A Drunken Madman

It's often said that in an infinite universe, everything is possible - indeed probable. This "infinite potential" is often viewed in an overwhelmingly positive light. Indeed, the word "potential" is almost exclusively used in a positive sense, especially by industries such as marketing, education, finance and #SMEG.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a misapplication of everything we know about the universe.

You see, in a universe of infinite potential, it is probably more likely that you'll encounter eye-gouging horror than anything else. If there can exist unicorns which fart cherry-flavoured rainbows, there must also be not only sharks, but kelvar-armoured flying sharks armed with fintip scorpion cannons.

Each of which fires exploding cluster scorpions.

In this universal Yin and Yang, there must always exist the opposite of awesome. For every #win, a #fail. For every LOL, an FML.

This being the case, I invite you to consider the internet, and its potential for awesome.

Have you pictured it? How incredibly brilliant it is? How unspeakably wonderful a place the internet actually is?

OK, now click here.

Hi. It's me. We need to talk.

It's about that thing you believe. You know the one. Yes, that one.

As we've discussed before, that thing you believe is completely unsupported by evidence.

Yes, I know. You've tried to explain your "evidence" before. And we've told you why, in fact, it's not even worthy of the name.

No, it's not. We've talked about this. Your "evidence" consists of supposition, logical fallacy, confirmation bias, wishful thinking, observational error, groupthink and, frankly, a whole load of gullibility on your part.

I know. It's harsh, but it's time you were told. Everyone tiptoes around you because of this ridiculous belief, and we just can't keep doing it any more. Conside this an intervention.

You get angry when evidence contrary to your absurd belief comes up in conversation, and the big problem is this. The whole of what we call "observable reality" conflicts with this absurd belief of yours. So it seems like you're angry all the time.

You're just too heavily invested in it. You've even tied up your identity with your absurd belief. You "wear the t-shirt", as it were. You've woven your absurd belief in with many other beliefs in your day-to-day life, and it's unhealthy. Even stranger, you're perfectly rational about many other things, so you're clearly capable of sound logical reasoning. You just have a blind spot for this absurd belief, and it's getting to the point that you now hold many aburd beliefs, usually related to the absurd belief we're talking about.

Worse than that, you're constantly trying to convince other people to adopt your absurd belief too, and that has to stop. If nothing else stops, that stops. Now.

Other people don't deserve this kind of nonsense.

Look, I don't even like you that much, but you're a human and I think all humans deserve honesty, if nothing else.

So just stop it. Wake up. Come up for air and get a grip.

Your absurd belief is just that. Absurd.

Grow up.

I have a mortgage. Very grown-up, huh? Yeah. My mortgage is currently with NAB, or more specifically, with Homeside, the NAB's mortgage division. We switched to them a while ago when it became clear that Macquarie Bank were taking the piss with constant rate rises, and were a pack of suit-wearing moray eels with Louis Vuitton briefcases and expensive coke habits.

Anyway, I recently changed jobs. During the lead-up to the change-over some furious budget calculation went on, and it became clear that we were going to be a bit strapped for cash during the transition from job A (salary) to job B (contract rate fully in arrears). Not wanting to beg on street corners to pay for my overpriced food court sammiches for two weeks, I hit upon a bright idea.

I'll call the bank and ask if we can skip a mortgage payment! I'm a fucking genius!

"What's the worse that could happen? A refusal?" thought I, as I blithely called the number.

So I spoke to a moderately helpful guy at Homeside's call centre, wherever that happens to be, who said that he could organise something. He got a little confused, said he couldn't, then said that no, actually, he could, that's fine, next payment is now in November and there's a note on the account.

W00t.

Except in November, NAB called us and said we were a month behind.

We skipped a payment, we said

No you didn't, they said, we'd know.

We arranged it with you, dickheads, we replied

Don't care, said they. Give us money

OK, we responded, we'll give you some extra with next month's payment, then some extra the one after that, and we'll be level

Can't you give us $1000 extra a week instead, starting now? replied NAB

HO HO HO, said we. See how the corners of our mouths turn upwards and our bellies wobble as we LOL at your suggestion. NO

We'd really much rather $1000 a week, replied NAB, not quite getting the point

Sure. We'll send it over on the ROFLcopter. Monopoly money OK, is it? We chortled. You'll get the full amount over the next two payments.

OK, then we're going to put a note on your file calling you paupers, scumbags, wowsers and poopyheads. Then we're going to write nasty graffiti about you in the staff toilets. Then we're going to egg your house. With eggs.

NAB was clearly not getting it at all.

This situation is their fault - or more properly, it seems, the fault of an operator promising something he couldn't deliver - but they're going to blame us and call us defaulters? When we have a letter from you confirming the agreement?

Fuck you, NAB.

Oh, and get your phone system sorted out. I don't want to have to key my 9-digit account number in only to be immediately asked to provide it again when a human eventually answers the phone.

Oh, but the social media monitoring team are quick to respond and helpful of tone, even if the only thing they can really offer is more phone calls.

And while I'm on the topic. Bankwest. I have a mastercard with you. When you want to contact me to talk about this account, you always call me from an unidentified number - no caller ID - and immediately ask for my date of birth.

Stop doing this.

What you're doing here is training your customers to give out personally identifying information (PII) over an unauthenticated channel - effectively enabling a very simple phishing scam via phone. Here's how the little scam works:

• Bad guy does a mailbox run of the local area, to find the names of potential targets
• Bad guy hunts down phone number(s) of said targets, using name and address as gathered from mailbox run A.
• Bad guy calls number, claims to be from bankwest, asks for date of birth and mother's maiden name.

Bingo, bad guy has just effectively stolen target's identity, and can use said information to gather more information still. Bad guy then ROFLs all the way to the bank, where he takes out all your money and fucks off to Bali.

Bankwest: STOP DOING THIS. Bankwest customers: REFUSE TO GIVE THEM YOUR INFO WHEN THEY ASK

For a bank, you're very bad at information security.