Citibank

Falls Park, Sioux Falls, South Dakota

I've been going round and round with Citibank about a missing credit card statement. I only noticed it was missing when they turned off the card ( again!). I tried calling them to tell them I hadn't gotten a statement and would they send me another one, but they wanted to me to play their version of 20 questions, and I have no patience for that shit. Why do they need to verify that I am who I say I am? I don't want any information, I just want them to send me my statement. Their inability to fulfill this simple request is emblematic of what is wrong with America. This is why Trump won the election. People are tired of all the unnecessary bullshit that has been creeping into our lives for the last umpteen years. Okay, maybe you aren't, but I am.

So I wrote them a letter. It's an easy thing to do once you have all the pieces in place. They eventually sent me a statement, but it was the wrong one. We are now on our fourth go round, and they still haven't gotten it right.

Now I'm wondering why Citibank is having such a hard time with something that should never have been a problem in the first place*, and I'm thinking it's people problem. Could it be that the people in charge of answering letters are so overworked that they are not really paying attention to what they are doing? Or maybe they hate their manager and hate their job or they just don't care. As long as they send something back, they are doing their job and no one can fault them for sending the wrong thing. I can hear their excuses from 1500 miles away: 'I sent the right thing, the customer is an idiot.' 

What does this credit-card service center / hell hole looks like. I start with Citibank headquarters in New York City, but then I snap and realize my correspondence is with their outpost in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and what we've got there is a bunch of big box warehouse like structures that look like big box warehouses you find anywhere. But then I stumble across some pictures of Falls Park, which looks like a pretty cool place (especially in winter).

St. Louis Gateway Arch

I address my latest missive and I realize that the credit card service center is in St. Louis, Missouri. So where did I get the idea that it was in Sioux Falls? Oh, I have two different Citibank cards, one straight from Citibank and one from Costco. The Costco service center is in St. Louis, the other is in Sioux Falls.

*which reminds me of the old saw that a problem that shouldn't be a problem can't be fixed.

P.S. How was it that Citibank established a service center in South Dakota of all places? The Sioux Falls Argus has the story, as does Marketplace. Almost restores your faith in the financial establishment. Not.

Iowa

My wife and I got home Saturday night after ten days and 3600 miles on the road. We drove to Sioux City, Iowa to visit her father at the Holy Spirit retirement center. Usually when she goes, she flies, but this time she thought she might want to bring some stuff back, so we took her car, a 2006 Mitsubishi Endeavor.

Decker Truck on the way to Iowa.

   On the way there, not far out of Portland, I spotted a semi-truck from the Decker Trucking Company in Fort Dodge, Iowa. Fort Dodge is only about 20 miles from Rockwell City, my wife's home town. We used to fly into the small airport there. So right off the bat we know we're on the right road. We saw the same truck several times over the next couple of days. I'm pretty sure it was the same truck. We saw another one on the trip home. This one had a shinier trailer, and once again we saw it several times over the three days it took it us to get home.
    Eastern Washington is the most desolate looking place on Earth. Nothing but dry, brown scrub as far the eye can see. Once we got to Idaho things turned green. It was nice. Not much to see but grass and cows, but at least the grass was green. Much more pleasant than Eastern Washington.

Harleys parked in front of the Holiday Inn in Sioux City

    We got to Sioux City on Saturday evening, a week ago. There is major road construction going on downtown, so getting to the hotel required some wandering around. Just when we think we've got things sorted out we find our way blocked by the biggest gang of bikers you ever saw. News reports put the total at 25,000. I know we saw thousands of motorcycles parked in the street. Getting to the hotel required more deviations. Sioux City isn't that big, downtown is maybe ten blocks square, and our hotel and the biker party were both there. These weren't your regular bikers, they had filled the hotels. There were probably a hundred Harley's parked at the Holiday Inn where we were staying.

Sioux City, the morning after

    After the big biker brawl in Waco (Warning: CNN takes forever and a day to load, not as bad as some others) earlier this year, and seeing that Iowa does not require helmets, I was expecting a blood bath. I got up early the next morning to look for evidence, but the street cleaners beat me to it. All the evidence had been washed away.
    Rockwell City is still hanging on. Grandpa was selling his cars to the local dealer, so we paid him a visit to take care of business. I was surprised to see that he had a lot full of new cars for sale. There must have been a hundred, this in a town of maybe 1500 souls. He seems to be doing okay. Matter of fact, the whole area seems to be doing okay. I suspect things have consolidated some and now there is enough business to support the reduced population.

