My husband has worked in the same industry most of his life, but he has changed jobs quite a few times. These various jobs have taken us to many fun and unique places. One of his jobs was working as an annuity and Securities Broker-Dealer. We lived on the west coast so his ‘territory’ included Hawaii. He would fly over to the Big Island once a year to try and convince the local banks and credit unions to invest in his company’s products. The second year he headed over, he brought me along. We decided that while there, we could celebrate his birthday, my birthday, and our anniversary to help justify the cost of my plane ticket. I asked my mom to watch our toddler and preschooler and we headed off to Paradise.
While he put on seminars and large lunches for these financial institutions, I would take advantage of sleeping in, have Pop-Tarts and tea I brought from home for brunch, read by the pool, and walk along the beach. We thought we would save money by eating one official meal a day.
The first night, he came to the tiny room, frustrated from a long day. He suggested we walk down the beach and find a fun place to have ‘pu pu’ platter and drinks. This sounded fun, adventurous, romantic, and amazing, as I had only eaten two pop tarts all day. Walking hand in hand, with the wind in our face and our feet in the wet sand, we headed down the beach. We laughed at the very sunburnt Newly Weds, talked about bringing our kids there someday, and looked for shells. It was so relaxing.
We found a restaurant that looked fun, where we could watch the sunset, right on the sand, and looked like they had a ‘pu pu’ platter. After ordering drinks, and with some appetizers coming, I asked my husband how his day went. He proceeded to tell me about a lunch seminar that he did for over 100 people. After lunch was served, he got up to the podium, and began to entertain and educate the crowd about the products he was representing. About the time he felt he had the crowd in the palm of his hand, the head waitress walked up to the podium, seemed to lean into the microphone, and interrupted him mid-sentence, said very loudly, “Sir, your credit card has been declined.” He politely excused himself, pulled the hostile waitress aside, and asked her to wait twenty minutes, he would call his company back in California, and take care of the situation. He then had to go back in front of that crowd, make a joke about ‘fraud alerts’, and try and regain some dignity and credibility. It was an up-hill battle to say the least. He called his company, got the constraints removed from his card, and looked forward to the next day without being embarrassed. We laughed at the situation, made fun of all the different things those Brokers that attended his seminar must have been thinking; he had lost any and all confidence in my husband. We laughed about how that he’s going to have to ‘knock it out of the park’ the next few days as he met with the other groups.
As the sunset, we finished up our drinks and ‘pu pu’, and got ready to go. Soon our waiter came back to our table and said very quietly, “Sir, your card has been declined”. Both of us starred at each other. He asked the kind man to run it again. He let us know he had already run it three times. I looked up and asked the man if I could go to the kitchen and do the dishes. He laughed hardily as he violently shook his head no.
My husband told our waiter not to worry, he needed to make a call and clear this up. This was back in the day that proceeded cell phones, much less Smart phones, so he got up to head to the front of the restaurant to find a payphone. Before he left, he ordered me another drink and whispered in my ear, “just keep ordering drinks while I fix this”.
He left and I sat there by myself drinking a ‘fruity drink’ watching the wave crash on the white sand. After thirty minutes, I ordered another drink with an umbrella in it. Another thirty minutes passed. Our waiter asked me if my husband was coming back, and if I was ready to close out my tab. I switched to water and ordered some chips and salsa. Almost two hours later, my husband finally showed up looking a little haggard. Trying not to bite his head off for leaving me there by myself for what seemed like all night, I asked him what happened. He said he had called the 800 number on the back of his card, but no one answered. He went to pay with another card but realized he had left his wallet on back in our room at the hotel. He then had to walk back to our hotel to get his wallet. While back in the room he got ahold of the credit card company, straighten things out, then he had to come all the way back to pay our bill that was getting bigger and bigger. We sat and finished the rest of the chips and salsa and let him relax before we headed back to our hotel. I didn’t realize how far we had walked along the beach to get to this restaurant.
As we slowly walked down the beach listening to the crashing waves, we chatted about how we didn’t understand how the credit card company put a ‘fraud alert’ on his card earlier that day, lifted it, only to put it back on that evening. We couldn’t understand that if we told the company that we were traveling, they would still put a hold on our card. We also decided that it wasn’t worth getting frustrated over, and that it wasn’t our job to figure everything out. Sometimes things happen. Sometimes things are out of our control.
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding; think about Him in all your ways, and He will guide you on the right paths.” Proverbs 3:5-6
