SO WEDNEDAY rolled around the other day! Oh Wednesday! How I loathed thee! I woke up at Laruiane’s house, made some coffee, and then went to Nanterre to sign the papers for my new second job! By the way, I got a second job as an Education Assistant (i.e. hall monitor) at Magali’s school. The job will give me 18 extra hours a week and will fill my schedule so that I work from Monday all the way through Friday.Anyway, back to Wednesday! OH Wednesday! How I despised thee! After leaving Nanterre, I went to my future neighborhood to deal with the people at my current (unfortunately) bank. I had gone to the bank the day before (Tuesday) upon request that I arrive to sign the insurance papers for my housing insurance. Little did I know that they were the same papers I had signed last Saturday! In other words, I was called in for nothing! Oh well, I went ahead and took advantage of Tuesday by making sure that my account had been transferred (it hadn’t!) and by asking them if I could make a withdraw to pay my rent without fees even though the account hadn’t been transferred. I was told to go ahead, but when arriving at the teller, I saw that it had been closed early (FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER!). This meant that I needed to return for WEDNESDAY’s incidents!
When I got to the bank on Wednesday to make the withdraw, the teller told me that I would need to take out a cashier’s check instead. He spoke with the woman in charge of my account (Mme Medjaouri) and she needed me to come back in an hour. Whatever! I obliged! An hour later I returned and sat down at Mme Medjaouri’s desk to take out a cashier’s check. She then noticed in my notebook that I had the bank account information of my landlord and recommended that we do a direct transfer instead. Unfortunately my account had still not been transferred from Caen, so Caen had to do the transfer and send a fax to confirm. Mme Medjaouri told me that she would make sure that this happened within the day and that she would call me when the fax arrived. I then left the bank again and wondered around Paris for three hours before deciding that she wasn’t going to call and that I had better return to make her do her job. When I arrived, sure enough, she had not contacted Caen to make sure that things were being expedited. A bit frustrated for some reason or another, Mme Medjaouri made the call to Caen and griped them out. She then hung up and gave me attitude. I thus informed her that I was sorry to bother her, but that I was getting a bit cold waiting on her outside. To that she responded, “You should have gone home!” to which I responded, “I am currently living with someone who lives very far from here and was afraid that if I go back, you would call me and I would simply have to turn back around. She then felt very bad and politely asked me to wait in the lobby while Caen sent the fax.
As I sat in the lobby, all I could think about was how much I didn’t want to be in the lobby and how much I really just wanted to go home to the United States. I was SICK AND TIRED of this horribly run administration! How on earth do they operate on a daily basis without…
CRASH!
What was that? Did someone drop something?
screaming…yelling…panicking…
“CLOSE THE BANK!” one woman yells.
Another woman then instructs me to get up and go up stairs immediately. I’m a bit confused, but soon understand as I see the street just outside windows is filled with smoke. When I arrive upstairs, I find myself hiding on the floor next to Mme Medjaouri. Another woman is crying and explaining that she saw the car just before it crashed into the bank. We are then instructed to go to the basement. We are then instructed to go into a small court yard. We are then informed by one of the bank directors that if we (clients) suffer from any post traumatic stress, the bank will be more than willing to pay for our treatment. HOW ABOUT YOU JUST GIVE ME A FAX AND MY DAMNED DEBIT CARD!
It seems that just as I was waiting for the bank to get their butts in gear, four individuals pushed a car into the ATM machines in order to break them open and steal the money. Realizing that they weren’t successful, they tried to break into the teller’s room and take the cash behind the counter. They were again not successful and all four escaped on scooters. HAPPY WEDNESDAY COLE!
Nobody was hurt in this incident, but I did become closer friends with the people at the bank as I went back today (Friday) to discover that my account was finally transferred! I still don’t have a debit card, but maybe a semi will try to break into the ATM machines soon and get the idiots at LCL to move even quicker! I won’t hold my breath!
Follow the link to see a video of the car on fire outside of the bank: http://www.leparisien.fr/paris-75/encore-une-banque-braquee-a-la-voiture-belier-a-paris-15-10-2009-674993.php
