Monday, May 07, 2007

Unlucky But Not Stupid

Once again, I have to say I'm so glad I'm a little accident prone rather than just stupid. I had two shining examples of stupidity before nine o'clock this morning here at the bank. First was a young lady who came to the drive up window before we were open. Have you seen those shades that banks have that slide down over the drive up windows that say CLOSED? We have one of those, and it was down...because we were closed. She pulled up to the closed drive up window and starts honking her horn. It was really early, but I decided that it would be better to talk to her than to let her sit out there leaning on the horn. She was busy on her cell phone, so she just kept honking, not looking over to see if anyone was there. When she finally realized that I had opened the screen and had spoken to her, she said, "I need a pen." Okay, frantic honking at a closed bank for a pen? Seemed a little extreme. I gave her the pen and waited for her to finish her phone call and rummage around in her purse for her license and a check. She finally threw all this stuff in the drawer and I took a look at what she had. What she had was a check from another bank and what she didn't have was an account with us. I told her that she needed to take it to the other bank, which is right up the street She sat there, completely puzzled by what I told her. "Well, what bank is this?" I said, "This is Bank A, you need to go to Bank B." I even told her where it was. "This isn't Bank B?" No, it isn't. And yes, I'm positive that it isn't. More puzzled looks. Finally she took the check out of the drawer and sped off.

A few minutes later, another car came to the drive up. This one was going the wrong way, coming in through the exit and pulling into the farthest lane from the bank. This young lady started yelling at the drive up window and waving her arms at me. She's farther away than the first, so I couldn't really hear what she was saying. Finally I figure out that she's screaming "ATM! WHERE'S THE ATM?" I yell back that she needed to "get out of the drive up and go around the building to the ATM." And by the way, "you're going the wrong way!" This was accompanied by arm motions suggesting which way she needed to be going. She couldn't understand me since she was too far away and her radio was on full blast, so I repeated myself a little louder. She still didn't understand, gave me a disgusted look and spun out her tires driving away while signalling that she thinks "We're Number One." She was still going the wrong way, and almost hit another car coming around the corner.

If this is any indication of how my day is going to go, I'm going to wish I had stayed in bed.

4 comments:

Alex said...

Is it just me, or are people getting really stupid? No...it's not just me.

jess said...

I think people are not getting more stupid. I think it's that we've become smarter than we were before. Therefore the stupidity of all of those behind us glares brightly at us.
Don't you remember the looks that we used to get???

Heather said...

Personally, I think most people have always been stupid. What I do see now is that more people are unbelievably rude. Every one seems to feel that they are entitled to what ever they want, and don't care about much else. I see more people coming into the bank talking on their cell phones, and I actually had a customer complain that I didn't say thank you to her at the end of the transaction. I told her that I would be happy to talk to her once she was done, but I didn't really see the point if she wasn't going to even look at me.

Kate said...

the expectation of polite (maybe even intelligent) behaviour makes me feel like i've... turned into my parents. i know they're gloating. they see me raise my eyebrows at people and they smile. all their reminders to say please/thank you, chew gum with my mouth closed, not to scuff my feet with each step, and to be reasonably civil AND aware of my surroundings have finally sunk in. i am my parents and everyone else is a teenager. gah!!