Birgit and Roger Pratcher, click
here to update your pages on AuthorsDen.
Blogs by Birgit and Roger Pratcher
Ironix 8/5/2006 5:25:35 PM
Ever tried to deposit some money in your account, hundreds of miles away from you bank? Ironix?
We are hundreds of miles away from home and have a fat check in our pocket. So far so good. Now, according to our research one of the safest places for a big fat check is the bank account, also hundreds of miles away at the moment, and that’s where the check should go!
Of course, nobody in his right mind will travel all those miles back home to make a deposit, no. Instead, if your bank does not have a branch here, you find one that is affiliated with it! “Right”? “Right!”
Now thanks to telephones, notebooks and wireless internet it is not a big deal to find the right bank and the directions to go with it.
We place a quick phone call to make sure this bank is really working with ours and off we go!
The check is nicely nestled in my purse and I’m snuggled into my seat. We are following the directions and should reach the closest bank in no more than forty minutes.
Unfortunately the directions were good, but a road construction sent us on a detour, a lousy thirty minutes of our time. Well, actually, being in a strange town and not a small one at that, it took another hour to finally detour all the way to the bank.
Once there, we got in line, fat check tightly clasped in hand. The old man on the counter takes forever, but finally he is done, the gentleman, left over from a different area is next and he’s quick too. Now only the middle-aged lady with her huge hat is next in line between us and our deposit. She is a chattery little thing and when she’s finally done gossiping and turns to leave, she leaves her purse behind. With a shrill yelp she doubles back, snatches the purse and dashes off …
“I had called earlier and would like to make a deposit,” my husband says cheerful and hands the check over to the clerk, after he pried it from my hands.
“Do you have an account here?” the lady on the other side of the counter asks without even looking at the check.
“No, I have an account with my bank, but I have called and was told your bank is affiliated with mine and I can make my deposit right here,” he explains, still all cheer and charm.
With a sigh she reluctantly picks up our check, the big fat one, on the very corner, as if it carried some contagious disease, and looks at it.
“Nope,” she simply says and hands it back over.
We looked at each other at a loss for words for one moment and than back at her, as if she was some strange creature from an alien planet.
“What do you mean NO???” my husband asks, pushing the check back towards her as if not to infect himself.
“We can’t do that. You have to go to your own bank to deposit THAT,” she says frowning at our simpleminded naivete and pushes the object back toward our side of the counter.
“No, I’ve called and was told that your bank is affiliated with mine and it would be no problem to make a deposit, here!” he pushed the check back toward her.
“You must have called another bank, sorry,” she replies, obviously bored with us here.
“No, did not. Do you have a supervisor that could help us out here?” I finally put my five cents in, my two went earlier at a reckless driver.
By now the bank was very empty and two other female tellers came over to look over her shoulder.
“He’s on lunch,” she says, her hands folded in her lap, we assume, since we can’t see them.
“Tell them to go to another bank,” one of the ladies behind her advises as if we were not even there.
“Go to another bank,” she repeats.
“Look, Miss, we have called this bank and were told that you could deposit this check into our account at our bank. There’s got to be someone here who can handle it,” I insist stubbornly.
“I’ve never done this before, you’ll have to go to a service center or to your bank,” she replies just as stubbornly.
“There’s another bank just down the street, they can do it,” the other lady behind her assures us.
“So, your bank can do it, but you’ve never done it, is that the problem?” my husband asks now, raising his eyebrows.
“Never. But, yes, right down the street, I’m sure you can have it done there,” she replies.
“No more than two or three blocks,” one of the ladies behind her agrees.
“Can’t miss it,” the other one knows to tell.
“Who usually does deposits like that?” my husband is determined to ignore the ladies advice. The only answer we receive is three ladies shrugging their shoulders.
“When will your supervisor be back?” I ask suspiciously. Another shrug of shoulders.
“I’m sure his lunch can’t take all that long, we can just wait,” my husband offers, now all smiles again.
“Oh, I’m sorry, but he has the afternoon off for an appointment,” one of the standing ladies knows to tell.
“Well, someone in this bank has to know how to deposit a check into an account with an affiliated bank. How about if you just find out who it is, we’ll wait!”
“No, I’m sure we don’t do that here, sorry,” she pushes the check closer to us again.
This time we are out of patients. My husband takes the fat check, stores it in his shirt pocket and takes my hand.
“ You know, you all should look for jobs a little more appropriate for your talents, like cashier in a grocery store, or selling the paper on the corner,” he says, takes my hand and leads me out of the door.
“We’ll be in touch with your supervisor, just to make sure you get some training,” I call back over my shoulder.
We drive down two blocks and find another bank. It takes us all of five minutes to enter, reach the teller and deposit our check. We even were addressed with Ma’am and Sir!
