It's All About The Benjamin's, Baby

That needs to be the title of a movie. Perhaps a documentary. Something to show that when you have money or when people think you have money, you are treated differently. We have recently encountered this on a couple of occasions.

While our income hovers near the poverty radar, we have been able to make some investments. One of those businesses, a bank, in which we opened up a new account, actually called us to thank us for our business, asked if there was anything they could do to help us (uh, double the interest rate??).

I've had bank accounts since I was 16. Not once has any bank phoned to thank me. For anything. As I told Mr. Nina, it has to be because of the dollar amount.

We also signed up for one of those big box store accounts. God knows why. You don't save that much and shopping inside of these places, no matter what time of the day or night it is, is a bit of a neurotransmitter overloader. But whatever, we opted to go for the higher end membership. On our first visit, we were overcharged and didn't notice it until we arrived home. When I called to inform them of their error, I was told the store's policy for such a situation is for the customer to return whereby you are given cash. When I explained the inconvenience, not to mention the gas of driving 30 plus miles to do just that, I asked if they could just mail a check. I was told "Nope. That is not store policy. We are unable to do that."

However, when I mentioned the kind of membership we had, I was passed off to a supervisor who asked for our address and said the check would be in the mail. (And yes, it really did arrive.)

As I told Mr. Nina, "only a million more to go before we will be treated like royalty". Throw in some star status privy to the Oprah's of the world and "we will be given anything we want."

Pretty damn sad.