Every time I enter a UK bank...

...I die a little on the inside. No but seriously, i do; I think by now I've probably had a good 6 months taken off my life by the tragically inept UK banking system. Not that the American banking system is flawless; au contraire, mes amis: I have in fact spent hours on the phone (using my precious international minutes) with my American bank, trying to get them to unlock the secret to transferring money between countries, to no avail (turns out there IS no secret- it simply can't be done. Thanks, TD Banknorth!). But the thing about my American bank is that it's hit-or-miss; sometimes I get hung up on by rude managers who don't know what the eff they're talking about, but SOMETIMES they are lovely and do lovely things for me like drawing up complicated visa letters without complaining. With my UK bank, however, I *always* know what to expect: lovely, polite ineptitude. They are NEVER rude, and would probably rather die than hang up on me, but dear GOD no one knows what is going on with my account. Today I made my third attempt in setting up a direct debit to pay my rent. Third time's the charm, right? WRONG. Basically, the first time had failed because I had filled out my OWN direct debit form, not the special bank form; the second time had failed because (unbeknownst to me, maybe because I never open my mail) evidently the signature on my direct debit form (the *special bank* form, thank you very much) didn't match the signature they had on file for my account. [Sidenote: when I went in to correct this, it turns out what they consider 'not matching' means there was a tiiiiiny little loop missing from one of my J's. REALLY??] So, when I had corrected this massive signature discrepancy, I assumed we were all set, right? WRONG. The lovely, polite bankeress informed me that she was putting some notes on my account requesting that the direct debit be re-authorized to begin in December, but she couldn't guarantee anything. AKA, good luck with this but you're probably going to have to come back in December with another, brand-new BANK-APPROVED form in order for your direct debit to ACTUALLY work.

Then it was on to the deposit side of things; I had (finally) received my security deposit check from my apartment in Boston and was excited to (finally) have some money to deposit into my UK account (because in case you were wondering, I still haven't received my funding... *sparklessss*!), but uh-oh! The check is an *American* check, which means it's in *American* dollars. Well, good thing they're a bank, right? I mean, surely they have the capabilities RIGHT THERE to convert dollars into pounds according to the current exchange rate, right?? WRONG. (Clearly, I was wrong about a LOT of things today. How unusual and disconcerting.) Turns out, it's actually going to take 4 to 6 business weeks (What the hell does that mean? Do the weekends not count as part of the week??) to process the check, convert it into pounds, and get the money into my account. (I would've offered to do the conversion myself, in my head, right then and there, but good old Martin the HSBC Teller didn't look like the type that would've found this amusing.)

Well, whew. Good thing I didn't have anything else to do today, like research for the 4,000-word advocacy case study that's looming over my head, or reading for tomorrow's debate in which apparently I'm representing UNICEF (I thought the military loved them some acronyms but they've got NOTHING on the NGO sector...). And the *truly* exciting thing is, I get to go back to my bank tomorrow to try and MANUALLY transfer my rent money since clearly direct debit is proving to be a wee bit too tricky for my university-educated self. Good thing drinking before 5 pm is acceptable here, because my bank closes at 4:30 and from now on I'm making sure I have a few alcoholic beverages in me before setting foot in that place. :)