Let that be, a lesson to you
Everybody meets their Waterloo
You’re never too big to end up behind the 8 ball
When one is privileged with being something of a world traveler one learns to take certain precautions in stride. Exotic locales often come with equally exotic problems. In certain areas of the world I leave behind all my jewelry (including the pieces I pretty much sleep wearing), and all of my cash, in my cabin onboard, and go shore side with only a mostly empty purse, my ID, and my bank cards. Doing otherwise is just asking for trouble. It doesn’t matter if you can’t bear to be without your Rolex, it’s not worth your wrist.
So, I don’t carry cash in port. This serves the purpose of making me slightly less of a target for mischief, and also helps a lot with my budget as you don’t spend as much when you’re not actually carrying money. When I see something I want, I go to the nearest bank and withdraw exactly what I need in local currency to purchase that item. It’s a system that’s worked very well for about a year now.
Long story as short as I can make it: The shuttle today dropped us off at a relatively high end mall. I did some window shopping and found a few items that I figured were a good enough deal to go for it, so I trotted across the mall (literally across the hallway from the store I was shopping in) and waited patiently in line for the ATM at the bank. Just as I stepped up to it and slipped my card into to the slot and proceeded to start to read the screen (because at first it looked as though the person prior to me had not finished their transaction), a man came up behind me, shoved his arm past my shoulder and said “no, you have to do it this way” and proceeded to push so many buttons so quickly that I a) couldn’t stop him and b) couldn’t really react at all.
Almost instantly the machine seized up.
Great, I thought, first some damn moron thinks I don’t know how to work an ATM, and then the ATM swallows my card.
So, with this guy still yammering in my ear and still trying to push buttons despite the fact that I keep shoving him out of the way (and this was a big guy, some part of me was afraid of him), I tried re-entering my information (this is what comes of someone creating the perfect combination of confusion, aggression and authority, I know better than to re-enter my information at someone else’s urging, but I did it! And god knows why! I’ve been asking myself why ever since.) No go, machine won’t spit out my card. I never doubted that the machine had eaten my card, after all I had put it in the slot and hadn’t seen it come out again, so what other explanation was there? A royal pain in the ass, but not worth making expensive phone calls about, because after all, if a card is stuck in the machine, you just get it back.
So I go to the bank manager and report that my card has been retained and that I really need it back because I’m a long way from home etc etc. She tells me that the people who have the keys to access and open the back of the ATM and retrieve the cards are on rounds and won’t be at the branch until 5, that’s too late for me. I am rather going into a panic here, so she – because she really was a very very nice person (and I will swear on a stack of bibles she had nothing to do with what happened) – makes a lot of phone calls, pulls a lot of strings and breaks a few rules to get someone in who can open the machine within two hours. However, when the fellow in question opens the machine? No card.
No sign of a card anywhere.
Bloody hell.
It’s then that my mind starts ticking over, not being caught in the panic of having someone talking at me and shoving me around and purposely freaking me out I realize that that guy who kept getting in my way also skillfully managed to get me to re-enter my information at least four times within his eye line, and while I was focusing on trying to shield the keypad and trying to avoid him, it would have been easy to snatch the card when it was rejected from the slot with his free hand without my even noticing it. Magician’s trick – keep the audience focused elsewhere.
As soon as I realized what had actually happened, I pulled out my cellphone and called my bank’s emergency line.
When was the last time you used your card miss?
Three weeks ago in Australia.
Right, we have four transactions on your card in the last three hours. Whoever it was has hit your daily limit. Be grateful you *have* a daily limit.
Instantly they locked the card down of course, all he’s got now is a useless piece of plastic. The bank assures me that I can get all my money back, and was extremely sympathetic for what had happened. It makes you feel oddly violated, being “robbed” (I use that word because I can’t think of what really to call it, it wasn’t pickpocketing, it wasn’t scamming, but I wasn’t hurt or really attacked, so it wasn’t mugging…) – and I’m still a little unsettled by it. Of course I’m also without a bank card with all that that implies, which is no fun either. Thankfully I have amazing parents who are able to take care of everything until it all gets sorted.
I have been told since that this is an extremely common occurrence in South Africa, that it even happens to locals (who are more aggressive themselves and automatically take precautions simply because that’s the world they live in) – and that it was actually covered by our amazing travel guide on board in her lectures to the passengers – thing is, I’m always working during her talks and I’m usually too tired at night to watch the reruns on the ship channel. If I had thought to ask her before hand….but I didn’t and there’s nothing to be done about it.
This was…not the best start to the month.
Are we sure Mercury isn’t in retrograde?