Relationship Banker? Really?

Is that what we're calling ourselves now?

Okay, I can see how Fiscal United Bank is looking to make everything a little more personal and enhance the customer relations experience, but why do I suddenly feel like I'm the star of a Will Smith romantic comedy? (Granted, Kevin James and I probably wrestle in the same weight class, but Hitch I am not...)

How exactly does Relationship Banker explain to the customers what my function is? Just seems to me like this is more of the Dilbert-esque corporate lingo doublespeak that gave us such gems as "leveraging our action items into a dynamic corporate synergy." What does that even mean? Where do people come up with this? It's like someone threw business edition poetry magnets at a fridge and used whatever came out as their new mission statement for the quarter.

Whatever happened to the days when your job title actually described what your job was? What was wrong with Client Service Representative? Too long? I can see how they'd likely seek to avoid branding us Client Servicers. That just sounds way too blue. But what made them settle on Relationship Banker? Why not Financial Ingénue? Domestic Partnership Broker? Currencyhandler of Intrigue?

I guess it could be worse. I have been called worse by people I worked for. Just seems like they're hiding us behind an Esperanto-like language of Business English that shall henceforth be known as "Bizinglish."

Here's hoping you can leverage your daily action items into a positive calendar position (or, in non-Bizinglish, "have a nice day.")

Poetry In (Pro)Motion

I'm a movin' on up (or down, as it were, to a lower chair). I am being trained to become a Client Services Representative. There is no formal training for this, I am told, so the past few weeks have been me having my job explained to me by four different people four different ways. What's even funnier is that I am learning the way to do my job now, on our current systems, even though in less than a month we will be switched over to our new system, ConnectionSpot. So I'll have to learn the job all over again, from a computer stand point.

I am also told that one of our tellers, Billie Jo, is being passed up for this promotion. I didn't even know she was being considered, and frankly, it shocks me to hear it. She is not all that good at her current job as a teller. She gets flustered easily, distracted frequently, and confused copiously. She has differences in reconciling her teller drawer at least once a week, which for those not in the banking world, that's not good at all. Not the worst I had seen, but not up to standards. (The worst I've seen was Tracy, from the Riverhead branch, who had 29 differences in a 40 day span, and the only reason she wasn't fired according to Jean, the assistant manager, was because they couldn't afford to lose another teller. As in, because I was leaving, they were keeping a moronic Barbie-doll. And to think, I could have stayed there and enjoyed all that strife!)

You put Billie Jo behind a desk with an irate client yelling at her, she'll fold like an origami laundromat with a 2-7 off suit.

We shall see how the new position treats me. Hopefully it won't lead to another new position: prone.

Jane Sykes, Chapter One: In Which We Learn The Name That Must Never Be Spoken

Jane Sykes is in her seventies. I was working on the drive up and she pulled up in her huge car. Just before I went to help her, one of the other tellers grabbed my arm and said “Oh, God, it’s Jane. Don’t say her name to her, she’ll flip out.”

I laughed to myself, thinking they were playing a prank on me. I turned and looked at the client and froze in my tracks. I’ve seen how old ladies apply make up. It looks like they applied it driving 80 miles an hour backwards.

Well, Jane looked like she had taped lipstick to the end of a giant swinging pendulum and then ran past it with her lips pursed like a duck bill. Her eyes were crazy. It was like they were vibrating in their sockets. I broke my momentary paralysis and opened the drawer, turning on the microphone. “Good morning, how are you today?”

What issued forth from the speaker was a string of untranslatable gibberish. I heard something about cats as I pulled in the drawer and began to process the transaction. The woman speaks as if she constantly has a mouthful of lozenges.

After a few moments, I finished her deposit and placed her receipt into the drawer, sending it out to her. Without thinking, I asked “is there anything else I can do for you, Mrs. Sykes?”

I feel I am a good person. I may not have adhered to the strictest definition of my religion’s tenets, but I treat others with kindness and compassion, I try to be the best most decent person I know how to be. I’d like to think it’s the intent, not the delivery, that grants the departed access into whatever hereafter there may be. In other words, I don’t think I am going to Hell.

If I am, though, I have an idea of the kind of demonic howling I am apt to be greeted with. This woman went insane right there in the drive up lane. How could I have used her name? What was I, stupid? Didn’t I know that they were listening at all times? Didn’t I know that if they had found out that she was banking there, they were apt to break into her house in the night?

I apologized profusely and she drove away very angry.

Holy Sweet and Sainted Jesus. I will never doubt my co-workers again.

Happier Holidays

A few days after the big sit down, I spoke with Alice, the manager at the new branch I am looking to work for. She also told me that Jean had a mouthful to say about me when Alice called to discuss the transfer. What Jean didn't know is that Alice knows me for almost a dozen years, and that Alice further knows that Jean is a vindictive and spiteful bitch.

Now, apparently, after the big sit down, Caroline had a bit of an impromptu meeting with Jean, basically telling her to shut the fuck up and be nice. She apparently had a similar meeting with Latoya. Since that day, both have been sweet as pie with me. It has been refreshing. I kept wondering when the other shoe was gonna drop.

Two weeks ago, evidently. Caroline came to me while I was in the break room as I was getting ready to leave for lunch and asked me how I was. She asked how things have been lately, if Latoya was treating me any better. I said yes, she and Jean had been much more professional. I expressed my gratitude to her for making it happen. Then she said it wasn't too late, that I could stay if I wanted.

I may have peed a little.

Not there, on the spot, mind you. On the spot, I simply smiled and said "thanks anyway, but after all that Jean had to say about me, I don't feel comfortable working here any more." No, it was after I had gotten out to my Jeep and driven around the corner. It was as I burst into gales of uproarious, bellowing, side-splitting laughter that I may have squirted a tiny bit.

They didn't even tell me my transfer went through. I had to call Alice on the 12th and find out what my first day at her branch would be. December 31. They kept me for an extra two weeks, because they needed me so badly. If I sucked as bad as an employee as Jean suggested, you'd think she'd have wanted me gone as soon as possible.

FUCK THEM. FUCK THEM IN THE ASS WITH A BIG RUBBER DICK.

I'm out of there. In a week, I'll be in greener grasses. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

Sitcom Cancelled?

That's right, folks... as of December 31, I am no longer employed by the Riverhead Branch of Southern Star Bank. I have landed another job at the Blue Point Branch. So I am finally escaping the shanty town that Riverhead has become for some more elegant surroundings.