HSBC bank. What a waste of space. I have merely to pay three cheques into two accounts.
I arrive. Upstairs, the queue for proper person to person pay-ins is looking like Nigel Farage's immigration poster, or Thatcher's "Labour isn't working" poster back in the 1970s. I harbour a sneaking suspicion some of the people at the front of the queue are the remnants of Thatcher's queue that was redirected to this bank teller's position without that knowledge. Or maybe even the last vestiges of the Jarrow march that similarly and unknowingly got redirected to Devizes.
So I venture back downstairs where the automated pay-in machines reside. The pathetically inadequate "self serve pay-in" machine won't take the pay-ins. I try several times with the various pieces of paper in different orders and ways up etc. It's still not taking them. It hates me. I can tell. It mocks me with its insistent beeping noise and teases me by asking for my bank card for the bank account details. Then spits it all out and laughingly refers me to a member of staff to assist me. Except there are no members of staff downstairs, where "Radio HSBC Braindead" is playing just-oh-so-slightly-too-loud with its cheery banterous and jocular invitations to take out vast swathes of credit interspersed with the sort of musical tracks that not even Radio SadTwats won't play.
No doubt the members of staff that are not available to assist are on their lunch break. Which is fair enough. Except that it is clearly beyond the wit of HSBC to realise that the busiest time of the day is likely to be when everybody else is at lunch and needing some reasonable expeditious service. My how I chortled to myself at this oversight.
I return upstairs, defeated by my nemesis of self service automated machines. Upstairs has only two tellers. Because of course HSBC only has two teller positions. They don't need any more of course because the automated self service machines downstairs means nobody needs real life tellers really. I sigh.
The "real world and people" tellers i.e. actual human beings, have a queue six people long now. Thatcher has put the rest to work, or Farage has put them onto an overcrowded boat and sent them out to sea. And the Jarrovians have just withered and died and are but dust on the breeze of the just-too-cold air-conditioning.
Eventually I get to the front. There's a guy on the left taking out his life savings and needing to supply a thousand security proofs to do so. And a woman on the right on holiday that is insisting on telling the teller her life history and holiday plans. Eventually the woman on the right has finished with her great-aunt's lumbago story. She is finished. Well, she takes a breath which is all the teller needs to interject. But then the interjecting teller starts to give holiday woman a sales spiel about an advanced account that holiday woman could transfer to. This takes a few minutes. Holiday woman acquiesces and is directed to wait in a nearby chair for someone to attend her. Holiday woman moves away and the teller's window is available. At last.
I step to the window. "Sorry Sir, I have to attend to something for a few minutes. Please wait."
My life flashes before me. will I ever see my wife and children again? Will I end up on some politician's banner one day making a heavy and unsubtle point? I step back to the queue. The head of which is now held by a woman with a walker. She has to then awkwardly reverse with said walker so I can "stay behind the line". Its an unedifying position and the entire rest of the queue jostles backwards, including travel-agent-chat man who is loudly talking on his mobile phone to somebody who is in a travel agents. Its marginally worse than listening to "Radio HSBC Braindead".
I wait. Eons pass. Life savings man has now got to answer a question about his great-grandfather's dog's favourite walk. I wonder if he will actually pass away before getting his mitts on his savings. Or he will fail at the final hurdle because his DNA doesnt; match an alleged ancestor for the times of the Dark Ages.
I wait some more. A lot more.
Eventually life savings man has passed the Spanish inquisition and walks off with a cheap plastic shopping bag stuffed with notes. He wouldn't last 30 seconds in Streatham. Good job this isn't Streatham.
I step forward. "How can I help you" asks the other teller
I count to ten. I briefly and curtly request to pay the cheques in. She inquires about the automated pay-in machines; she catches my less than delighted visage. She quietens and processes the cheques and paying in slips. The paying in process takes less than a minute.
I have reached nirvana.
Now I am finally completed, outside the seasons have changed and my children are now adults. There's a new monarch on the throne and Brexit has still not completed. I notice a political poster in the wall of the new building that has somehow sprung up since I entered the bank. "Bojo's Dry Cleaning". The poster has a long, winding queue of people in it. I am sure I can see myself somewhere towards the back.
(c) Ian Diddams 2017
