Last week, for a few seconds, I wished I were named Aloywichius Phofhenzoller Llanfairpwllgwyngyll. You would have felt the same.
Let me back up. Do you check your bank accounts frequently to look for suspicious activity? Good. But don't do it in a coffeehouse, we're told. That harmless hipster tapping away at his laptop with a $4 cup of hot whipped soy might use the unsecure Wi-Fi to get your passwords and empty your accounts.
Joke's on him, you say: I don't have a savings account. I used to, back when they paid 3% interest, but now you get 0.001%, because the banks had an epiphany: "If we don't give them interest, they'll still give us their money? What were we thinking all those years?"
Anyway, I was checking my accounts when I spotted something unusual: a large payment on a credit card we do not have.
Step one: Call the bank. The automated menu reminded me that the only Spanish phrase I know is "to continue in Spanish, press cero," and I wonder if that will ever come in handy. I'd never ask anyone to continue in Spanish, because I wouldn't understand what they said.
Anyway, I eventually got a nice guy somewhere in the world who was very unhappy to hear that a bad thing had happened and expressed his boundless desire to assist in any way he could.
Does that include flying to the city where the crime occurred and personally supervising the SEAL team that would extract the villain and deliver him to my doorstep trussed up in a burlap bag? Ah, no point in asking. So I described my problem, and he said he would cancel the transaction and begin an investigation. I had an image of men in dark suits snapping awake in a bunkhouse, grabbing their briefcases and sliding down poles to a room full of desks and phones.
"I'm going to give you a customer number," he said.
