Drop-Box Syndrome - 2

************************************************************************************************************

 

http://www.jantoo.com/cartoons/keywords/bank-accounts

"When I go into a bank I get rattled. The clerks rattle me; the wickets rattle me; the sight of the money rattles me; everything rattles me. The moment I cross the threshold of a bank and attempt to transact business there, I become an irresponsible idiot. I knew this beforehand, but my salary had been raised to fifty dollars a month and I felt that the bank was the only place for it.

So I shambled in and looked timidly round at the clerks. I had an idea that a person about to open an account must needs consult the manager. I went up to a wicket marked "Accountant. " The accountant was a tall, cool devil. The very sight of him rattled me. My voice was sepulchral.

"Can I see the manager?" I said, and added solemnly, "alone." I don't know why I said "alone."

"Certainly," said the accountant, and fetched him.

The manager was a grave, calm man. I held my fifty-six dollars clutched in a crumpled ball in my pocket.

"Are you the manager?" I said. God knows I didn't doubt it.

"Yes," he said.

"Can I see you," I asked, "alone?" I didn't want to say "alone" again, but without it the thing seemed self-evident.

The manager looked at me in some alarm. He felt that I had an awful secret to reveal.

"Come in here," he said, and led the way to a private room. He turned the key in the lock.

"We are safe from interruption here," he said; "sit down."

We both sat down and looked at each other. I found no voice to speak.

"You are one of Pinkerton's men, I presume," he said.

He had gathered from my mysterious manner that I was a detective. I knew what he was thinking, and it made me worse.

"No, not from Pinkerton's," I said, seeming to imply that I came from a rival agency.

"To tell the truth," I went on, as if I had been prompted to lie about it, "I am not a detective at all. I have come to open an account. I intend to keep all my money in this bank."

The manager looked relieved but still serious; he concluded now that I was a son of Baron Rothschild or a young Gould.

"A large account, I suppose," he said.

"Fairly large," I whispered. "I propose to deposit fifty-six dollars now and fifty dollars a month regularly."

The manager got up and opened the door. He called to the accountant.

"Mr. Montgomery," he said unkindly loud, "this gentleman is opening an account, he will deposit fifty-six dollars. Good morning."

I rose.

A big iron door stood open at the side of the room.

"Good morning," I said, and stepped into the safe.

"Come out," said the manager coldly, and showed me the other way.

I went up to the accountant's wicket and poked the ball of money at him with a quick convulsive movement as if I were doing a conjuring trick.

My face was ghastly pale.

"Here," I said, "deposit it." The tone of the words seemed to mean, "Let us do this painful thing while the fit is on us."

He took the money and gave it to another clerk.

He made me write the sum on a slip and sign my name in a book. I no longer knew what I was doing. The bank swam before my eyes.

"Is it deposited?" I asked in a hollow, vibrating voice.

"It is," said the accountant.

"Then I want to draw a cheque."

My idea was to draw out six dollars of it for present use. Someone gave me a chequebook through a wicket and someone else began telling me how to write it out. The people in the bank had the impression that I was an invalid millionaire. I wrote something on the cheque and thrust it in at the clerk. He looked at it.

"What! Are you drawing it all out again?" he asked in surprise. Then I realized that I had written fifty-six instead of six. I was too far gone to reason now. I had a feeling that it was impossible to explain the thing. All the clerks had stopped writing to look at me.

Reckless with misery, I made a plunge.

"Yes, the whole thing."

"You withdraw your money from the bank?"

"Every cent of it."

"Are you not going to deposit any more?" said the clerk, astonished.

"Never."

An idiot hope struck me that they might think something had insulted me while I was writing the cheque and that I had changed my mind. I made a wretched attempt to look like a man with a fearfully quick temper.

The clerk prepared to pay the money.

"How will you have it?" he said.

"What?"

"How will you have it?"

"Oh"--I caught his meaning and answered without even trying to think--"in fifties."

He gave me a fifty-dollar bill.

"And the six?" he asked dryly.

"In sixes," I said.

He gave it me and I rushed out.

As the big door swung behind me I caught the echo of a roar of laughter that went up to the ceiling of the bank.

Since then I bank no more. I keep my money in cash in my trousers pocket and my savings in silver dollars in a sock."

 ...My Financial Career by Stephen Leacock

 http://www.fullbooks.com/Literary-Lapsesx79601.html

 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

By the time I retired from IIT KGP in 2005 our Branch of State Bank of India there was a vast affair. It was housed in a huge building and there were perhaps 50 odd employees there. Most all of them were males. They were friendly but not exactly helpful...the system there was like that.

