Stop RIBbing me!

To start off with: I’M OK! Nobody worry about me! I have enough money to survive on for the moment, and Anastasia and T. have both offered to lend me money if I need it, which I don’t plan to! I’m just ticked off with my bank.
I’d walked in one morning, intending merely to gather information about opening an account, thinking I’d have to have a signed proof of residence, evidence that I was in the process of getting my green card, vaccination record, last month’s bowling scores etc etc etc in order to get an account. But no. They just wanted my passport and the letter saying I’m employed. Great! I thought. The education ministry people had instilled the fear of French bureaucracy in me, but this is a piece of cake!
I should have smelled something funny when they kept telling me "You should recommend us to any other assistants you know. We’re a good bank." Didn’t tell me why, just that they were a good bank. Um hmm…I just figured they were patronizing the slow foreign person. Now I’m wondering whether or not they were trying to convince themselves too…
It seems every time I go in there, it’s something different. They tell me they’ll have my bank card and check book ready for me by that Friday, and my code sent to me in my mailbox (at school) on Saturday. Great! Less than a week!
"So getting an account is a piece of cake, hmm? Let’s see how you deal with this little slice…"
Even a week is not soon enough. The office at school absolutely needs my RIB (Relève Identité Bancaire, this number used to identify your account, which you have to give to all sorts of people like employers and phone companies to give them access to your account. And the bank gives you several…something to do with security…I’m still lost) to do all the paperwork so they can give me an advance on my pay. French paperwork being what it is, it takes the state two months to deal with all the information that comes before my monthly salary, and so I have to apply to the school for 75% of my salary at the end of my first month so I don’t starve waiting for two months salary at the end of November. And I have no RIB as yet…so I go to the bank, explain my situation, ask them if they can give me a RIB in advance. They seem slightly flustered, but they punch buttons on their computer and come up with something they assure me will work.
I turn it into the Proviseur adjoint (sort of vice principal/secretary to the principal, I think) along with my birth certificate, a copy of my passport, my Iowa test scores, and two letters of recommendation from my orthodontist. Well and good. I can rest easy. She assures me multiple times that I should get paid at the end of October, I’ve done all there is to do.
It seems my bank hasn’t. Friday, Saturday, then Monday and Tuesday roll by. Nothing in the mail. Nothing at the branch. Finally they promise me, next Saturday. Saturday rolls around. They have my check card, but not my checkbook. Well and good. It’s better than nothing. Mini drama where they won’t exchange my dollars on Saturday, as described before. End result: I have a card. I’m good, for the time being.
But I can’t help wondering where my checkbook has gone. After all, I still haven’t paid rent, and a checkbook is kinda vital for that. I go in several times to check. Nothing. Finally someone discovers it hasn’t been ordered. Oops.
In the meantime, the end of October rolls around. I’ve made up my budget, discovered I’m running a little short on funds, and start to wonder exactly when I’m going to be paid. I drop by today to see if they’ve heard or had anything. I wait in line for fifteen minutes, give the lady the paper with one of my RIBs, and ask if I’ve been paid yet. Nope, I’ve given my employer a bad RIB. I’m going to need to give them another one.
Now when they gave me that first RIB, I must have asked five times if this will work, if I could indeed get paid with it. And the answer was oui oui oui oui oui. There has to be some reason they needed this number at school a good two weeks in advance OR ELSE. It can’t help to suddenly change it, even with the nice note they wrote me to give to my employer explaining the problem (with "erreur" misspelled, as I find out later). Not to mention everyone at school is on vacation until Thursday of next week.
So yeah, I’ve broken down in tears by this point. Not because I’m desperate or because I’m going to starve, but out of sheer frustration. It’s always something with this bank!!! If I knew all the other banks weren’t like this, I might go ahead with the trouble of changing after all this. Here is my recommendation: Don’t go to that bank. If things don’t get any better I might just put the name and hope French people with good English skills google it and come across this.
I call Anastasia to ask if she’s been paid (she hasn’t but all of her school friends have and she has her own drama now, poor thing). She comes to my rescue, gets indignant at the bank with me, lets me know I’m not crazy or demanding, helps me look through my papers and call the school (no one is there,) and feeds me. And lets me pet her cat.
Have I emphasized enough how great she is? Probably not. I really hope if, when I return to the states, I come across some poor lonely lost foreigner, I can be as kind to them as she is to me. And Annemarie. And Anne and Cristophe. And the Raskins for that matter…but yeah, I have a lot to pay forward.
(Her cat, by the way, if I haven’t mentioned it before, has all this fur growing out of his ears and is named Volvox, after some ancient French monster with the same trait)
I also told her some of you were thinking of coming to visit. Apparently everyone would love to meet you. So come! (but let me know well in advance so I can get you in the habit of using everyone’s real name…) (and if you can’t because you’re up to your ears in law school debt I understand, don’t worry you know I love you!)
And pray that I might find a sense of charity towards my bank…
Vocabulaire:
Baby Foot: Foosball
Enceinte (n): enclosure or enclosing wall
Emboiter le pas à quelqu’un: to follow on someone’s heels
Cachmire: cashmere
Chantonner: to hum