Legends of the Bank Teller - Episode LVIII

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned before that I'm not a fan of answering the phone at work. In fact, I'm fairly certain that the sound of that phone ringing is possibly the most annoying sound on the planet.

I don't like answering the phone, because no one ever calls for me. And usually, on the rare occasion that someone does call for me, it's not for a good reason.

Despite the fact that tellers stay pretty busy throughout the day dealing with customers that took the time to actually come to the bank, we are sometimes forced to answer the phone because the customer service people might be busy.

I found myself in that situation just the other day. A man called and wanted to speak with a manager. Well, as luck would have it, the manager and assistant manager were both busy and were unable to take a phone call. So he, the irate customer on the phone, asked for the number to another branch. This is information that is readily available, but not right where I was standing. So while I stayed on the line with the customer, I asked another teller to look on the list for the other phone number.

In the 15 to 30 seconds it took to find this number, I got to listen to all of this man's complaints. Mostly his rant consisted of "y'all screwed up my account again," and similar phrases. As a teller and a representative of the bank, I'm expected to sit there and take it. I gave him the number he was looking for and he hung up in a huff.

I really don't want to sit there and take it sometimes though. I'd really like to ask him what he means by "y'all?" I know it's a contraction for you all. But that implies that all of us at the bank had a hand in his account being overdrawn. This being the first time I'd ever spoken to him, I assume I had never even looked at his account. So I, personally, had nothing to do with his account being messed up.

I'd be willing to bet real money that it was, in fact, he and he alone who screwed up his account. But if I make that kind of claim, then I'm being just as harsh and judgmental as he was.