Occasionally I had an outstation check which I had to deposit in my Savings Account. And I had to fill up a form for that. And there would be a long line in front of the counter manned by a clerk sipping tea whenever I happened to go there.

To get the form I had to seek this gentleman...he had a few forms secretly stored in his drawer. And as I approached the counter sidestepping the customers in front of it, there would be scowls. And I had to pacify them that all I needed was only a form.

And, amidst his preoccupations, he would take a look at me and reassure himself I was no fake, collecting blank forms and selling them in the black market outside. And gingerly hand me one.

Filling up that form required a mastery of the banking jargon...all sorts of numbers like my own Account Number, the couple of numbers on the check, the branch code of my own bank as well as the drawee's and a host of other details...back and front.

Since I was not very sure of what I entered, I had to go to the counter again just to get the counter clerk's approval, once again amidst scowls. And he would tick a few items and put his trademark red ink initials.

And then I had to stand at the end of the line. After half an hour my turn would come and the clerk would kindly pin my check to the form from his secret collection of pins and check the entries once again, thump a couple of rubber stamps here and there, one more on the counterfoil and sign it in red ink, tear it, and hand it over to me triumphantly. I would be happy that I have some proof that I had deposited my check in the bank.

Everything was different when I first went, in 2004, to a neighborhood State Bank of India Branch in Hyderabad. The bank was equally vast and crowded but everyone manning the counters was a lady, for a change. And I asked the lady behind the Help Desk how to open a Savings Account there. She told me to meet the Personal Manager, Subba Rao. 

Luckily when I reached his cubicle, his customers were leaving and I found him alone. When I told him that I was a Professor at IIT KGP, he asked me to take the hot seat in front of him and said:

"Why don't you open an IIT in our Hyderabad, sir...our children have to go all the way here and there seeking admission nowadays"

I smiled as if to say that I will try my best ;)

...It took less than 5 years for his dream to come true...in spite of me...

And then he took out a 10-page blue booklet and asked me some details like my name, PAN, and filled the form himself in a few minutes, asked me to sign it here and there and give him whatever documents I had with me like address proof and photos, and within a few minutes I had my brand new Pass Book and Check Book in my hands. 

And he said I would get my ATM Card to my home address within a week. I didn't exactly know what an ATM Card was; but I kept quiet.

And we shook hands, and I left, wondering what was happening...

After I retired in 2005, I got this check on SBI, IIT KGP Branch, for a hefty sum of a couple of lakhs of rupees as my dues from IIT. And I went to my Hyderabad Branch to deposit this sumptuous outstation check in my Savings Account, with butterflies in my stomach lest I lose it in the hustle and bustle.

And I went to the courteous lady behind the Help Desk and showed her my fat check and asked her for help in depositing it. She showed me a table on which were lying hundreds of forms of various colors and asked me to pick up and fill in the blue form.

I was amazed, and with the expertise I developed at IIT KGP, I filled up the form and the counterfoil to the best of my ability and went to her and showed it to her if it was ok. She didn't even glance at it but showed me another desk on which was stationed a Drop-Box of wood with three slots on it, labeled Local, Outstation, and Foreign. 

And she asked me to take a pin from a stack lying on the desk, pin my precious check to my form and drop it in the appropriate slot.    

And get lost...

I was peeved and asked her about my counterfoil. She said I could tear it from the 'foil', and keep it with me.

I asked her:

"What about the rubber stamp?"

"The stamp and the pad are lying beside the Drop-Box. You can stamp the counterfoil yourself"

"What about the banker's signature on the counterfoil?"

"You can sign it yourself if you so wish"

My head was reeling and my heart was thumping that I was being asked to dump my Rs 2 lakh-check in a creaky wooden box with no proof that I had ever done so.

I demurred and at last I decided to approach my Personal Manager, Subba Rao, who was terribly busy with half a dozen customers...all of them perhaps millionaires of Hyderabad.

He looked at me and came out and asked what he could do for me. And I showed him my check and form and he smiled and took them, signed and stamped and handed me the counterfoil, dumping the foil in his drawer.

And he made an entry in my Pass Book too...telling me that I could withdraw from that amount any time I liked...on good faith...SBI-to-SBI transactions are trusted.

Wow!!!

Shortly thereafter, my son's marriage came up...and my wife and I went to our Bank with a wedding card and invited Subba Rao with his family to the Reception at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Abids...and they were there gracing the occasion...

************************************************************************************************************