Friday, January 7, 2011

how to: make a bank teller's day more interesting

Twenty years ago, I was a bank teller.  It was a fun job, once I got over the whole eww-how-many-people-have-touched-this-money-before-me-and-where-were-their-hands? thing.  Every once in a while we had to stay late for meetings, which irked me even though we were getting paid, but I didn't mind when the meetings were about how-to-stay-alive-while-you're-being-robbed.  I know bank-robbing isn't a good thing, but come on - who doesn't like a good dumb-and-smart-things-crooks-do-and-how-to-respond story?  In one, after the teller gave over the money, the guy said, "Now give me your car keys."  He had scoped her and the bank out beforehand and knew which car she drove!  (And therefore she was able to give a very accurate description of the getaway car to the police.)  Perhaps just an urban legend, but I was an early-20's-year-old in my first "real" job, and that creeped me out.

Anyway, I was reminded of that story today about half-way through performing the following maneuver in the parking lot of one of my new bank's branches, and I realized my actions could have looked like this:

What I did:                                          What a well-trained teller would think:
Pull into drive-thru area, look for             Pull into lot and block any cars which
place to pull over to fill out my               gung-ho employees or plain-carred security
deposit slip because I am so polite,       officers could use to follow me after the
fail to find much space, so block            robbery.
bank employees' cars as I write.

Lean over to my purse on the floor          Lean over to pick up weapons.
on the passenger side and pull
out my wallet and a medicine bottle.

Take an allergy pill.                               Take meth for courage.

Fill out deposit slip.                               Write robbery demands.

Back up, nearly hit car lurking just          Make erratic movements while operating
in front of the drive-thrus as that              heavy machinery just after taking drugs,
polite woman filled out her deposit           then...wait...never mind, it's just some
slip (they really need to expland that       idiot.
parking lot) and pull into drive-thru lane.

No comments:

Post a Comment