Don't watch out for me.

I am watching a story this morning on WSB Channel 2 about a distraught woman who was victimized by fraud. Fraud appals me. In my job, I see dozens of cases (and I am being thrifty) of fraud each week. The lady on the television suffers from Parkisans and had entrusted a friend to do her finances. The "friend" drained her account of thousands of dollars. Like I said, I see this EVERY WEEK! It is a full time job to be a crook and they are getting better at it daily.
First let me say that my job is to take care of our clients. When I say take care, I mean protect their accounts and money they have entrusted to my bank. I often do this with a smile on my face and I often try to remember names and faces. Customer service! I have been doing this for years. However, in my experience I have never really been in charge of other peoples money. Look at my last statement; "in CHARGE of other people's money". I have been entrusted by my company to ensure if you have an account with my bank it will be safe. This means if someone comes in trying to commit fraud on your account, I have been trained to catch it and stop it.
Lets go back to the poor woman who was wronged. The premise of the news cast was not in so many ways reporting how the friend took advantage of her, it was more to point a finger at my company for not refunding the money she lost. I want to make it clear that if a real fraud takes place with one of our clients, the client will be given all the help and in most cases all of their money is refunded. In this case I am most certain the person that was handling her case dropped the ball and the correct information was not given to our fraud department. Luckily, the case will be re-opened and better scrutiny given.
The woman who was victimized was questioning how her account was accessed without her authorization. In all circumstances the account should have never been accessed. However, here is reality. With banks being scrutinized daily on how they do business, how they charge fees and how they are out to hurt everybody, customer service has to be at an all time high. Upper management have and will terminate employment of a team member who does not give the best customer service. With this in mind think about the last time you went to your bank. Did you withdraw money? If so, did you offer your license and debit card as ID? Did you swipe your debit card and enter a PIN to verify your identification? Did the teller/banker even ask you for such information? If you answered yes to all the questions, you completed a successful banking transaction. If you said no to any of the questions you have been marked as either a "known" customer or an "irate" customer. You see the reality is we deal with mean people. I am not saying we deal with rude, obnoxious, or even attitude customers...I am talking MEAN people! We either have the mean person who is attempting to defraud the bank or we have the mean person who is getting mad because we ASKED for their ID! If we ask for an ID in most cases, here is what happens:

1. Welcome, how can I help you?
2. I need to make a withdrawal.
3. My pleasure, could you please swipe your debit card in order for me to pull up the correct account?
4. I don't have a debit card! Clark Howard told me to NEVER get a debit card from you people!
5. OK, that is not a problem. Could I see your drivers license and a second form of ID?
6. What do you need that for? I just want to pull some money out of my account!
7. I apologize for the inconvenience, however in order to verify your identity as an authorized signer on the account, I will need to see your identification or have you enter a valid PIN from a debit card attached to your account.
8. Are you new? Don't you know who I am? I have been banking here for 20 years! I have thousands of dollars in this bank!
9. Again, my apologies. We do sometimes have new faces here at the bank however it is standard that we identify each individual in order to protect our customers accounts.
10. This is ridiculous! I want to see your manager! I hate coming here! I am going to move my accounts! I don't understand why I have to show you my ID to withdraw my money!?

Did you read the last part?? Yes, people actually say they don't understand why we would want to identify them!
OK, back to the lady who was victimized. I am not saying this is what happened, but what could have happened is the crook had been doing the victims financial business at the same branch over and over. She had a history of helping the victim and the tellers did not want anything to happen to the victim and believed the crook was taking care of her. This should not have happened but more than likely the tellers did not want to have a break in service so they complied.
Let me make it clear. At my branch, my MOTHER has to show her ID. I will not allow my tellers to put their job on the line for a loudmouth "self-entitled" customer. I don't care how much money they have. I want to keep what little I make so I FOLLOW THE RULES! Hate the banks all you want to folks. Believe me, my bank is not doing me ANY favors in the wallet department. However, I detest criminals. I will do my best to stop any and all fraud. People should be happy that I am on watch.
For those of you that think you have so much money that every banker/teller should know you; try thanking that teller that asks you for your ID. You never know, someone may have just been in the bank an hour before posing as you trying to steal your money.

