When it rains, it pours...

I am about ready to tear my hair out.

This morning, the train kept stopping about halfway between each station, for several minutes... for no apparent reason. Result, I was 10 minutes late getting into downtown.

I went to get a breakfast sandwich (bagel with egg, bacon and cheese... and yes, I'm still working on the whole reducing meat intake thingie) and orange juice, and paid with my bank card, because I never have cash on me, which I know is a bad habit, because, hello, additional usage fees! The machine first tells me my chip is broken (which also happened to jpwic during our vacation), and to please swipe the magnetic stripe. So I try that, it then tells me my card usage has been restricted, which means "Hey, dude, you have a chip on your card, why the hell are you swiping the magnetic stripe thing? USE YOUR CHIP!" Fortunately, the second try on the chip worked, but then, that means I need a new card ASAP.

Now, that seems like an easy enough problem to solve. Not really, in my case.

My financial institution happens to be a co-op rather than a bank. And, because they're a co-op, and not a bank, they use the excuse that they are different from banks to not offer basic services... like the ability to go to ANY branch to have a new card issued. So, I either have to go to my branch, which is about 2 hours away by road, or to have it delivered to me. My branch refuses to use internal courrier to send to a head office, and will only ship through regular mail, to my home address.

Little hiccup on the regular mail thing... Canada Post is on full-on strike for the Gods only know how long.

*headdesk*

In the meantime, I can always keep going to ATMs to take out money, since they read only the magnetic stripe. And I can still pay my bills online, which I couldn't do, if I had a new card issued. So I'm sitting on it for now.

Changes

The person who was doing data entry for cruises has gotten a job for the provincial government and is leaving us at the end of the month.

W00t! for her.

That means, since I was fresh off 8 years of working in cruise reservations when I was moved to this department, I am getting the product assigned to my tasks. Officially. There are things I am totally clueless about, including groups that were open for sales in regular reservations, since I never touched those files as they were implemented after I moved departments, but I still essentially know exactly what they need in order to be able to do their job, in reservations, and I think I'm going to be efficient at the job. (And a lot of it is copy and paste from other ships within the same cruise companies, so, yeah, mostly child's play.)

I have secrets of my own, because I am also prepping my resume for other things, because I believe it's healthy, psychologically, to not get oneself stuck in a box with no way out, and look at what can be offered to me, job-wise. I felt stuck for years, in reservations, due to my home circumstance of living alone and needing the little bit of stability a steady job gave me, and, now, not so much. I'll even give up my seniority and extra vacation weeks, if the salary and work conditions are good enough to compensate.