I realized my debit card

I realized my debit card was missing yesterday when it wasn’t in my coat pocket I’d been carrying it in. I cursed myself because I JUST replaced the card a couple months ago after losing it at a bar. But because I hadn’t really been anywhere this week, it was easy to retrace my steps to the last place I used it: J’s and my favorite Chinese restaurant in the slope, Red Hot. After a frantic search of the apartment last night, I gave them a call, which was pretty much:

RH: Hello, Red Hot, can I help you?
Me: Hi, I think I might have left my credit card there the other night…?
RH: Ten dollah minimum order.
Me: Wha…no, I think I left my card there?
RH: Oh, when?
Me: Tuesday.
RH: No. No card.

She seemed a little quick with the “No” so we wandered over to the restaurant to ask in person. After asking again, one woman behind the counter said, “HSBC? Yes!” which is my bank, so that was good, but then started speaking Chinese and pointedly jabbing her finger at an empty space on the shelf, which was not so good. They told us to come back in 15 minutes, which completely irritated me, because WHERE WAS MY CARD?

As you may have guessed, when we came back in fifteen minutes the status of my card had been downgraded to “gone” and “not here.”

Me: Are you telling me it’s been stolen?
RH: Yes. Stolen.
Me: Seriously?

Augh. I had checked earlier in the day for any wayward charges and had seen none. Based on a scam that had befallen my previous boss’s mother I learned that the first thing New York thievers do is run to metro card machines and buy millions of expensive metro card passes. Since this didn’t seem to be the case, I vacillated briefly between canceling the card and waiting because it had probably fallen behind the register and would be returned swiftly. The only reason I hesitated at all is that I had JUST gone through this and it took ONE MILLION years for the new debit card to come, which meant I had to actually do things like go into a bank, fill out things called “withdrawal slips,” and interact with “tellers.” Very strange and time consuming. In the end, caution won out and I called the bank this morning to cancel the card.

Bank: Can you verify the last charge on the card?
Me: Well, there will be something from Red Hot and an order from Amazon I placed yesterday.
B: Two $10 metro card charges?
Me: What? No!
B: A $25 metro card charge?
Me: Augh! No!
B: A $100 metro card charge?
Me: Sigh. No.

It wouldn’t have been as bad if it had been a real credit card, because then it is sort of hypothetical money, but as it was, they were stealing real dollars from my debit account, which INFURIATED me! My whole dollars! Of course I’m not responsible for the charges, but what’s worse is that I can never go back to Red Hot again. We eat there at least once a week. I have an unhealthy addiction to their broccoli and tofu. But, damn. I love me some Bean Curd Orange Flavor, but they either let a customer steal my card, or more likely, stole it themselves. As J said, “They are dead to me.”

So if anyone's in the area, I'm in the market for a new favorite Park Slope Chinese place.

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