Those who are familiar with me know that I'm a venerable Whitman's Sampler of hate, containing a wide assortment of slightly different topics in which I can no doubt hate upon. Speaking of which, have you ever notified that there is no actual box of Whitman's candies, only the Whitman's Sampler? Sampler implies that there are unique groups of confections available for sale somewhere, and the Whitman's Sampler is a conflation of all these different kinds of specialized candies. Kind of like how Red Lobster has the Seafood Sampler. However, notice that one never sees a box of Whitman's candies for sale – only the Whitman's Sampler. The whole thing makes no sense. In any event, the point is I hate on things, and today's topic deals with my new bank, Chase.

About five months ago, Washington Mutual, my former bank, had a minor flaw in their business model, in the sense that they went bankrupt. JPMorgan Chase decided to buy them at a discount rate, which meant all the Washington Mutuals would become Chase banks. This was all fine and good, until Chase decided that they needed everything converted from the old Washington Mutual to the new Chase. All the signs came down, all the websites changed, and as of last Saturday, they decided to merge the Washington Mutual customer deposits into the Chase customer deposits. This would be okay if they did it, say, in the middle of the night, and they were quick and efficient about it. However, they decided to do it at 4:00pm on a Saturday. All their ATMs no longer functioned, and of course they closed all their branches so no one could have access to their hard-earned capital. No one, including me, could get access to his or her money at all. Somehow I am the only one who has a problem with this. Some guy named Lefty could have been threatening me with the business unless I paid him off, and I wouldn't have been able to do it, and then would have found myself at the bottom of a river sleeping with the fishes. So thanks JPMorgan Chase for almost killing me last Saturday. I look forward to doing business with you in the coming years.