Yesterday during lunch was kind of weird. I
went to the main food court in the skywalk system with the full intention of
going to Subway. I go to Subway often
for lunch. They are one of the healthiest options available.
There's a high end deli and a Panera Bread available to me as well in
other parts of the skywalk system, but for some reason I don't frequent them
very often. The food court is up on level 3, a level above the skywalk.
To get there you take an escalator.
I think everyone gets admonished by our parents to be very careful when you get on and off an escalator. It is ingrained over many years of childhood that escalators are dangerous. Of course, it does look dangerous, too. Those metal teeth and slots at the end precisely mesh with the incoming stair's opposing metal teeth and slots. It looks like it could eat you alive if you were that small.
Okay, we've established that escalators at least have the appearance of being dangerous. So, we alter our gait right before we get on and off just enough that we notice. We might even call it our Escalator Gait. The next time you are just people watching, pay attention to their approach to the start. If you see people elongating their stride (usually) on that first step on, congratulations, you have identified the Escalator Gait.
Yesterday, the escalator was broken.
A broken escalator is no big deal. When it is broken, it just turns into a set of stairs. You're expecting to be propelled forward when you take that first step. The problem is that we all just automatically switch to Escalator Gait because of the thousands of times we have ridden one. So it feels weird. Not just on the first step, but the whole way up. It feels like you are doing a 2-steps-forward-1-step-back kind of thing just because there is some give in each of the steps when it isn't moving.
Enough about the escalators. I get to the top and see that the line for Subway is a mile long. They have had some employee turnover recently and one of the new girls slows the assembly line process down to a crawl. Hopefully they address this soon. It didn't use to take so long to get through even a long line.
By the way - my standard Subway order in case you are really inquisitive: a foot long Spicy Italian on wheat bread, not toasted, with pepper jack cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, green peppers, red onions, and vinegar.
Around this time I check my wallet. I usually like to pay cash for my lunch. Aww, dang it! Only two dollars. Okay, I’ll go back down the stairs to the ATM. So I get to the ATM. I stick in the card, go through the transaction steps, wait for my money, and get a message saying that my transaction cannot be processed. Maybe I entered something in wrong, so I'll try it again. Same result. Aww, crap!
Going through my mind were visions of the IRS or the Secret Service coming to my apartment and ransacking the place. I was going to be under the suspicion of wire fraud or money laundering or something. You see, I am in the middle of changing the bank I use. I'm tired of not having a local bank. I still use the same one I used when I lived in Omaha. Every time I want to make a deposit I have to send a letter and wait a couple of days for it to be processed. I also get no interest. So, I opened a local account a few weeks ago. They even give me 1% interest - really hard to find even 0.5% nowadays. I had asked for an electronic transfer last week. Most of the money in my Omaha account was going to move into the Des Moines account. I think I may have set off some sort of fraud alert trigger in Omaha. Maybe it was because I was sending a large percentage of my money to an account that had been recently opened. It shouldn't have been the actual dollar amount. That is certainly nothing to brag about.
Anyway, I got an email about it a couple days ago from the Omaha bank. They were concerned that it wasn't legitimate and had held up the transfer. I called the number I was directed to, but no one picked up. I left a voicemail with enough identifying details that they could tell I was the real account holder and that the transfer was legitimate. Apparently it worked because the transfer finally went through last night.
At the ATM, these visions of being locked up, not being taken seriously though, quickly went away when I took a look at my ATM card. I was looking for the phone number to call when I saw the expiration date on the card. 1/31/13. Ahhh, that's why. It was just an expired card. All these troubles will get cleared away as soon as I get my new card from the new bank.
I think everyone gets admonished by our parents to be very careful when you get on and off an escalator. It is ingrained over many years of childhood that escalators are dangerous. Of course, it does look dangerous, too. Those metal teeth and slots at the end precisely mesh with the incoming stair's opposing metal teeth and slots. It looks like it could eat you alive if you were that small.
Okay, we've established that escalators at least have the appearance of being dangerous. So, we alter our gait right before we get on and off just enough that we notice. We might even call it our Escalator Gait. The next time you are just people watching, pay attention to their approach to the start. If you see people elongating their stride (usually) on that first step on, congratulations, you have identified the Escalator Gait.
Yesterday, the escalator was broken.
A broken escalator is no big deal. When it is broken, it just turns into a set of stairs. You're expecting to be propelled forward when you take that first step. The problem is that we all just automatically switch to Escalator Gait because of the thousands of times we have ridden one. So it feels weird. Not just on the first step, but the whole way up. It feels like you are doing a 2-steps-forward-1-step-back kind of thing just because there is some give in each of the steps when it isn't moving.
Enough about the escalators. I get to the top and see that the line for Subway is a mile long. They have had some employee turnover recently and one of the new girls slows the assembly line process down to a crawl. Hopefully they address this soon. It didn't use to take so long to get through even a long line.
By the way - my standard Subway order in case you are really inquisitive: a foot long Spicy Italian on wheat bread, not toasted, with pepper jack cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, green peppers, red onions, and vinegar.
Around this time I check my wallet. I usually like to pay cash for my lunch. Aww, dang it! Only two dollars. Okay, I’ll go back down the stairs to the ATM. So I get to the ATM. I stick in the card, go through the transaction steps, wait for my money, and get a message saying that my transaction cannot be processed. Maybe I entered something in wrong, so I'll try it again. Same result. Aww, crap!
Going through my mind were visions of the IRS or the Secret Service coming to my apartment and ransacking the place. I was going to be under the suspicion of wire fraud or money laundering or something. You see, I am in the middle of changing the bank I use. I'm tired of not having a local bank. I still use the same one I used when I lived in Omaha. Every time I want to make a deposit I have to send a letter and wait a couple of days for it to be processed. I also get no interest. So, I opened a local account a few weeks ago. They even give me 1% interest - really hard to find even 0.5% nowadays. I had asked for an electronic transfer last week. Most of the money in my Omaha account was going to move into the Des Moines account. I think I may have set off some sort of fraud alert trigger in Omaha. Maybe it was because I was sending a large percentage of my money to an account that had been recently opened. It shouldn't have been the actual dollar amount. That is certainly nothing to brag about.
Anyway, I got an email about it a couple days ago from the Omaha bank. They were concerned that it wasn't legitimate and had held up the transfer. I called the number I was directed to, but no one picked up. I left a voicemail with enough identifying details that they could tell I was the real account holder and that the transfer was legitimate. Apparently it worked because the transfer finally went through last night.
At the ATM, these visions of being locked up, not being taken seriously though, quickly went away when I took a look at my ATM card. I was looking for the phone number to call when I saw the expiration date on the card. 1/31/13. Ahhh, that's why. It was just an expired card. All these troubles will get cleared away as soon as I get my new card from the new bank.
So, all of that is why my lunch yesterday was
weird.
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