The Change Bank

About once a week I take the money we collect from selling cheap snacks at the Institute down to the bank that is staffed entirely by dummies.  The kids they have working that little branch in the grocery store are as dumb as a pile of rocks. A sweet, friendly, helpful, but dumb pile of rocks.  Large amounts of change stump them every single time.  It's quite a show. 

They always start out so haphazardly. I feel like the most logical way to count change is to group like coins together into dollars and then make groupings of different coins into dollars.  But these folks just dive right in and make the most random coin combinations. This always makes them miscount and when they point out that my deposit slip doesn't match what they've counted I have to point out that several of their stacks of coins that I watched them form don't actually equal a dollar.  Or that they mistook all the dollar coins for quarters.  Or they forgot to count several coins they pushed off to the side.  Or a roll of nickels is $2 not $4. 

I started to think that maybe it was me.  Maybe I make them nervous, just sitting there watching them count.  So I try to be as happy and non-judgy as possible.  I go along with the small talk and act totally casual about the whole thing.  And still they fumble.  And this isn't just one teller.  It's every teller (Except for one.  Fatima.  I always pray she's there.  She rarely is.  I need to learn her schedule.) All of them really struggle with this.  Look, I know that numbers are hard.  I've never cared for them myself.  But if you're going to be a bank teller shouldn't one of the minimum skills be counting?

At the end of every visit they all say the same thing:  "Can I go out of my way to do anything else for you?"  I think this is a very strange way to ask.  I don't know if the management started that or if one of them said it and they all thought it was so clever that they picked it up.  But regardless, no, I do not want them to go out of their way.  But since they're asking, I wouldn't mind a snack seeing as I will be there for a while.