    We covered 3600 miles, burned 140 gallons of gas, which works out to about 25 miles per gallon, which is pretty durn good considering we were cruising at 80 MPH for most of the way. South Dakota had the highest speed limit at 80 MPH. Normally I set the cruise control to 10 MPH over the limit, but 90 was a little unsettling. The car handled it fine, but there was something in the back of my brain telling me we were in dangerous territory. There wasn't much traffic, but there were still occasional incidents of people not paying strict attention. Besides, the little computer display claimed our mileage had dropped to 15 MPG, the lowest I had ever seen it.
    The trip cost a little over two grand, hotels were almost half of that. We ate in 'nice' restaurants mostly, so our food (and beverage) bill was a little more than the gasoline. Premium gas (required by our high performance utility vehicle) averaged $3.29 a gallon, but we saw places where it was only $2.65. We only ran into one place that did not have premium, but there was another station a mile up the freeway that did, so it wasn't a problem.
     We saw a lot of Minervas. We ate at the one in Rapid City twice, and also at the one in Sioux Falls.

Holiday Inn Sioux City Iowa

Portable HD Video & Audio Recorder

About half way from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to Sioux City, Iowa, a distance of about 80 miles, we stopped for gas. As we are leaving the gas station I decide to stop and make sure I got the gas cap back on. We left my wife's favorite pillow at the hotel in Rapid City, South Dakota, this morning, and I don't want to make another stupid mistake.
    The gas cap is in place, but as I walk back to the driver's door, I notice the rear passenger window is open. What's going on? Did I push the button by mistake? No, the mechanism is broken. Pushing the button has no effect. I can slide the window closed and it stays that way until we hit the first bump on the highway. Now it is open again, and at 80 MPH the wind noise is deafening. My wife crawls in the back seat and holds the window closed until we get to Sioux City. We go directly to the Walgreens across the street from the Holiday Inn and buy a roll of duct tape and tape the window closed.
     Later on that evening we go back to Walgreens to get some essential supplies and I notice this video recorder for sale for $40. When I bought my first video cam-corder 25 years ago it cost $1600 and it stored the video on a VHS tape, which has what? A quarter of the lines of resolution that an HD video has? It won't be too long before they are giving them away in Cracker Jack boxes.

Fat Man Lifts Car

Me and the lever demo, Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Pull the rope down 3 feet and the car goes up a few inches.

Movies

I saw Public Enemies the other night and Inglorious Basterds a couple of weeks ago. Both movies had a big impact on me, but I wasn't quite sure just what kind of impact it was. They were gripping tales, that was for sure, but they weren't happy movies, it wasn't a grand adventure. There was a constant undercurrent of lethal tension. Were they good movies? Did I enjoy them? Those are a little harder to answer. Were they good? Well, they were well made, they told their story very well. Did I enjoy them? I'm not so sure, but I think I have finally figured out what the effect these movies had: they were so full of information it was like getting hit with a hundred pound sack of mail.

Every scene in Public Enemies opened a new can of worms. Oh, once upon a time J. Edgar Hoover was a young man. Once upon a time there was no FBI. In the beginning there was political wrangling over funding the FBI. In one shot during a bank robbery there was a placard for the FDIC displayed at a teller's booth. The mob had armorers. Baby Face Nelson was a lunatic. Don't ever try to rob a bank in Sioux Falls. There is the hostage standing on the running board and hanging onto the side of the car during a get away and there is a gangster letting fly with his Tommy gun six inches from his ear. He doesn't flinch. He must be deaf by now or so stunned by events that he doesn't even notice. Al Capone maybe gone (or maybe he hasn't come on the scene yet), but Frank Nitti is running a big operation. I wonder who takes in more money? The Governement or the mob?

Update: I was talking to Ross about this and his take was that there was no "edge" to Public Enemies, no engaging story line. He also thought Inglorious Basterds was funny. There were funny bits, but the overall story was pretty frickin' grim.

Reminds me of Burn After Reading and War of the Roses by Danny DeVito. Supposedly comedies, maybe? But actually pretty grim little stories. Give me a fantasy adventure like Indiana Jones anyday.