Absurdity

Absurd things in life come around on a pretty regular basis. Absurdity bothers me. My Dad has very extreme reactions to absurd situations. My childhood memories are full of things that dad went crazy over like teller rope systems, parking tickets, and retail chain stores to name only a few. I too get bent out of shape over things but not to the same degree. I’ll gripe about it when the moment arrives but after it passes, I will think of all sorts of other things I should have said regarding the absurdity in the moment that would have been much more effective. Well last night was another absurd moment.

I have been carrying the cash from the Vette sale since last week. I never got a chance to go to the bank yet until yesterday after work. I pull up to the drive up banking station, the lobby closes at 5 but the drive thru is open until 5:30. I fill out my deposit slip which is for the cash and a small check. I send it all along in the vacuum tube with my drivers license for ID since now ID is supposedly required for ALL transactions. I was the only one at the drive thru currently so I figured my transaction would be processed quickly and I could be on my way home. I’m waiting, a minute, 2 minutes, 5 minutes…… WTF? How long can it take to count the money? I just had the truck windows tinted dark yesterday so I couldn’t roll the window down, I had pulled up and opened the door instead. Finally a woman comes on the intercom.

“Mr Duffey, we have a 3000 dollar limit on drive thru transactions…”

“Huh? What? You have a limit on deposits???”

“Yes for security purposes we have a 3000 limit on driveup transactions and the lobby is already closed. If you like you can deposit it in the ATM”

“I would prefer to handle a deposit of this size with a human being, why would you limit the amount I could DEPOSIT?”

“It is our policy”

“What the….. mumbling….. ok how about you do one transaction for 3000 and another for the balance?”

“Sorry we can’t do that either.”

“That makes no sense”

“They limit drive up transactions because they don’t have a camera on you” (as I am looking at the camera sitting right by the tube)

“That makes no sense” (for whatever reason I didn’t mention the camera 18 inches from me)

“If you like we can deposit 3000 of it and then you can deposit the balance in the ATM, the ATM has a camera”

“Grumble, fine, whatever….. f’in stupid” (mumbled under my breath)

So I get the balance of the cash back with a “Have a Nice Day” that I intentionally ignored, like that made any difference. I spin around to the ATM and huff and puff as I have to pull out a big wad of hundreds and stuff it an envelope as I am thinking, if I get rolled with this cash right now I am going to freak out on these assholes.

Now if I were my dad, I would have stayed there for a half an hour arguing with the teller/supervisor over how ridiculous this all was. I would have said something like “Let me get this straight, I want to give your institution money to invest and make money with. I am doing this willingly. You are telling me I can only give you 3000 at once because if I gave you more it would be some sort of security issue??????? You have my GD driver’s license!! What the hell is wrong with you people!” Following the tirade, I would have told them to close all my accounts with them and vow to never deal with them again.

But instead I just was grumpy for a few minutes and I blogged about it the next day. Sometimes my reflex reaction to be nice in a situation overrides my inner desire to just tell certain people to get bent. I actually have a theory on the whole thing. I think the policy was bogus. I think because I just had the windows tinted dark and had the door open instead of the window rolled down, they couldn’t get a picture of me on the camera. Somehow this must be a scary thing for a bank, especially when someone wants to deposit money with them. Absurd.