I had a somewhat frustrating day today—as compared to yesterday, which was full of new wonders and “gold star” moments.

Today, first of all, I didn’t have any coffee. Since I lost my debit card at police HQ (long story), and have been waiting for a replacement, I have not been shopping for necessaries like coffee. I never use cash anymore, especially at the supermarket.  No reason, just don't. 

So I started the day without coffee, and even though I have a number of coffee shops just five minutes’ walk from my place now, it was colder than a witch’s tit this morning, and I didn’t want to go out for it, get all chilled to the bone, and then come back and have to warm back up and then go out all over again when I had to leave for school. (Yes, it's true—I'm not in Somerville two weeks and I've already turned into a complete pussy.)

So that's how it all began.

And it went from bad to worse when, after my lessons, which were routine, I went to get some cash from the bank.

I was going to go to the bank I usually go to, right across from the school, but I had already walked halfway to Copley Square when I remembered I didn’t have my debit card and would therefore need cash if I wanted to buy a book, which I did, from the new bookstore on Copley Square, which is why I had already walked halfway there.

The book, by the way, was James’ The Bostonians, and they didn’t have it, nor did three other bookstores I tried on my way to one that did. But that comes later.

So I went to a branch of my loathsome bank I don’t usually go to. And the teller decided to give me a hard time for the twenty-five bucks I was there to withdraw from my checking account.

But before she did, I noticed her nametag said “Made in Albania.”

Trying to make polite conversation, or something, I was like, "Wow. Made in Albania! Nice!" as I handed her my passport and a withdrawal slip. "Just make sure the money's made in America, please!" I winked.

She scowled at me, pursed her lips and opened my passport.  She flipped idly through the pages, looked at the photo, looked at me, back at the photo, back at me, fanned herself with my passport, narrowed her eyes, and said, “This doesn’t look like my passport.”

I shrugged.  "Well, it isn't your passport, is it?"

"In fact," she said, as if she hadn't heard me,  "this doesn’t even look like a real passport.”

I'm like, "Oh, no, you di'int."

Still wishing to avoid an incident, I explained to her that the reason it may look different—and it doesn't even look that different—is that it was issued by the Embassy in Budapest where I was living at the time.

She rolled her eyes at me and called over a Jamaican teller who started flipping through it.

She’s like, “Does this even look real to you?”

I'm like, "OBJECTION!  That's not a neutral question!  You're practically giving her the answer!"

The Jamaican teller concluded that my passport was probably real, but just a really old one.

Not satisfied with her coworker's basically siding with me, she turned and demanded “something else—a credit card or something.”

I explained that the sole reason I was putting myself through this exercise in bad customer service disguised as good customer service was that I had lost my Citizen’s debit card, and was waiting for my new one to come.

“Oh,” she said tartly. “Well, I’m going to have to ask you some questions.”

“Bring it on.”

I thought they would be really obscure and mystical, like:  "Tell me where you hid that coin you nicked from your friend Chris Brown’s collection when you were in the sixth grade?" Or "Who's really your favorite Brady?" Or "Where did you have your first orgasm?" or "Are you wearing women’s panties?" But, no, it was “What’s the amount of the last check you wrote?”

I rolled my eyes. "A hundred and ten bucks or something to Comcast."

"It was a hundred and fourteen," she corrected me.

"You know," I said, "if you’re gonna waste my time with stupid questions, you can keep the twenty-five bucks. My time’s worth more than that."

Then she slipped a piece of paper under the little window and instructed me to write down…not the opening line of Shakespeare’s King Richard III ("Now is the Winter of our Discontent," duh), or the birth and death dates of Chidiock Tichborne (1558-1586, yawn), or the Latin name for the Common Toad-Lily (Tricyrtis—are we done yet?), or the name of the ninth track on the first album recorded by the Violent Femmes (Um, hmm...gimme a sec, here... "Gone Daddy Gone," final answer).  No, she wanted me to write down my social security number on it.

Which was easy. I mean, was she trying to make it easy for me?  What was the point in that?

After a lot of huffing and puffing and hemming and hawing, I finally got my money. MY money. Not her money. MINE. HA! MINE ALL MINE!

Yes, she was just doing her job, and lucky for her it just happens to entitle her to passive-aggressively take out whatever frustrations she has on customers carrying what should be more than adequate photo identification (adequate enough to get me around the world once or twice) who want to withdraw a measly $25 of their own money from their checking account.

And, you know, when she handed it over it was like she was doing me this big favor.

Once a year. Just once a year, you should have license to bitch-slap people who have been asking for it all year long, and they have to let you. I’ll take mine with the rest, if I’m deserving. Sure.

There should probably be a process in place to ensure no one will get just randomly bitch-slapped.  The way it could work is, if someone gets nominated for a bitch-slap by some arbitrary number—seven people, say—then, after due deliberation by an impartial committee of some sort, those seven, plus any others who have filed grievances deemed legitimate, get to participate in a sanctioned group bitch-slap of the nominee. No spitting in their faces, or throwing rotten tomatoes, or anything. Just a good, sharp smack in the chops to let them know what a shit they’ve been to strangers for no good reason. 

Do you think if I wrote up some legislation Deval would go for it?  

So anyway, after wresting my money from the tight fists of my miserly bank, I went off in search of The Bostonians, which, this being Boston and all you’d think these big box bookstore’s would have in stock.  At least a copy or two.  I trekked all through the Back Bay, like I said, and only the fifth bookstore I went to had a copy. One single copy.  In all of Back Bay.

I got bogged down at Brattle Books along the way, and left not with the book I was seeking, but with a paperback copy of The Complete Essays of Mark Twain and Beckett's More Pricks Than Kicks, which you know I had to buy. It was a buck, for Pete's sake. The first tale in it is about a guy called Belacqua making toast, and contained this gem of a passage:

He looked sceptically at the cut of cheese. He turned it over on its back to see was the other side any better. The other side was worse. They had laid it better side up, they had practised that little deception. Who shall blame them? He rubbed it. It was sweating. That was something. He stooped and smelt it. A faint fragrance of corruption. What good was that? He didn't want fragrance, he wasn't a bloody gourmet, he wanted a good stench. What he wanted was a good green stenching rotten lump of gorgonzola cheese, alive, and by God he would have it.

He looked fiercely at the grocer.

"What's that?" he demanded.

The grocer writhed.

"Well," demanded Belacqua, he was without fear when roused, "is this the best you can do?"

"In the length and breadth of Dublin," said the grocer, "you won't find a rottener bit this minute."

Now that's customer service.  I'm going to send that to Citizens.  To Miss Albania.  And that passage is why, even though I had managed to finally get a copy of The Bostonians, I decided to read Beckett on the train on the way home instead.