CPUnk I write right. Right? Aye.

More clothing, and a mixed blessings bank experience

Yes­ter­day, we all went shop­ping again — this time Kathy and Angie got their own per­sonal shop­pers, and Nate and I headed off to the men’s sec­tion for me (Nate couldn’t care less about clothes for him­self for the most part).

So, we had a great time shop­ping in our sep­a­rate camps — Kathy and Angie bought a lot of great stuff, as did I (I bought a lot MORE great stuff than they did — but that’s ok, beats a watch ). So, towards the end of the day, Olga and I are close friends, we’re chat­ting away the whole day in French, talk­ing about what we like and don’t like — meet­ing all the dif­fer­ent peo­ple in the store (she’s a real celebrity in the store, she’s been there for 30 years, every­body loves her, all the peo­ple work­ing there were grab­bing at her for atten­tion at dif­fer­ent times). It was really fun to walk around with her — because we sort of had “run of the place.” All the “you may stand here and wait for your turn to talk about this pair of pants” stuff that goes on nor­mally in a depart­ment store — that was gone … we’d walk up to a spe­cific depart­ment or brand area and the peo­ple would turn, see her, see me, SMILE broadly and imme­di­ately want to help. Mul­ti­ply that by the fact that every­one was French, and you can see how it was fun to have this “back door into the sys­tem” kind of access.

We spent a major­ity of our time at Zadig & Voltaire which is a new favorite brand for me … the clothes are pretty cool. That was our first stop, so Nate was still into it — while he played his DS, he’d look up every once in a while and say “no, Dad, I don’t like that col­lar — it’s too dull”, then go back to his DS. But that wore off soon, and he was ready to do some­thing else.

Well, Olga threw her weight around and we went to the cham­pagne bar run by Moet. Behind them, there was a pri­vate porch salon that was cur­rently closed, but had an enclosed fancy schmancy trans­par­ent tent with sofas and pil­lows inside. She strolled up and asked/told them that Nate was going to use that tent for the day, so he got to hang out in lux­u­ri­ous secu­rity while we rolled around the store buy­ing things.

Towards lunchtime, Olga ran off and got me a foie gras sand­wich — which was pretty awe­some. She came back with the sand­wich and said she had also given one to Nate (uh oh).

“Oh, that’s won­der­ful,”, said I, “let’s go visit him for a lit­tle while?”

“D’accord.”, she said. (happy agreement).

So, we roll up on the trans­par­ent tent, and there’s my brave boy, gamely gnaw­ing politely on this thing that’s been handed to him. She had enthu­si­as­ti­cally handed him a foie gras sand­wich, he has COMPLETELY politely taken it, said thank you, and bit­ten into the thing with­out com­plaint. By the time we’d arrived, she was enthu­si­as­ti­cally ask­ing him if he was enjoy­ing the sand­wich and he was say­ing yes … then she said she was going to head off for a few min­utes as well (per­haps to eat) and would be back in 15 min­utes. “D’accord.”, said I.

As soon as she was out of the tent…

“Daaad?…”, says Nate.
“Yeah, son.”, say I, sup­press­ing a grin.
“I really don’t like this sand­wich AT ALL.”
“Oh, I fig­ured that — I’m really proud of you, buddy, for how you han­dled your­self — really, really proud.”

So I threw myself on the grenade for him and ate his sand­wich too. So now, my finicky boy has not only eaten goat face in Africa, he’s eaten duck liver (this was foie gras du canard, I’m pretty sure) in France. I’m a proud papa

Bank­ing Gone Bad
Ok, fast for­ward to the end of the day — Olga and I are chat­ting away — we don’t got to Eng­lish much, but I’m start­ing to get a lit­tle tired. I called Kathy (using Olga’s spe­cial in-store mobile phone to call the other per­sonal shop­per, because we’re so cool), and Kathy says she’s wrap­ping up. Olga and I are look­ing for a new wal­let (which we didn’t get, even though the folks at Gucci, Ver­sace and Prada were think­ing we should ), when Kathy calls to start talk­ing about how to coor­di­nate her return to my build­ing. Acti­vate moment of exhaustion.

So, I’m stand­ing there, with the phone to my ear, in the Ver­sace depart­ment, Kathy’s talk­ing into my ear in Eng­lish about how she’ll get all her stuff over to our build­ing — and Olga is talk­ing in my other ear in French about how she can han­dle the whole thing for us — and Kathy is talk­ing about how we might want to leave it all here while we go to Notre Dame, and would that be pos­si­ble — and Olga is say­ing that she will com­bien tout l’ensemble ici and Kathy is say­ing that if we could, it would be nice to pick it up tomor­row and Olga is say­ing nous sommes ferme demain and Kathy’s say­ing we really don’t want to take all this stuff with us to Notre Dame and I’m start­ing to spin and *poof*

… hello, this is your brain’s inter­nal French trans­la­tion depart­ment — we have shut down for the evening, you can now only say “chat” and “chien” (cat and dog) — have a good day.

Ok. Un moment. Je ne pense pas qu’il est pos­si­ble for me to make sense out of this sit­u­a­tion quand je parle avec both of you at once.

