A Day in the Life

As with every job, there are things that you like and you don't. Days that fly by and you leave feeling like you've accomplished a lot and helped many people out and days you leave just pissed at everyone and everything. But within any day, there are always little moments of time where you can't help but to laugh.

Last week an older guy came into my office and wanted to talk about his account. He was noticeably shaken and was concerned that someone had gotten access to his account. So I ask him to tell me details about the situation. You see, he had gone to an ATM machine to withdraw money. Being an older guy, he usually doesn't do anything "new" like that. For him, the drive-through teller window is about as Ritzy as it gets. After his transaction at the ATM it printed him off his receipt - which included his balance. What he thought it said was that he had withdrawn his balance. So he said he waited a few minutes for his money to come out and when it didn't he was concerned that someone who came up after him would have gotten his money. I told him - trying not to just break down laughing - that his account was fine. The only recent transaction on his account was the $100 withdrawal and no one came up after him and took his money. The funny part of this is the fact that he had around $19000 in that account and the visual of an ATM chugging out that amount of cash - and the time it would take to do that - is fairly amusing.

Another story is about a guy who called up and wanted to know about a certain check that he had written. He wanted to know, that since it has come back as a NSF, if the payee of it would try again. I looked it up and saw that in fact they had tried to cash this check 3 times in the past week. He then wanted to know if I would put a stop payment on this check. I asked him why. He said because he didn't have enough money to make the check good - yet. I told him that first off, if you write a check to someone knowing there is not enough funds in the account, it's illegal. Second, I would not put a stop payment on the check. To me, it's like going to Wal-Mart and buying a 55 inch TV and a bunch of other random crap, putting it on your credit card then calling them up and say "Don't charge me for this. I can't pay it back." Third, the payee was the government. Um, yea. They are going to get their money from you buddy. And like hell if I'm going to be putting a stop payment on a check that you wrote KNOWING there were not sufficient funds in your account.

Third, a lady came in to update her account information. As part of our security procedures, when you open your first account with us you have to answer 6 security questions. These questions are used for when you call up a branch so we can verify your identity and also for online banking for when you log in from a computer that wasn't the original computer used to create your online banking. I ask her why she wanted to change her security questions and she proceeds to tell me that she had a nightmare that someone had stolen her identity. I'm like oooook. So as she is creating her new questions and answers she is like "I'm trying not to lie too hard." I ask her if she will remember these answers and shes like "No, I'm trying to make them random because in my dream someone I knew stole my identity and they were able to steal my money." I told her it was not a very good idea to do that and so she agreed and refilled out the paper. At the end, she had only changed two of the six questions.

Finally, I had a guy ask me if he had credit with us. For starters, most questions about credit don't start with a "Do I have it with you?". I asked him did he have any loans or credit cards and he says no. I look him up and verified he didn’t have any credit with us. I say well then you don’t. Hes like, I have credit with someone but I don’t know who it is. He proceeds to tell me that hes looking to get $800 to buy a truck from his friend. Im like well, we can look at doing that just need a recent paystub. He pulls out a piece of paper where a check would have been on the bottom. On the top is printed hours worked and how much the check was for. No deductions. No gross. Nothing. I'm like, we need something that shows the deductions for taxes and other things such as medical, 401(k) loans and things like that. He's like, well they wont give it to me. I'm like, ok how about tax returns for the past two years. He looked at me like I had just insulted his dead grandmother.

So little gems of comedy and gross lack of common sense do exist still on this earth filled with smart phones, search engines and social media.