You Have Been Declined

Let’s see if this story resonates out there. Here’s the scenario. You’re a customer making a purchase with your lifeline…aka…your credit card. When out of the blue you hear 4 dreaded words… “You have been declined.” (3 words if a contraction is used). Even if the words are whispered, you feel like everyone in the store has heard it too. It sounds like an announcement through a megawatt megaphone…YOU HAVE BEEN DECLINED.”

So you insist there is a reasonable explanation for the declination. “Run my card through that computer again, sonny.” So the kid does…and with an accusatory look says… “Sorry Ma’am…YOU’VE BEEN DECLINED.”

This, my friends, is what happened to Wishy and I while visiting the Apple Store. After a lengthy show-and-tell discussion with an Apple Expert about the pros of a MacBook computer…we decided to purchase one. At this point in the sale, Wishy and I were BFF’s with the Apple Expert…and we knew more about him than we wanted.

We knew that the Apple Expert was a Canadian, went to college in Nova Scotia, and his college education was a deal at 6,000 dollars a year (I wonder if Wishy would consider a transfer). He played the bagpipes, his identity was once stolen, he studied geology but switched to computers. And his name was Bruce.

And what did Bruce know about Wishy and I? One thing…WE HAVE BEEN DECLINED. We were a couple of rotten Apples.

Friendly, congenial Bruce then became the frenemy…No more Mr. Nice Guy. Bruce looked at us in horror…like we were trying to pull off the Great MacBook Laptop Caper…as if we were a mom and daughter duo…hitting Apple stores looking to reap the latest technology. Bruce called in all his enforcements…managers, and manager’s managers…all with concerned looks.

The humiliation was unbearable. Even though I knew I wasn’t a criminal…I began to feel like one. I felt like a fraud…move over Bernie Madoff. I thought about making a citizen’s arrest on ourselves and throwing us in the slammer…for ten to twenty.

But seeing Wishy was too sweet for jail life… I stammered and hammered out some story about how this was some mistake. I set out to prove my innocence by calling the credit crud people who eventually validated my story. I was actually an innocent mother/blogger from the burbs buying some electronics. (In credit crud terms, the computer had put an automatic block on my account because it concerned a large electronics purchase.) Hey, I wasn’t a rotten Apple. Vindicated!

Low and behold…Enemy Bruce became Friendly Bruce. He decided we weren’t riff-raff after all. We were not the Bonnie and Clydebelle schiksters of the electronic world.

I’m trying to figure out who bothered me the most…my credit crud company…or the Dr. Jekly/Mr. Hyde Bruce, Apple Expert.

Hmmm…I’m thinking Bruce ticked me off more: “Hey, Apple Expert….take a bite out of my…."