China Crisis

No this is not an 80's pop music group. And no, it's not in reference to the latest Melamine scandal either. It's not even about Mussolini not getting her visa for Beijing fall 2008.

This is about my own crisis with Chinabank and the 1st company I've ever worked for, PeopleSupport, Inc. You see, when I left that company in 2003, I returned all the necessary training materials and confidential chuva with the HR. I retained my ATM card and kept using it during my whole stint as an unemployed and disgruntled, deeply depressed and overweight pre-nursing student. I've held on to that ATM card even after I quit nursing school and started working for another company in 2005. Somewhere during that time, I stopped withdrawing or depositing money in it so it came as a suprise when, around August 2008, I discovered my account had been disabled. I called up and feigned fever one day just to visit the main branch and have my account cut off once and for all.

China was pretty busy with the olympics back then and so I guess there wasn't any room for accommodating me. The accounts clerk was nice and had arranged all the necessary papers for me to sign. I surrendered my tattered ATM card and waited for them to give me my money. The finance people from PeopleSupport had told them I didn't finish my clearance and that my no longer have my records. It was fine really coz I'm a very patient person.

I went to PeopleSupport the same day and tried to have them find my records. I saw a handful of people I remember working with, but didn't bother saying hello. (Haller, we weren't close then!) The receptionist had me use the lobby phone to contact the finance department. The phone just kept ringing and ringing for about 30 minutes, and I'd call again and look for different people to call from that department (they had an electronic listing) until someone had answered.

The finance person told me to wait for the HR manager for clearance because he couldn't find my records there. After all, I resigned in 2003 when they were still in PhilamLife Tower. Now they have their own building. But really, nothing's changed. I had to wait for the HR manager to come in at 10:00pm to talk to her.

FoBlogger and I ate dinner at Jollibee and then hung out at Coffee Bean, took some pictures and just talked. At 10pm, we went back to PeopleSupport. I talked to the HR person and she told me she couldn't find any records either and that she would refer my case to the finance department again. I asked her to email or contact me.

A week had passed so I decided to email her. Another passed and I spammed her with my inquiry. It appears she had an emergency CTO so, ok I understand. She told me I would really need to contact finance because they're the only ones with hard copies of all financial records. I called finance again and got transferred to Admin because Admin takes care of Chinabank account applications and such. The Admin gay told me they don't handle that but that I should go visit their corporate finance office in another building so that they'd be able to find my records.

Frustrated, (and busy with other stuff too because I have a life) I tried calling Chinabank to ask if I can just get my atm back and withdraw the money that's left (which isn't much, however I desperately need the cash) and the snotty b*tch told me they can't do anything and that it's impossible for finance not to have a copy of my records and that I should definitely clear things up with PeopleSupport first. The runaround.

My past comes to haunt me; an old ghost with a strip of paper posted on its forehead that states,

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"Over my dead body!"

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