The Bank Part 2

I didn’t tell the whole story about the bank in the first entry, and I still won’t tell the entire story, but I will give just a taste of the background.  In short, John didn’t want to open a French bank account.  In fact, we had a 3-week-long argument about it before finally going to the bank.  Every time we talk about the bank or go to the bank, it reopens the wound.  At the bank, I have to do all the talking, and John just sits there silently with an air of reluctant acceptance.  The reason why this becomes important to the bank story is because they said they could put only one name on the account, and they put his.  After all of the effort we (I) went through to get this account, the mail from the bank now all comes addressed to John Thornburgh.  I don’t even exist. 

Now to continue where we left off, a few days after I signed the certified letter, we (John) received 4-5 letters from the bank.  Two of them included certificates to turn in at our conveniently located bank branch to pick up our debit cards.  Apparently, they don’t mail you cards here.  They arrived on Saturday and we went to the bank on Monday to pick them up on the way to lunch.  The bank was closed.  We saw the opening hours on the wall and noticed that the bank closes from 12-1:30 every day, so we went back after lunch.  After lunch, the bank was still closed.  We read the sign more carefully and found that it is not open at all on Mondays.  Rather, it is open Tuesday-Saturday. 

Tuesday morning before noon we went back and found the bank inexplicably closed.  We examined the sign yet again and were reassured that the bank should be open but it wasn’t.  There was a French man there too and he was equally confused by the locked door.  We all walked away scratching our heads.  I talked to a friend later that day and he said that, since Wednesday was a holiday (unknown to me) and that banks are not open on Mondays, they often take a “bridge” holiday on such occasions.  Unfortunately, we were all departing on Wednesday for vacation so we would have to wait.  Elizabeth and I were going to be gone a whole week, but John was coming back sooner, so he said he’d pick up the cards while I was gone.  Surprise, surprise, when I returned, he hadn’t.

On Saturday (now a week and a half later) we decided to go pick up the cards because we now knew that the bank was open on Saturdays.  However, that morning, John received an email from the bank manager saying that she had never received the signed certified mail back from us and that we couldn’t pick up the cards until she had.  Sigh.  I told John to ask her if she had checked under the name Connell.  Indeed, it was there.  We decided to go on Monday to pick up the cards.  However, John received yet another email saying that they needed a copy of our marriage certificate before we could pick up the cards.  Even though I had shown her a copy of our marriage certificate at our meeting, I gave it to John to take a picture of it and email that to her.  We are patiently waiting to hear back if that will allow us to finally get the cards.  Then we have to ask about getting checks.