A Trip To The Bank

Better get these cheques to the bank, thinks Jeffrey, at the end of a hard day at the office. Mmm, can you still pay into the bank using one of these old fashioned looking paying-in books, I wonder. Well, only one way to find out.

Paying-in book filled in and off I go on my mission to the bank. "Can you still use these paying-in books", I enquire at the desk. "Oh, yes sir", the young man informs me with much enthusiasm, "No problem, at all, I'll show you how it's done".

We walk over to one of the alleged multi-talented automatic teller machines. "We hit this button and then that button, we then take your cheques with paying-slip on top, and place in this little slot", goes the running commentary. The machine swallows the cheques and paying-in slip. There's a sound of scrunching paper inside the ATM, a slightly concerned look comes over the bank employee. "Don't worry something obviously not quite right with one of the cheques", he says. Unfortunately, his attempt to bring reassurance to the proceedings did not succeed, especially when our friendly ATM spits out three of the cheques, in a less than perfect condition to which they were when originally put into the custody of said machine. "Where are the other four cheques", is my question, at this point.

Our man of the bank then peers into the slot where the missing cheques were placed. I then have a feeling that this is not a machine at all, but imagine there is another bank employee on the other side of the wall, having a joke with us and purposely causing havoc as people try to feed in their cash and cheques.

I'm asked to wait by this supposed machine whilst our friendly but rather embarrassed bank employee retreats to get help and find out what has happened to the other cheques. A rather amused fellow customer is feeding in cash into another nearby machine, "Good luck with that", is her comment, which sparks off memories of the good old days where you queued up, saw a real person, paid in your cash and cheques, and walked away knowing that all was well and funds were now in your account. With this so called improved system who knows what has gone anywhere. These machines supposedly read the figures written on the cheques and credit your account with the correct amount, but beware machines do not read human handwriting that well. Keep a close watch on what you have paid in.

Back to our tale, Mr Bank Man returns with all 7 cheques in hand, I guess the man on the other side of the wall having a joke with us had given them back to him. "Can I ask you pay them in using our manual system, sir". He leads me up a passage way where two ladies are taking payments using the good old fashioned way of looking at your cheques and stamping your paying-in book. Such a quaint way of doing things, might catch on one day and they'll get rid of those pesky automated wonder machines.

 

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