THE NEXT PHASE... new job (Part 105e)

Tuesday morning I happened to follow Hobie into the parking lot. Walking up to the door he told me that in addition to learning my way around as far as to where things were kept and how records were filed he wanted me to use my “fresh eyes” to observe how things were running from an operational standpoint. He explained that prior to Chuck being promoted he had been the manager of the office but was moved upstairs at that time. Now, being shorthanded with Chuck’s death he’d been moved back downstairs but hadn’t had the time to take a close look. He said all he wanted was for me to take a “common sense” approach and to report back to him at the end of the week. I remember thinking that he was putting a lot of faith in me.

I won’t bore you with all that went on leading up to my meeting with him that Friday afternoon. However, I will give a rundown of some of the things that jumped out at me in just four days. The first thing was that Chuck had let the tellers set their own times for their lunch hours. There was no schedule at all. On one day I found three of them out at the same time. It was the same for their 15 minute “break”. There was no way to know where any of them were at any given time. The next thing had to do with the drive up window. The bank had spent a lot of money to install it and were paying for a teller to run it but it was open for less than half the time the bank was open. One of the things that really galled me was that when I’d go to a teller to have them process a transaction for me (when I had a customer at my desk) I’d get different answers to my questions as to why one would process it one way and another would do it a different way. After pursuing it in a non confrontational way I found that teller training was done in a “willy nilly” way. In “Cee’s” case, Cara had trained her so she was doing things the way Cara had taught her. In Cassie’s case, Mala had taught her and she learned Mala's ways, right or wrong. Another problem was that Chuck had allowed the tellers to bypass some of the accepted policies and procedures as written in the manual I’d been given to study and had been told was the “Bible”. And... then there was Katy...

Here I was, less than two weeks into my new job and meeting with my boss to tell him what I felt was not being done right. Was I nervous? NO... and that was a problem. I’d gotten so caught up in all that I’d found wrong I fully expected to be praised. It didn’t happen that way. I have a tendency to get a bit hyper in situations like that. I hit Hobie with most of what I’ve written above and instead of praise he cut me off and the way he did it told me he wasn’t very happy. I didn’t know what to think. I’d done what he’d asked me to do and yet he wasn’t happy with the results.

What had happened was that the way I presented the information made the deceased Chuck look like he was totally incompetent. If you remember from earlier posts, Chuck was well liked by everybody and that included Hobie. He took my report as an attack on Chuck. Indirectly it was but all I’d done was to look at the inefficiencies and reported them... or some of them (there were more). Hobie, clearly upset with me, stated the area that he wanted me to focus on was the policies and procedures issue as the bank had been cited in a State banking audit. Seeing Hobie this upset I was almost afraid to ask if the tellers had copies of the manual. When he said they didn’t I couldn’t believe it. I wondered how they were supposed to know what was right and what was wrong without that information... but I didn’t say anything fearful that he’d “jump” on me again. Still upset with the way the meeting had gone I decided to look through the manual again and to identify the areas that the tellers needed to focus on. I came up with the idea of extrapolating those parts, copying them, and then distributing the material to the tellers. Unsure of myself at this point I ran the idea by Hobie who gave me the OK to proceed.

Because it was a Friday night and I had drawn the "short straw" it was my duty to make sure everybody was out of the building and that the lights were off at 6pm. Up on the second floor I didn't see anybody so started turning out the lights. I heard a female voice yell out "Stop!" and then saw Pauline, the switchboard operator, standing about 20 feet away from me holding a pair of jeans in front of her trying to hide the fact that she was in her panties. I hadn't expected to find anyone up there and was still processing the fact so I just stood and stared. She didn't stay there long and ducked back behind the office partition where she'd been changing. As I waited for her to come back out (dressed) I remember thinking that this was the first "peek" of anybody I'd experienced since starting. I wouldn't have chosen her if I'd had a choice but, like they say, beggars can't be choosey. Tall and extremely thin (I don't think anorexia had been coined at that time) with long black hair, I didn't find her attractive at all. But, I did see white panties so it wasn't all bad.

The experience reminded me how disappointed I was that I hadn't gotten a VPL from Cassie, the "solidly" built teller. The first day I'd met her she was wearing a tight Ivory colored skirt and on the few chances I'd had to get a glance at her backside I hadn't seen anything, not even an indent for a leg elastic. She'd worn it again this second week and it was more of the same. I was truly puzzled, especially after seeing her bend over to remove her pocket book from the bottom drawer of her work cabinet. As far as the others were concerned it was what they wore, mostly loose fitting or flared knee length (or longer) dresses or skirts or patterned (tweed, plaid) wool skirts that were the reason for the lack of discovery. I could only hope that warm Summer weather would change that.

To be continued...