So — I strug­gle to the sur­face for air — and ask Olga if we can leave every­thing until Mon­day. I’m strug­gling to under­stand her but she says basi­cally that she can gar­ble blark mark Mon­day floop mongo Hotel. I take that to mean that she’ll have the entire group of stuff dropped off on Mon­day at the hotel. Superb!

The sit­u­a­tion is resolved — but please note, I’ve gone from flu­ent French to back of the class­room from that tense experience.

Then Kathy calls back a few min­utes later — “Honey, my card was declined.”

I’m not going to go into too much detail — but these are cards that don’t get declined.

Under nor­mal cir­cum­stances, when a snafu like this hap­pens — I’d just call my banker/broker at Schwab, Matt Pick­ett — and he’d flip a switch and all would be well. But Matt’s self­ishly decided to leave because his wife is hav­ing a baby. The nerve — doesn’t he know I’m buy­ing CLOTHES in PARIS?!!!

Well, as a backup, we’d usu­ally call his asso­ciate, Bran­don Siler, who han­dles our “fast and dirty” spe­cial needs (wire trans­fers, etc.). Bran­don is also COMPLETELY self-centered and has left on his hon­ey­moon. I mean, who do these peo­ple think they ARE? I’m buy­ing pants AND shirts. I’ve eaten foie gras!

Well, it’s time to break glass in case of emer­gency. I took the iPhone out of air­plane mode. It shud­dered with antic­i­pa­tion as some­where an AT&T billing com­puter turned its sleepy eye our way, licked its lips and started my inter­na­tional meter.

I called Schwab’s inter­na­tional phone sup­port line. You’d think that the inter­na­tional sup­port line would come in through some voice­mail tree that is faster, since well — it’s inter­na­tional, right? Nope. “Howdy, wel­come to Schwab — press one if you’d like to take a really long time — oth­er­wise please wait just a nor­mal long time for the next avail­able associate.”

While wait­ing, I lis­tened to the play­ful sound of my pock­ets emp­ty­ing into AT&T’s bank accounts.

“Hi, this is Schwab, how can I help you?”
“I’m call­ing from Paris, this is $1/min, my card has been declined.”
“Oh! Let me ver­ify you and then I’ll trans­fer you to the appro­pri­ate depart­ment!” … arg.
…verify…verify…
back to the hold music of my money dis­ap­pear­ing
“Hi, this is Schwab bank sup­port, I under­stand you are call­ing from Paris — do you have a num­ber we can call back?”

Olga, Olga! Chat! Chien! Com­ment t’alez vous?!!! … oh damn … how do you say “I need the phone num­ber for your spe­cial phone so I can get an inter­na­tional inbound call returned from my bank to deblock my wife’s credit card?”

“Je desit un numer pour tele­phone pour ma banque me rap­peller?” (I need a num­ber for phone for my bank me to callback).

insert grap­pling with phone num­bers — coun­try codes (the iPhone bill is still run­ning, mind you) — and then hang up.

Now we wait.

Poor, poor Shelly the Schwab oper­a­tor. It took her about 10 min­utes — but she fought her way back through the snooty depart­ment store switch­board using her high­school French and found us again. I con­grat­u­lated her profusely.

She told me she’d make a note of the costs for the call and see to it that we were reim­bursed for our iPhone charges, and worked to remove the block on Kathy’s card. She said that the block was because Kathy’s card doesn’t usu­ally have this sort of behav­ior — my card would work fine — but hers needed to be cleared (after all, I had no prob­lems yesterday).

Shelly advised wait­ing 15 min­utes, then Kathy could try it again. All very nice — so we do that. Mean­while, Notre Dame is slip­ping through our fin­gers (which ended up work­ing out for the best).

Mean­while — since Olga is just stand­ing around — all the young man­agers from the var­i­ous depart­ments are reach­ing out to her and beg­ging her to help them with things — what, I don’t know … but she’s really peeved by it, keeps telling them she’s with a client … and that’s adding to the tension.

Kathy tries her card again — no love. AAAAaaaarrrghhh…

Ok — we’ll head over there and use my card.

We grab Nate, head out of the build­ing, cross the street to the other build­ing, find Kathy, Angie and Olivia (their shop­per) and every­one is stand­ing in line for a major pur­chase at the teller. It’s a huge line because the guy in front of us (who also has a “lesser” shop­per, it would seem) is try­ing to pay on mul­ti­ple cards. Stand around, stand around.

I sug­gest that Kathy take the kids some­where to eat — which she does. So now I have the room to get my Mal­colm on. I ask if there’s any way we can get around this ridicu­lous line — so one of Kathy’s shop­pers (Olivia had an assis­tant, it would seem) asks if we can cut in for 2 min­utes to run my card. Every­one agrees. We shoul­der our way in — and presto! Card declined.

Rokey dokey smokey — I’ll just be tak­ing off my charm hat now. Here, Olga, hold my smile — I’m call­ing Schwab.

