"A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is
shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain."
-- Mark Twain
Basically bankers are bast... umm..jerks. Im sure to their friends and families they are loving and normal but get them behind that counter and they have nice facades with evil centres. Like banana flavour filled chocolates.
Now anyone that has interacted with bank staff could have told you this but to reeeeally know it you have to work with them. Join them in their hushed vaults and paper morgues where they see out their days and lives.
Surprisingly then, my days at the NAB accumulate to one of my longer employment examples- a whole 6 months of slow beaurocratic death. But let's take this journey in the right steps.
Once upon a time, there was a girl who didn't know what she wanted to do.
So she read lots of books with names like "QLD Job Guide 2005" and stalked seek.com.au late at night in dark rooms..... (dadada daaaaah!)
Until one fateful day she saw a promising piece advertising a cert something or other roman numeral in Financial Services while being employed full time. This looked like a new exciting direction so she went for it.
Training was actually fantastic. The girl made lots of new friends, had lunch at the pub every day and apparently learnt very little. The only recollections of the actual training was of the instructor stressing that we were not to YELL AT THE BLIND PEOPLE! Apparently it happens a lot. And that at the end of the week we had a mock bank day. And even the trainers couldn't balance my partners and my books afterwards. It caused them some concern.
Anyhoo. On to working life! The young girl started at a lovely quiet (now non-existent) branch at Redcliffe. The women there all called her 'dear' and gabbed over the latest Amway magazines and knew all the customers by name. (before they'd read their card I mean). The girl, let's call her Heather shall we? learnt a lot there and was given her first NAB scarf!
Oh those heady early days of free scarfs and teaching old ladies how to use the fancy ATM machines. But her fatal banking flaw was already becoming apparent and after a couple of months Heatherwas relocated to Strathpine Branch were the pace was faster and they'd be able to teach her better. Or so they must have thought.
Strathpine branch was busier. And nastier. These two characteristics are not as random as you might think. Let me explain. The average bank employee hates their job and wants the next person ups position. So the bottom row, the tellers are constantly looking to backstab their colleagues and undermine their superiors. I'm not even kidding, it was crazy.
The next level up, the loaners and 'head teller' are trying to hold the branch together and just hoping to make it home without their managers calling about something the tellers said they did. I have no idea what the managers do. Hide in their office and hope that no one robs the bank today. (I was robbed but we're not at that but yet). So the busier the bank the more this competition gets intensified. Heatherwould spend my lunch times alone just to not have to listen to what whoever wasn't in the room had done. She had bigger problems.
Like that first training day, she still couldn't balance most days. Well, eventually she would as otherwise they wouldn't let her go home but it was an ordeal of misplaced slips and incorrectly entered numbers. Also, the major aspect of being a teller was to sell crap to customers. Stuff like credit cards, home loans, life insurance etc. There'd be weekly personal, team and branch targets, 'new hot products!', and absolutely no incentives except getting fired otherwise. Now Heather was a nice girl who liked people and so she had moral objections to annoying people to buy products when they were clearly just paying their loan on their lunch break. This had been the breaking point for her time at Redcliffe and would similarly have her transferred away from Strathpine and it's social club water cooler that she had been unwittingly stealing from each day.
Her start at Chermside was pleasant enough. New friendly matronly faces, lots of work to do and new teachers not frustrated to breaking point by her tenacity and stubbornness. The lack of any movement on the targets whiteboard began to cause friction after a few weeks and the waiting around for that new girl to balance- what the heck is she doing?? must have been a trial. But what finally released her from banking life with the phrase "You're just not bank material" was much more dramatic.
A lovely, pleasant fellow in a nice suit came in with a forged cheque. A very good one. Heather did nearly all the checks is that she was supposed to do, even got the head teller involved to make sure she was doing it right. And handed over thousands to the smiling, lying face. The nicest, friendliest of robberies.
The next week I was told to give back my name badge and that glorious scarf and was escorted out of the bank. I was "not bank material" which really should have been obvious from the start.
I would not recommend anyone work in a bank. It is dirty, nasty work, you will cop abuse and not trust your coworkers. Having money constantly on your mind does not a happy life make I think.
Unless you are scoping out to rob the bank, and even the don't work there to long less you lose the courage and creativity to do anything.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