Saved Life

Good morning friends and family.
I had to leave the comfort of my bed this morning very early due to a headache. My wife was in a similar situation, each of us could not sleep and got out of bed. My wife went back to bed but I decided to make a pot of java and see where my early morning thoughts took me. So here I am.
Each day I get my daily bread of Bible Gateways "Verse of the Day". This morning I read;

James 3:17-18

But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.

This verse (as many other verses often do) went hand in hand with an interview I watched of Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She was being asked about what Dr. Kings stance would be on gay marriage. She delivered her view and what she felt Dr. King would have said; Everyone is deserving of love and kindness. She did make it known that the gospel does not support gay marriage. Again, she also said all humans deserve the love of God.

The verse above tells it clear; the WISDOM of Heaven is first of all PURE. I love how the bible puts the words in the correct order so that the facts are weighed evenly. For thousands of years, even before Christ there has been a definition of purity and what it means. Purity or pure has many definitions. One is "being free from moral fault or guilt". So when the wisdom from Heaven is given, it will first of all be pure and it will be free of fault. After James makes it clear that Heaven's wisdom is pure, he tells us all of these adjectives that relate to the treatment of everyone. Heaven will tell us the truth, but it will tell us the truth in a peace-loving way. I really love how James uses words that actually place him in humility to all that hear him. He states that the wisdom is considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. We see no terms of hate or bitterment.

Living the Saved Life teaches me that the truth will never change. There will always be a right and a wrong. If we choose to live right, we will not have to cover impurity. If we live wrong, we will always have to justify our wrong-doing. Regardless of the way we live, we should all be treated first in love.

God be with you today. May the love of Christ fill your day with happiness and grace.

"E.B."ing a dad...

I will go ahead and admit that I "borrowed" the name of this post from a blog I was reading today. The name of the blog was "EB"ing a mommy. It is about a single mother in Louisianna who has a son that has a degenerative form of Epidermolysis Bullosa. To be blunt, her son has defied the odds of many kids with his form of EB. It is deadly. It is the "deadliest disease no one has ever heard of" as described on ABC news.
I bring this up because I am a father of children with EB. Not only do two, possibly three of my kids have EB; but I do as well. I want to start by telling exactly what EB is.
Epidermolysis Bullosa is a skin condition where the skin is missing an adhesive layer (a carotine) and blistering becomes easy on the skin. There are many different forms and thank the Lord we have the milder form. But dont get me wrong, we would totally rather not have it. When you cant walk for a long time and running is really out of the question, it gets rather annoying. However annoying is better than pain.
On to the subject at hand. Being a parent of children with EB can be emotionally exhausting. When the summer months come around and we have to all meet on the couch with needles, poroxide and bandages it makes anyone want to cry. As we try to lance the blisters on our childs feet and treat them so they will not get infected. Infection is always an issue. The worst part of course is seeing our child cry because the pain is so bad. However, we are raising our kids to understand that this disease is NOT going away. With this in mind they will need to educate themselves so that they will not have to work in labor intensive jobs. So yes, we teach them that they will need to "deal with it" in order to survive the real world.
Here is where it gets rough. While we are raising our kids to value a good education, the hard fact is our child has a dissability. And a disability is protected by the law. Sometimes EB can affect them at school. We knew this so we decide to team up with our childs school to get her protected under the American Disabilities Act. By providing what the school calls a "504 Plan" our child will be protected from losing valuable education time due to her disability. It was supposed to be a simple meeting. We were to get a doctors "expert diagnosis" and bring that diagnosis and information on the disease to a meeting with the principle, the head school district nurse, the teacher and the counselor. To make a long story short, the nurse and the other staff did not feel that the DOCTORS diagnosis was serious enough to allow the 504 plan. Wow, since when does a school nurse have more intellect than a doctor? To go even further, a specialist that has been studying these types of disorders all of his carreer.
I write all of this to say that I am very dissapointed in the staff at Lewis Elementary and the way this was handled. We were told to take our child to the doctor, get a diagnosis, and meet together so we could do what was appropriate for our childs future. Instead, the principal, the counselor, the P.E. teacher and the school nurse made the determination that our child did not need the protection of the 504 plan that is stated in the Americans Disability Act. She has a disability, it is a known disability, it was diagnosed as a disability...where is the problem here?
I will continue to protect my child and see that she and her sister get the education they need. I will also let the school system know that this is treatment that mirrors discrimination. I would welcome any and all feedback.