Thursday, January 27, 2011

Legends of the Bank Teller - Episode XCV

To the spoiled rich customers out there who like getting whatever you want just because you carry a certain average balance with my bank, stop coming to the drive through if you want us to wipe your butt for you. If you want a personal banker to hold your hand while you get all your transactions processed, you need to come inside and sit down at the customer service desk.

Scenario: A wealthy business owner came to my drive-thru. I've seen this man any number of times. He makes deposits into his business accounts. That's all I've ever helped him with. On this particular day, he came with a deposit and a check to cash. First of all, the check he was cashing was for $1500. I've been told that I'm not supposed to cash checks for more than a thousand at the drive-thru. This is for security purposes. But we were short handed that day and I didn't feel like dealing with the backlash of asking him to come inside.

When he initially drove up, I was already helping someone in the lobby. The lobby customer had multiple transactions. And I was treating them as I treat everyone, first come, first served. When I completed her transactions, I turned back to the window and ran the wealthy douche bag's deposit. When I saw the amount of the check, I asked for his ID. At this point he began throwing a temper tantrum.

"You don't recognize me?!" He then spouted off some obscenities, which I will spare you here.

"I do recognize you, but I've never cashed a check for you before, I just have to record that I saw it," I said, maintaining my calm.

He then proceeds to tell me to hurry up because he doesn't have time to sit around and wait. He also told me to make sure I didn't screw up on his deposit like I did last time. For the record, I have messed up his deposit before. It wasn't anything that he or I didn't catch right away. He's one of those guys that likes to just throw a pile of paperwork into the drawer without separating anything. So he could have one deposit ticket followed by a couple checks, and then another deposit ticket and a few more checks. When you're looking for speed and accuracy, help your teller out by having things separate. Just a good rule of thumb.

I'm barely containing my rage at this point. Not only has he shouted obscenities through the speaker at me, he's questioning my ability to even do the job I'm being paid to do. I counted out his money and passed it out to him. I ended the transaction with the same script I always do. It's nice to have the script when a customer is doing everything in his or her power to piss you off. He yelled back that I need to do a better job of recognizing my customers.

You know, for a very long time I've called into question whether or not I'm even cut out for customer service of any kind. I may not be very good at selling things or talking people into opening new accounts, but I can be polite and courteous 'til the cows come home. There are a lot of times when I may be repressing other feelings while trying to make the customer feel warm and welcome, but I've gotten pretty good at faking it when the situation calls for it.

I really don't want to become one of those cynical types that just completely hates working with people. I don't want to be someone that completely hates being around people altogether. But people like that make it really difficult to ever want to break out of this shell I've managed to build up around myself for so long. People like that, who just seem to be looking for a reason to complain and lookin for a reason to pick a fight are the kind of people that I don't want to deal with. It's people like that that make me want to quit this job on a daily basis. It isn't my co-workers. It isn't even the expectations that the powers that be have on me and my job performance. It's the rude, arrogant, selfish [expletive deleted] that make their way through here and make unreasonable demands of the people who are doing nothing but trying to help them.

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