Change you can't believe in

I moved to D.C. the day after graduation. This jar is one of the many things on my to-do list that remained undone. It's silly to haul 10 lbs. of spare change across the country in a moving truck, but today something even more ridiculous happened. I'm finally short enough on cash to take this heavy haul to the bank; now I'm back from the bank but I still have the jar of change. Is it because I like to carry heavy bags around town? Is it because I hate my back and I'm deliberately trying to break it? No. I still have the money because the bank refused to take it.

Apparently the bank of America won't cash in spare change for their customers unless it's in rolls. The teller apologized and offered me some empty rolls to fill in my spare time and bring them back. She also gave me the other option of having it sent somewhere off-site to be counted for a $5 charge. Maybe it's just the branch near my apartment (3 excruciating blocks away) or maybe Bank of America is just too big to deal with spare change. The question is, what do I do with it now? Use it to buy groceries? Sell it on eBay?

I've never been to a bank that didn't have a machine on-site to count change. Usually it's free for customers and a couple of bucks for everyone else. I pondered this as I walked home (between whimpers of "Ouch - my back!") Is this just a Midwestern thing? How presumptuous of me to bring money into my bank and expect them to just put it in my account.

I have been told I have two left feet...

I can't blog for very long tonight, I have a boy coming over. Seriously. What? You don't believe me? Okay, fine - he's not actually coming up to my apartment, he's just going to pull up in front of the building and bring me a shoe. No kidding.

Shoes have become very important in my life. A lady at work told me, "You are the walkingest girl I ever met!" (or maybe she meant I was the "Walken"-est. Marsupials scare me.) I do love to walk and I do a lot of it out here, but I didn't realized how ill-prepared I was for the amount of walking I do. I can't wear tennis shoes or flip-flops to work, so I can point to a corresponding bruise, blister, or scar on my feet for each pair of dress shoes that I own. Yesterday I went to a mall in Arlington and bought a comfortable pair of sandals. When I put them on this morning I was rushing around getting ready for work half asleep and I put the shoe on the wrong foot. Then I switched them and I still had a shoe on the wrong foot. What the hell? Upon closer examination, I realized... I had two shoes for the same foot.

How does that happen? Can anything be un-complicated? Can I just go to a friggin' shoe store without it turning into an adventure?? Apparently the answer is no.

So I was really annoyed b/c I already spend $4.00 a day to ride the Metro to work and back, it would cost a couple extra dollars to go back to Arlington and exchange the shoe. I called the shoe store and explained, waited for the guy to finish laughing, and he told me to bring it in, no problem. Clearly there was no other way to make the exchange - it would be a bigger debacle to try and ship the shoes or something like that. It would be in their best interest to accommodate me - as long as I have two left shoes, they've got two right shoes they're not able to sell. I didn't get too bitchy about it, but I did make it clear that I was not happy about having to go all the way back & I wasn't sure when I'd have time to do it.

He said: Okay wait, let me talk to my manager. [whisper-whisper-whisper] Uh, okay. My manager says he'll bring the shoe to you if you give us the address.

So yes, I do have a boy coming over. His name is George, he manages a shoe store, and I told him parking would be a problem at my building so I'll meet him out front.

"Okay. I'll be in a Camry."

"Great. I'll be... the girl carrying the sandal."

And there you have it. A really bizarre turn of events and all I wanted was some comfortable shoes. I'm pretty happy about the service. Today at work we were discussing how to exceed peoples' expectations. It's pretty rare when someone you do business with goes out of their way to accommodate you, but when it does happen - they never forget. I definitely never expected that I would do a shoe exchange right in front of my apartment.

Before

After