So I walked into my local branch of First Second State Federal Credit Union this morning intent on depositing three checks into my checking account. I would like to point out that in my over-ten-years of banking with FSSCU, the fine tellers there have always handled similar requests with a style, grace, aplomb, speed, and efficiency I have come to rely on. In fact, I was especially relying on this efficiency as I had about 10 minutes to get to work to be on time for a meeting I had. Fortunately for me, no one was in line and so--with one person on duty at the counter--I stepped up to the sign that kindly directed me to wait for the next available teller.
The teller on duty slowly looked at me, smiled, looked to the side, looked at the ceiling, looked behind her, looked at me again and asked me if she could help. I walked up, handed her the three checks I hoped to deposit and asked her if I could please deposit them in my checking account. She looked at me, looked at the checks, flipped the checks over, looked at them, looked behind her, up at the ceiling, back at me, off to the side and said, "Do you know your account number?" Slightly confused that she wasn't looking at me or at her computer, I gave her my account number. She looked back at me and said, "What? What was that?" Checking the large circular mirror in the corner to make sure I hadn't suddenly turned into a gorilla or something equally mystifying, I dutifully repeated the number again.
The teller punched in my account number, flipped the stack of checks over and looked at them for a bit, flipped them over again and looked at them for a bit, repeated this process three or four times, and then repeated this process again for each of the checks in the pile. I'm not sure if she was looking for signs of counterfeiting, her daily horoscope, the secret of life, or the cure for cancer, but eventually she decided they were just checks, and began to key in the digits. After she finished, she asked me to verify that everything was correct on the display in front of me, which I confirmed verbally. She began staring at me. After about thirty uncomfortable seconds, she asked me, "Is that all?"
"Uhhhh...." I replied. "Uh. Yeah, I think so... So those went into my checking account, right? We're good, right?"
She looked away from me over her shoulder at nothing in particular (I know it was nothing because by this time, I had scanned every inch of the bank to see where the armed-robbers-that-certainly-must-have-taken-her-hostage-and-were-even-now-plotting-our-violent-deaths were, but--fortunately--could see no one else) and slowly replied, "Yeah."
I was really late for the meeting.
