and they don't really have any procedure in place for those situations. Real banks have a number you can call on weekends, so you can handle situations like this. My credit union has the same mandatory cut-off after bad ATM attempts -- but without the phone operators available on weekends. So you're just screwed. Sucks to be you, loser...

So yeah, I feel disrespected. And the thing is, I joined a credit union because I thought they were going to be customer friendly. If they were going to shut me off, and also not take my call, and not tell me on the screen of the ATM, at the very least they could have some information about this somewhere on their web site. I sent an e-mail to customer service, so at least I know this is covered. The thing is, I still don't know if my card will work on Monday. Does it come back to life after 24 hours -- or does it never come back to life until I phone them. I can find out the hard way on Sunday, or just wait until Monday.

Dear god, this makes me angry. It's a really really messed up policy. (They should inform the honest customer that once the maximum number of pins have been exceeded, they should call customer service.) This would've spared me the humiliation of going to another ATM and being shut down again. Because I would at least know what was going on, instead of finding out the hard way.

And they should also spare me the humiliation of dialing the phone number on the back of the card, only to find out there's nobody there and no way to activate the card. Maybe pressing three for "card activation" will help? More humiliation -- no, that's also a waste of time. Maybe pressing two -- no. You can guess and guess again. Maybe the truth is there's nothing you can do -- and also that we don't actually ever tell you that any place, so you have to deal with every possible avenue of help, only to discover that no, that actually won't work either. You're just not getting your money until Monday.

So, new plan. I have money in my wallet. I took out "the emergency twenty" and put it in with the rest of the bills. That'll be enough for Sunday. That will get me to Monday, when I can make the call. (And I have an e-mail in to the bank about this, so when they write back it'll remind me to call them (if that's what I need to do). But this is still messed up, because I have more things to do today than run around trying to guess what my bank's ATM policy might be.

Okay, that's the real problem, I've finally figured out. It's not that I don't have my money. It's that I won't have it until I do......what? No idea. I'm locked out and I'll stay locked out all weekend -- and I have to try everything and research everything just to confirm that yes, the good news is you are truly locked out, so now you can stop hoping that you can make it better somehow because you can't. That actually is an improvement. Yay me, for figuring that out. I guess what I hate most is I have to deal with banking policies -- on a Saturday, when you know no one is going to be there to help you -- when I don't want to because it's my holiday weekend.

But you can't just let your money not be available to you. You can't just go la-la-la, I'm going to just have fun. As much as I'd like that, no -- I am going to get my ATM card working again. It may or may not be working Monday morning -- it's possible that I'll have to call them to get my card reactivated. And I abso-fricking-lutely hate the fact that I have to brood about this for the next 36 hours. No money for you, and no way to resolve it. You will now be phoning your bank on Monday. Your to-do list just got a mandatory new item, or else you'll never see your money again. But, okay, Monday's not part of the holiday weekend anyways. Maybe this is a little Christmas miracle in disguise...because now I can't do any bank stuff. It's back to a money-free remainder of the weekend. That's weird -- really weird.

A more interesting question is why I'm so upset about this. My girlfriend talked about childhood powerlessness, and how we still have coping mechanisms from that experience when as adults we should make better choices. It's a bad day for my bank to say no money for you -- and you have no way of getting help from the bank to understand when it's coming back. No one on the phone, nothing on the web site. No money for you and no info on what you can do next. I unilaterally came up with a new plan, which is sigh and let it go until Monday, when it will either come back to life by itself or after I make a phone call to the bank (during regular banking hours). If I were smart I'd even put on my calendar -- for Monday -- a reminder.

Okay, so here's where it gets into double overtime. My girlfriend told me to "calm down". Yeah, obviously I'm real upset. But think about it -- do you tell an angry person "Calm down?" Is that, like, in some way going to lower the anger level? I just Googled it, and the first match is even a relationship counselor's article: "Never tell an angry person to calm down". (Saying that sometimes it's "used in ways that deny the upset person's right to be upset, agitated, frustrated or frightened.") So now I'm cut off from my money, I guess (correctly) that I can't call my bank, I get the humiliation of sliding my card in and getting the menu and then being told they actually won't do anything for me. Later I'll find out there's no phone number I can call on the weekend and no online web page where I can get this addressed on the weekend. But okay, these are messed up things.

Honestly, I put pressure on myself to not get my money to be cut off from me for the entire remainder of the weekend. Maybe that's part of it. I now know that there's nothing I (or anyone) can do, so the thing is to back off. But in the moment, I have this new bank-related to-do item for my holiday Saturday afternoon. I guess it was a problem because I didn't want to do it, so I had to put pressure on myself to do anyways this thing that I don't want to do -- and I'm extra-mad because I'm in this situation. (Three tries? That's it -- you get three tries at the ATM, and then no money for you ever until Monday?!)

I honestly didn't know that was their policy. You can see why it'd be frustrating to find out the hard way...

Okay, so now I know. (I actually would change banks, if I could find a web page that told me the new bank actually would have a phone operator on the weekend who I could call if I'd been locked out of my ATM.) Ah, but I can't find that information on the web. And the truth is, this lower customer service window is what you get when you work with a local financial institution rather than a big corporate bank. They are better about some things - like ATM fees. But yeah, they didn't hire a 24/7 call answering service.

Okay, so I'm just going to have to deal with the fact that they're a small local institution and they don't have any way whatsoever to deal with this on a Saturday afternoon. Eventually I was going to get here. But it just left me all alone on this when my girlfriend told me to "calm down." I pulled the car over and said I was walking home. When I came home later, I told her not to tell me to calm down when I'm angry. She said okay, and then I walked out the door with my laptop. Good for me for standing up for that.

And for determining (on my own) the best possible solution to this problem. There is the possibility that it will come back to life tonight on my way home, or tomorrow (after it's been 24 hours). The surest way is to just chill until Monday, and resolve it over the phone (whether or not that's required). So I've gathered all the information it's possible to gather this weekend. And I also addressed the problem of the girlfriend insensitivity, and it probably won't happen again.

In theory, now I can get back to whatever it is that I need to do. I think the most important part of this was recognizing: it is frustrating. The bank's ATM screen doesn't act like it is, but yeah, it obviously totally is. Writing this out helps me see that others would probably agree: this is a frustrating experience and not optimum service from my place of financial service. That it is just as bad as it seems -- no recourse until Monday -- though that actually makes it even easier for me to stop pressuring myself. (A, it's frustrating -- it's not just me -- and why pressure myself when I can't do anything, and I really should get back to enjoying my holiday weekend.)

I was just kind of vulnerable in that moment when my girlfriend said "calm down." It was invalidation at a time when I just didn't need it....