Rage against the machine

I went to the bank today, it is a Saturday I know but I had to make a deposit. The branch was due to be open till quite late so I had plenty of time to get there, however, I parked in very expensive, notoriously risky part of town; I had to hurry so as not to get a ticket. I found plenty of parking, in itself quite unusual, pay the meter and rush into the bank. There was the usual bank of automated machines lining the wall. I have used them several times and they do not work for me. Apart from withdrawing cash, they do nothing else. I join the queue of people waiting to be seen by a real/human customer service person. There were 3 people in front of me, not a long wait, or so I thought.

I got in behind the last person and there was the usual customer service staff circling the queuing customers, trying to lure them away from the archaic practice of “Queuing”. Why not use or new automated service, it’s a machine, no idle chit chat, and get your transactions done quicker than speaking to a human (ironically, I thought, these people are talking themselves out of a job because soon, these fancy talking hole's in the wall will replace them all). I refused the offer, I always do, I end up wasting far more time at those machines and preferred to wait in line. Others in the line refused too, they too perhaps were now wise to the non performing robots. We carried on waiting and we seemed to be waiting far longer than seemed necessary. I wonder if the banking tellers were purposely wasting our time so we would start to reconsider using them. I say this because when you eventually get to a teller, they ask you all sorts of ridiculous, inane questions: "I see you are due a financial check up", "would you like to see someone" " no one is available till the next couple of weeks" "should we call you to make an appointment" "is this withdrawal for Christmas presents" and so forth. They have become like double glazing sales people, there is no getting rid of them.

I waited, and waited, watching the clock to make sure that I got out of the bank before my parking ticket expired; I was getting a bit anxious. There was a changing of the guard at the tellers, someone’s shift was over and it took her impossibly long to get off and hand over the reins to someone else. We were down to one teller now and the line had practically stopped moving. Then someone else came on to join the only other teller but instead of serving us customers, she counted money in that money counting machine thing, and shifted papers hither thither. What on earth is going on I wondered. Eventually, after counting the same cash over and again (I am convinced) she was open for business. She signalled to me and I went over to her. By now, the lobby was full of queuing customers and despite repeated calls for us to use the wonder machines, people still queued up as the machines were still not fully functional.

Whist I was eventually being served, I looked over at the other teller. She had just finished with a customer but did not immediately attend to another. I stared at her in sheer frustration to see if she was really making us wait on purpose, she was! For after the last customer left, she appeared to re-arrange her desk; she moved her calculator out of her way, looked at it and readjusted it, then she moved her stapler or something similar, she assessed her handy work and then shifted some papers, stared at her workspace some more, then when there was absolutely nothing left to shift or adjust, she called for the next customer and apologised, yes apologised for the long wait. I didn’t believe it, I was incredulous; had they been ordered to make people wait at the tellers so that we would be encouraged to use the machines. I was disbelieving, surely, they realise that when customers become dependent on these machines, their own jobs will cease to exist, and to be honest, with service like I have received on my last few trips to the bank, that would no big loss.