Wednesday, December 16, 2020

Drawing The Line




Big line at the bank today. I wasn't expecting a line because nobody goes into an actual bank anymore, but it was a Friday and I guess the Pay Day thing still applies.

That's how banking used to be. You got paid on Friday and you spent your lunch half-hour standing in line at the bank. That's how you could get cash money which you could exchange for beer. It didn't get excreted from a pore on the outside wall and it sure as hell didn't travel through space and reassemble in money molecules inside your account, from which you could withdraw it on your phone

Of course, nobody needs cash anymore. The grocery store is happy to dispense cash with your cauliflower, but mostly you don't need it. You can pay for absolutely anything absolutely any old way that doesn't involve cash. I don't know what street beggars are doing now, if they don't take cards.

I know you can take photos of your checks with your phone and shlorp them into your account from the comfort of your beanbag chair, or even at a stoplight, but I don't know how it's done and doubt my phone would cooperate. So I walk to the bank and hand my checks to the teller once a month or so. There's never a time a three-mile stroll isn't in order, and I don't have anything else I need to do. It's not like there's a line.

Until today. And the line appeared to have something to do with it being Friday and more to do with the dearth of tellers and the fact that one gentleman occupied one teller for the entire time I was there (that's a lot of mysterious banking), and the ATM outside was broken. The line was out the door because we were all spaced out, man.

The fellow in line in front of me did not recommend himself to me as an attractive font of conversation. He stabbed irritably at his phone and groused about stuff and eventually made it to the vestibule, from which he beckoned me--"They're letting two people in the vestibule"--and so in the name of visible progress I entered the vestibule, a small enclosed space, and the man continued to stab at his phone and grouse, with his face mask stationed under his bulbous nose, and I excused myself back outside, causing a cascade of back-stepping in the outdoor line.

By the time I graduated to all-the-way-indoors and stood on my assigned painted spot, the man ahead of me, Nose-Boy, got to a teller who wanted to know how he was today, or so she said, and he growled "Well, I've been standing in line for forty minutes," which was demonstrably not true unless he was there for twenty minutes before I showed up, which he was not. And he spluttered all of this with his face mask parked under his nose.

I know the tellers, who have to spend all day in that building with everybody's dangling or aerosolized secretions, would have loved to ask him to pull up his face mask. But people get tired of having to scold other grownups. And it rarely works out. This fellow wouldn't have taken it well. He was already put out by everything. The tellers have to make a calculation: risk severe unpleasantness accompanied by more spewing, or count on protection from the high ceilings and the Plexiglass? I didn't even have to work there all day and I didn't tell the man I was leaving the vestibule because his stupid nose was hanging out. I'd do the same thing as the tellers did.

Nothing. God Bless America.

31 comments:

  1. Even in my dreams, I sometimes realize that no one is wearing a mask and they are too close together, and I get scared. But, yeah, I don't scold anyone either, because I realize that people -- and that includes ME -- do not react well to a stranger scolding them about ANYTHING. It never ends well.

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    1. Generally, I can always make enough space for myself. I rarely go inside places anymore. I do know that some people simply can't remember to wear their masks correctly, so it's not always them just being obstreperous.

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  2. Teller work is not just dangerous for possible COVID, it is also dangerous for possible bank robbery and possible death. There is not way they make enough money for the abuse they have to take.

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    1. Most people don't make quite enough money for what they do, and others make way too much. There's a pattern there!

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  3. Let's hope that plexiglass did SOME prevention. I sure feel awful for these tellers (and the people behind this jerk in line). Anyway I just realized it's been 3-4 years since I waited in line in a bank, and I don't even own a smartphone! I don't miss those lines at all!

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    1. They probably really are pretty safe from COVID behind there although they have to be leery of each other, I imagine--any store, though, I feel for the employees, because I'm trying to get in and out as expeditiously as possible, and they're stuck.

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  4. No one stands in line at either of the credit unions with whom I do business. One either goes to the drive-thru or goes home. The doors are locked unless one has called to make an appointment.

    "Please give me some space" works well for this really old person, and I'm not afraid to say it. I cringe at those under-the-nose maskers and must admit to also being uncomfortable at masks over facial hair, there being no obvious way for a good seal to be had.

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    1. Oh dear. I also have an account at a CU and I can never seem to fight my way into their website and there's no There to go to. Everything is as automatic as I can make it and then I just hope for the best.

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  5. Sigh.
    I rarely go into a bank anymore (those hole in the wall jobs accept my cheques). If the hole in the wall is blocked I go away and come back later. I feel for the bank tellers. And those in line.

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    1. When the Hole In The Wall first came into being, I thought it was the greatest invention known to mankind.

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  6. The last time I was actually in a bank was when I was setting up my "freedom payments" after the divorce. Are those inside referred to as the Hole In the Wall Gang?

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  7. Maybe it’s time to learn to deposit a check.You just have to click on deposit, click on FRONT, lay the check down in a bright area, and move your phone towards it until it fills an outline. Sign on back for deposit only, click BACK and repeat. Then fill in your deposit form. Keep the check until it the deposit shows up in your bank records. This is WAY easier than trying to find an envelope, and drive miles to buy a stamp and mail it when people refuse to just transfer money to my account and I’m hundreds of miles from my bank.

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    1. That only works with a modern cell phone.

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    2. And NOTHING works on my modern cell phone, which is Abbie-Normal. I won't even try.

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    3. I still have a flip-phone, FFS. I don't NEED a computer with me 24/7, especially since I spend most of my time at home anyway.

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    4. Well mine is nominally a smart phone, but I'm still capable of ignoring it. Even eager.

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  8. Maybe Dr Adoda can make people wear masks appropriately.

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    1. He'd have a lot to do to vanquish the spell almost half the country is already under...

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  9. I believe you may have unwittingly found yourself on the wrong corridor of the many available on the intertubes.
    You're welcome.
    Have a day.

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  10. Yeah, we're all old enough to realize that there are other fish in the sea. Maybe you need therapy instead of Dr. Adoda.

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  11. "I got a black cat's bone / I got a mojo too! / I got John the Conqueroo / I'm gonna mess with you!" I prefer it when my witch doctors stay in blues songs and don't bother my website...

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  12. There needs to be widespread TV advertising on the correct way to wear your mask, since so many people clearly don't know how. I guess refusal of entry would also work.

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    1. Except that you gotta figure by now everyone does know, so it they're not doing it, there's something else wrong that you might not want to find out about.

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  13. You mean, my nose is also connected to my lungs? Who knew?

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  14. I don't know, I'm willing to try anything to get a lover to come to me on his knees. That is very promising.

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  15. Baby boomers are either going to die of the corona-virus, or will get abused in retirement homes. And you boomers deserve this for destroying your own children's future, your own children's lives. Look in the mirror. You baby boomers are extremely evil people.

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    1. Nya, nya, nya. I'm too old to be a Boomer. Besides, I wear army boots!

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    2. Aw, man, you're pulling the Greatest Generation card?

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