I Think I'm Signed Up For The Wrong Credit Card

The other day I received my Visa 2008 Rewards Program Guide. Huzzah! Time to see what two years of horrifyingly reckless spending has earned me. Since I quit bartending, my credit card has become my primary form of currency (lap dances being a close second), so I could only imagine what wondrous rewards were coming my way.

Eagerly I flip through the beautiful, glossy pages of the book, landing by chance on the section marked “Private Aviation”. Fancy that, I thought. Me on a private jet! Well, it’s the least I deserve for spending myself into a state where I’m forced to eat eggs for every meal and *gasp* go an entire season without purchasing designer jeans. Now let’s see here, how many points do I need?

Hmm…okay here we go. If I wanted to take my friends for a joyride on the Gulfstream 450, I would just need exactly…eight-hundred-and-twenty-four-thousand points. Per hour. Oh, and by the way—one point = one dollar spent on the credit card. Which, by my calculations, means my friends and I could spend exactly one minute and forty-five seconds on the Gulfstream.

I put down the calculator (and the wine) and yelled to no one in particular: “ARE YOU HIGH??” Two years of foolish spending (not to mention flights, hotels and dirty martinis at the Viceroy—God, I love expense accounts) and I get less than a lousy two minutes of luxury?!

Fine. Maybe I should head to the back of the book (past the 9-Night Greek Islands Tour, in which case my points would earn me the equivalent of one gyro) where they must keep the rewards for the not-so-high rollers, like me. Lookie here! A laptop. I could really use my own personal laptop so the IT guys would stop bugging me about my desktop being cluttered with videos of monkeys drinking their own urine. Stiffs.

Unfortunately, it looks like a laptop will set me back 98,000 points. Listen, assholes, if I’m going to pay a hundred-thousand dollars for a laptop, it better do all of my work for me and come complete with its own pee-drinking monkey.

I can’t believe someone thinks I’m actually going to acquire enough points to get anything in this stupid book. Do they know they’re sending this catalog to the same residence that receives the J.B. DollarStretcher, to a girl who will hold up the grocery line with tampon coupons (don’t like it? Hit the self-scanner aisle, jerkoff)? This is ridiculous.

Finally, I settle for the very, very back of the book, where they’ve conveniently listed the merchandise available to me by point level. Turns out I can get a $200 Tiffany & Co. Gift Card (for that keychain I’ve always had my eye on) or a set of Nikon Eagleview Binoculars (which will come in handy when I’m hunting down the person who came up with this stupid program).

Well, now I’m depressed. Thanks, Visa. Now I’m off to the mall to buy myself something to cheer me up—which, now that I think of it, was probably your sinister plan all along! MEANIES!

Oh, and I should probably pick up more eggs.