Sometimes Life Just Isn’t That Simple

My wife is trying to sell her car. She still owed payments on it so I paid the car off from our savings with the plan being that she’d pay back our savings after she sold the car. It’s just easier to sell a car when you have the title in hand.

Thinking the title was on its way, we put the car up for sale. Within two days someone had put down a deposit. Great right? Well yes, but it’s not so simple…

Two Days Ago:
Before selling the car we want to do the right thing and make sure it’s in tip-top shape. We find out a part had been recalled (something having to do with the catalytic converter) so she takes it into the dealer to get fixed. They take something out. She doesn’t know what it is, but the dealership mechanic assures her that the car will be fine without it. (Ummm, so why was it “in there” in the first place if it isn’t needed?) This takes the entire day. She has a project due for a new client, but he’s in no hurry so she can put it off for a day.

Yesterday:
Missy moves money from our shared account into her account so she can pay off the car. She spends the first half of her day on the phone with the bank trying to get the car paid off. You’d be surprised how difficult they make this! After lunch she drives an hour to Boulder and waits in someone’s store for two hours while she goes goes to a mechanic to get the car checked out. This kills the second her day, but the project she’s promised for a client can wait one more day.

Today:
Missy takes her car in to get the emissions test, which involves waiting in line for hours while some underpaid kid follows steps put in place by EPA bureaucrats to make money for state governments. Her car tests over. It’s only two years old – straight off the lot with less than 20,000 miles on it. No freaking way! Suspecting it has something to do with the recall and subsequent removal of some mysterious “uneeded” part. After waiting on hold for twenty minutes she’s told that the car failed because she stopped the engine while in line for the emissions test. But the emissions test people told her to stop it! She has to go back to get another test. But first, she calls the bank to get the tracking number for her title, which was supposed to have been overnighted. The bank can’t find the tracking code. On hold. Transferred. On hold. Transferred again. The manager says that they can’t take payments over $5,000 over the phone so the payment she thought she was making yesterday – the one she was told went through – never went through. She now has to mail them a check, which will then have to clear, and it’s going to be a week or more until she gets the title. Meanwhile, she has this woman’s $500 deposit for a nearly brand new car that can’t pass an emissions test because… well, who knows. There is no time for the bank AND the emissions test today so she had to make a choice. Emissions test today – again – and bank tomorrow – again. Oh and that project she’s been putting off? There’s no more putting it off so she’ll be up until after midnight tonight working on that.

This isn’t a gripe. I’m not complaining for myself or my wife Missy. The point of this whole thing is that while we like to idealize life in the country as being “simple” – and hope that our lives indeed will be much simplified – sometimes you just can’t get around the run-around. Laziness, ignorance and bureaucracy is waiting in the bank, the car dealership, the emissions testing place, government offices like the DMV, schools… try as you might, you can’t avoid it without going totally off the grid and removing yourself from society as a whole. That’s not what we’re about. So like I told Missy, you just have to roll with it.

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Category: Rants, The Transplants