Blood from a stone, all for naught
I didn't think it was possible to get a bank to actually give out money. Let's face it: banks are in the business of raping their customers, and this is hugely profitable for them. Like the mega hotels along Las Vegas Boulevard, the towering glass monoliths along Bay street were built by robbing people of their hard-earned cash. Getting free money out of a bank is like getting blood from a stone, money from a slot machine, or personal information out of Tom.
Yet yesterday I managed to do the impossible. I heard a rumour that RBC pays a $100 reward to professional students if they refer another professional student for a line of credit. Since the average line of credit debt of a medical student is well over $100,000, $100 is really nothing to them if they can get their hands on such juicy debt. I had already signed up for a line of credit with RBC, but I found a classmate who had signed up before me who was willing to throw me $50 if I got him the $100 referral bonus. (By the way, he did actually refer me to RBC). One email to my personal account manager (which is apparently some sort of privilege - most people have to deal with personal financial services representatives - suckas) later and $100 appeared in my classmate's account. Yesterday he gave me $50 after class.
I had enough time to buy a $3 spicy Italian sausage from a street vendor before I had to go play a game of squash (which I lost - I'm moving down the ladder quickly but that's another story). Alas, the spicy Italian dog would turn out be the only reward I would get from RBC. While I was playing Squash, some ignoramus stole my wallet right out of my locked locker at the Hart House gym. There was no sign of any tampering. In fact the culprit had taken the time to re-lock my locker after he'd lifted my wallet. I know you're all thinking that based on my record, I probably left my wallet somewhere. You may think I had left it on the bench beneath the locker, or on the street beside the hot dog stand, or anywhere. But this time it was different. I knew I had put my wallet on the top shelf of the locker along with my phone and keys. I had a clear image of it there.
It turns out that my experience is a common occurrence at Hart House. Apparently people lose their wallets, and nothing else, all the time. I wish they would have warned me. The thief takes advantage of their system. When you enter the locker room, they give you a combination lock that comes attached to a card with the combination written on it. According to the staff, the guy watches from a distance and memorizes the combination if you make the mistake of leaving it in view. I must have put the lock (with the combination written out in bold letters right next to it) down on the bench while I put all my stuff in the locker. I vaguely remember a tall guy pacing around behind me while I was getting changed. I don't generally make eye contact with other guys while I'm naked in a change room, so unfortunately I could not provide the campus police with a description. The guy must have waited until I had gone to play Squash, opened my locker as if it were his own, and fucked off with my wallet. Losing the money was bad enough, but the prospect of having to get a new birth certificate, driver's license, credit cards, etc. was the real piss off.
Luckily, by the time I had finished filing my report with the police, someone had turned in my wallet. It had been found outside by the phone booths. I sure as hell didn't leave it there. The money was gone, but everything else was there. Well almost everything else. Also missing was the strawberry flavoured condom I acquired at a drunken room crawl so long ago that it has almost faded from memory.
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