Saturday, October 02, 2010

Legends of the Bank Teller - Episode LXXXVII

We got a call from a woman yesterday who was calling to let us know that our ATM made a mistake and gave her money that wasn't hers. Apparently, she pulled up to the ATM, and before she even inserted her card or punched in her PIN, the machine gave her $400. She wanted to know what she should do.

Okay, I know the right thing to do is to return the money. But if there was a magical ATM out there that was just giving away $400, I'm pretty sure I'd want to visit that machine. When the teller that answered the phone asked the assistant manager what she should tell the woman, he said, "Do you want my answer or do you want the banker's answer?"

A lot of people wouldn't have bothered calling. That's $400 that you just got for free. Congratulations!

But this woman, who made it clear that she just recently opened an account with us, called to complain. "I just opened this account with you guys and already it's a hassle!" I'm sorry, but having $400 shoved in my face by accident is not what I'd call a "hassle." That's what I call serendipity.

Did Columbus call Spain to complain when he hit the Caribbean instead of arriving in Indonesia? "Crap guys! We're in the wrong place! Turn it around!" No, he didn't. Instead he landed, enslaved the natives, called them Indians, and pretended like he didn't make a mistake at all. He kept the $400 dollars.

This woman just kept complaining about how much of a hassle it was for her to have to bring the money back to the branch. But it was made clear that she didn't have to bring it to our branch. Any branch would do.

By the time the manager got off the phone with her, he was a little fed up with the phone call. When he hung up, he told us what he really wanted to say. "Do you want me to call Superman and have him fly backwards around the world to turn back time so this never would have happened to you?" If she had never called us, we'd have never known about the mistake. $400 gone and no one would have been the wiser.

I'd like to hear some of her other complaints about life...

"This diamond that my fiancee got me is way too big and heavy! I can hardly lift my hand!"

"It isn't fair that my kids are so well behaved. Why don't they ever get in trouble or sent to detention like some of their delinquent friends?"

"Well, shoot! I won the lottery. Now I've gotta drive all the way downtown to pick up my humorously over-sized check for millions of dollars. And I was gonna spend the day watching that Real Housewives of New Jersey marathon. There goes my weekend!"

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