I went to a major bank, the other day. It is rare that I go in person, for as most people, I have been trained to do most of my business online. But, occasionally, we are compelled to seek in person service, as I was on this occasion.
It was the lunch hour, when the working stiff has a brief freedom to conduct personal affairs. I am a retired stiff, but I happened to join the working ones on what alas was a longish line.
A concomitant reality to modern man being forced online for personal business is that brick and mortar locales have few service people to minister to flesh and blood customers. This includes large banks.
I did have another appointment, but I was not in extremis when it came to my schedule. That was not the case with some of the others ahead of me. There were, however, only two tellers at six or so windows.
And there was one grandmotherly type employee whose entire job seemed to be to quell the anger of the understandably impatient consumers who had hoped to use part of their lunch hour for. . . .lunch.
As a grumble erupted, this lady would engage and comfort and rationalize.
Customer: "Don't you have more tellers?"
Grandmother employee: "We have only three. One of them is at lunch. She has to eat lunch."
I am a barbarian, I know. I have many times been expected, and did, work through the official lunch hour, in order to take care of some emergency at my various jobs. The customer of whatever stripe came first. I realize that now there are rules, laws even, that prevent the exploitation of the employee in favor of the exploitation of the consumer. Yes, she has to eat lunch. She has to eat lunch during the lunch hour when bank customers come during their lunches. Makes absolute sense.
Some on the line were not assuaged. But one man, visiting from Australia, and at the very front of the line, was completely on board with the need for delay and the limits of having tellers at the teller windows.
He became the example of goodness which shamed the disgruntled. Alas, I remained on the side of the disgruntled.
Grandmother Employee: (to Australian gentleman) "You have a good heart. It is important to have a good heart."
I agreed. It is important to have a good heart. But, I was experiencing cognitive dissonance. Was it a failure of a good heart to expect that a major bank, for that matter, any business in which the consumer pays for a service, and where, as in the case of a bank, the business is in it for profit, to provide decent, timely service?
A woman came in behind me. She went directly to Grandmother Employee as soon as she saw the line and asked if she could just leave the deposit she had. She had another appointment elsewhere. It sounded urgent.
Grandmother Employee: "Yes, but then you won't get a receipt."
The woman thought better of her shortcut, and joined me on the line.
As more people entered and saw the line, and Grandmother Employee praised them on their anticipated good hearts, I decided to ask her to consider the incongruity of her expectation. If I had been in a particular rush, I would probably not have been calm or considered in my interaction, but I wasn't in a rush and could be thoughtful and, well, more or less of good heart.
I said that I appreciated her effort with all of us, and she clearly wasn't responsible for the staffing issues at the bank, but perhaps she could pass on to the management (hope springs eternal indeed) that having only two tellers and one at lunch at a time when it is most likely other working people will need the bank was illogical, and not the good service that we are always expected to agree occurred in those ubiquitous surveys. For example, I said, while indeed all employees needed lunch, perhaps they could stagger AFTER high noon, say at 1 p.m. when likely there would be fewer customers.
Grandmother Employee thanked me for my comment. She did not say that she would pass it on. I really didn't expect that she would.
The lady behind me, apparently no longer concerned about her appointment which had caused her to ask that her deposit be taken by Grandmother Employee, regaled me with her empathy for the system, and how, for example, when she had to wait places she would bring a book along. I didn't ask her if she really had an appointment she needed to go to when she asked Grandmother Employee to take her deposit, thus, attempting to bypass all of us waiting on line. My guess is that the appointment did not exist, because she was apparently content now to wait with us.
I felt anger rising in me that the now patient customer saw no problem with outright bad service and her solution was that in its presence a good book was a solution.
Fortunately, few people ahead of me had complicated issues (not always the case as you know at a bank) and I made it to the front. "Nice talking to you," I said to the lady behind me. That wasn't exactly true, but I was trying to be of good heart.
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