Brownies and Banks

In keeping with the plan, Keating and I made brownies last night to celebrate being given 3 months of pay. (Apparently, I'm so cool that they decided I started work in December even though my visa wasn't even approved until Dec 3 and I didn't arrive in Mexico until Dec 14, only to find out that everyone was already on Christmas Vacation.) We were a little nervous about how the brownies were going to come out since the box specifically told us to not use the only size of oven-safe dish we own for the high altitude version. Fortunately, the good people at Hershey's Brownie Mix are sissies and our brownies came out great!

That left me with one challenge left in the paycheck saga: how to actually get my bank to accept my cheque. From a cynical American perspective, this seems easy enough -- I mean, don't banks want our money??? It turns out, I was wrong. It took me three banks before they would accept my paychecks, and by bank 2 I was getting nervous that maybe my brownies were a little preemptive.

The first bank, which I visited yesterday, wouldn't accept my money because they won't deposit cheques from other banks after 3 pm. It was 3:05 pm. Argh! My boss was along for this since he said that particular bank, located inside of the university megastore (the school owns its own Walmart-equivalent), wasn't terribly safe. Disconcertingly, one of me boss' friends (an adult man) was apparently mugged in the parking lot in broad daylight. Despite the current travel warnings to Mexico, this sort of thing is still considered absurd. My boss did his best to convince the guy behind the counter to take my money, but was told that the computer is actually set to prevent him from doing this after 3.

The second bank branch, visited this morning, asked me to hang out while they figured out why their computers weren't working. Admittedly, that should have been my sign to flee. One woman there was kind enough to tell me that there was another branch only 3 stoplights up the road, but I have been in Mexico long enough to know that walking that apparently short distance would be a bad idea. First, Mexicans all seem to lie about distances when giving directions. "One block" in Mexican is the equivalent to "maybe a mile?" in English. In addition, she specifically said "stoplights" and not "blocks," and I can only imagine what that distance conversion is. Finally, she grimaced when she said how far it was, further convincing me that the bank branch in question might very well be located in Texas. I sat there for about an hour being told that it would only be a couple of seconds longer. When the computers were finally deemed to be functional again, the woman behind the counter told me that she couldn't deposit my cheques because I had only brought my bank card with me and she needed to know my account number which only exists on the paperwork that the bank gave me when I first opened the account and is now locked safely away with my other documents I'm hoping not to lose. Oddly, I have not memorized this number. Adding to the frustration, Bank Branch 1 had explicitly told me at 3:05 yesterday that all I needed was my bank card.

In the end, I wound up back at Branch 1. My boss figured that I'd be safe if I went before noon, since the local criminal element apparently likes to sleep in. I waited in line for close to forever (20-30 minutes, which they made more pleasant by making sure it was at least 90 degrees there), but they finally took my money. I get to keep my brownies after all.

My next step? Figure out what I have to do to set up direct deposit. There's no way I'm doing this every month.