The gang of per­sonal shop­pers scurry me off to the ladies pri­vate shop­per salon — they can tell I’m less than enthused — and I think from my body lan­guage, it’s pretty clear that some poor banker is about to die, and that this isn’t about lim­its or anything.

They sit me down in a chic-chic room for ladies, throw some orange juice at me and run away. Well, most do — Olga blithely sits with me, fully aware that beneath this ter­ri­fy­ing exte­rior beats the heart of a very nice person.

Acti­vate iPhone…

tra la la — Schwab voice­mail prompts –

“Hello, wel­come to –“
“Call­ing from Paris, every­one must die, fix now.”
“Ter­ri­bly sorry, work­ing quickly, please ver­ify.”
“Ver­ify.”
“Trans­fer­ring now.”
“Amber here, ter­ri­fied, wel­come to bank, please let me live.”
“Sorry you are unhappy, fix prob­lem.”
“Fix­ing prob­lem now sir, please do not eat me. Will involve man­ager, please may I call back?”
“Cell­phone num­ber.”
“Ten minutes.”

Chat with Olga — who seems to sug­gest some­thing like “oh, it’s just a secu­rity thing (which it was), let us stay happy.” So we did.

iPhone rings
“Amber here — all is well — may I stay on the line while we con­firm?”
“Thanks, Amber, let’s see how that works out, you’re a really nice per­son.” — oh look, my human­ity — I found it again.

So we all head back out to the teller, I’m chat­ting with Amber, who’s telling me that she was really afraid of hav­ing to call in through the store, because her French is ter­ri­ble — ergo the iPhone call­back. We laugh, we cry, we’re hav­ing a great time.

The French peo­ple all start talk­ing really fast to each other. Olivia is reach­ing around for receipts, tick­ets, all sorts of stuff.
I turn to Olga, who explains that the “work­ing receipt” for all of Kathy’s pur­chases has expired, because they’re only valid for an hour after they are sub­mit­ted and fail. Zut Alors!

So, the hero(ine) of the day is the lady behind the glass at the reg­is­ter. She was fir­ing away at the key­pad, enter­ing the ENTIRE day’s orders by hand at a speed that made me think of Heather on the cal­cu­la­tor (shout out to Heather and her lick­ety split fin­gers!) … the woman types and types — they scan and check and con­firm that every­thing is right. They ALSO apply 10% dis­count on a major­ity of stuff because Kathy had some sort of super duper dis­count card (because she rocks). They ALSO set up the parts we need for VAT (I think?) — so we’ll get another 12% back from taxes. Woot, this is like Christmas!

Mean­while, Amber and I are still con­nected and run­ning up my iPhone bill.

The time had come. I hand over the card.

In a tech­no­log­i­cally inter­est­ing moment — Amber tells me that the pur­chase has been approved … and THEN the lit­tle ticker tape on the desk starts spit­ting out it’s con­fir­ma­tion. Cheers and clap­ping all around. Laugh­ter and relief. Ain’t life grand?

I thank Amber, get her name and con­tact info so I can tell other peo­ple how great she is, and hang up.

“Mon Dieu!”, I exclaim … Olga vir­tu­ally slaps me on the back and com­pli­ments me on my proper use of French. Seems it’s all come back to me now.

After­math
So, we ended up skip­ping Notre Dame, got our clothes back to the hotel our­selves — poor Olga stayed an hour later than her check­out time — she’s a won­der­ful, won­der­ful per­son. Ends up she’s a Chris­t­ian too (we find each other), we chat­ted about that a bit — then wished her well, and she us as well.

Nate and I went off to the local toy store and bought a Lego kit for him as a cel­e­bra­tion of his impec­ca­ble behav­ior the entire day (Olga kept com­pli­ment­ing him on how gen­tile he is (polite)). So, Legos in hand, he was all set for the night in the hotel. Angie, mean­while, had had a great time buy­ing clothes (as any young girl should in Paris, imho), but was tired — so she was all set for the night. So Kathy and I decided to dress up in fancy clothes and go to din­ner alone (the kids were full from their foray in the store while I fought with Schwab).

We headed off to one of the places we’d vis­ited last night. This was a pretty nice place, quite busy — called Les Grands Capucins … which means “The Big Capuchins” (look it up). Big place, lots of activ­ity — a wee bit too much atti­tude… but we were bound to give it another try.

The food ended up being ridicu­lous… there’s an entire story there about me tak­ing on a pompous French waiter and win­ning in his own court — but this post is too long … so suf­fice to say … we had din­ner in spite of the poor service.

We ordered some food, enjoyed each other’s com­pany — and lo and behold… my card was declined.

I decided that the com­pany needed me happy — so I used the com­pany card. I’ll reim­burse the com­pany for din­ner when I get home (shout out to Heather (dou­ble shout out, Heather, woot!)).

I got back to the hotel — called Schwab (again) — talked with Tony — insert dia­log here — he con­nected us directly to Visa Fraud pre­ven­tion … they in turn had a full stop on our account because of the weird pur­chase pat­tern. All is fixed — for now.

Kinda can’t wait to find out what hap­pens next with my card that can’t be beat.

Sacre Bleu!