SETTLING IN ... at work (Part 107a)

I got a little ahead of my self in Part 106 so I’m going to backtrack a bit. Sorry...

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By the end of the busy period, which was after the 9th of April called the “interest period”, I felt that I’d achieved an “understanding” with all of the tellers with the exception of Cassie. She continued to ignore me as best as she could. During meetings with the tellers she wouldn’t look at me and I didn’t know what to do about it. Trish, because we had one on one contact with each other on a daily basis, had shown a willingness to share little snippets of information which was helpful to me. I felt comfortable enough to ask her, point blank, what Cassie’s problem with me was. Unfortunately,  she wouldn’t express any words and all I got was a shrug of her shoulders.

My other “problem child”, Kate, had performed well in her role as a “messenger” running transactions from the drive up window during Corinne’s lunch hour during the busy period. Sort of reluctantly, I came up with the idea of making her a “relief teller” and giving her a cash box. When I ran the idea by Hobie he didn’t exactly embrace it. I prevailed and when I called Kate to my desk to tell her I was totally unprepared for her response. At first all I got was her typical blank stare. Then she started to get up and as she did she quietly uttered “I think I’ll quit” and then walked away.

If she were just about any other employee I would’ve pursued her to ask “why?”. For almost the whole time I’d been at the bank I’d been looking for a legitimate reason to terminate her but, truthfully, her only “crime” was her dour personality. It only took a few seconds for the reality that she was leaving to set in... and I was glad. As I remember it I just sat there for a few minutes until Trish walked up and asked what had happened. I told her that I didn’t really know and proceeded to go through the whole episode. It only took a few seconds and I remember Trish looking towards the back and then saying that Kate had her coat and was walking out the back door.

When I told Hobie he just sort of shrugged his shoulders and told me to get out the applications to find a replacement. Trish, being the receptionist, was the one to handle job inquiries and had the folder. When she handed it to me I asked if she had a memory of any of the people in the file. When she indicated that she didn’t it meant I was basically starting from scratch. I’d never interviewed anyone so it was something new to tackle.

There were only a few applications that had been completed recently and I started with them. During the interviews I don’t know who was more nervous... me or the applicants. Using the basic formula from the County of choosing from three I ended up selecting, ironically, a Katie. A believer in “omens”, I hoped that it wasn’t a bad one. A short woman with jet black hair and dark eyes and a broad smile, I chose her because I felt she’d make a nice appearance to the public. In her early 30;s she was a bit older than most of the tellers. She was dressed a bit more stylishly than most of them wearing a tight fitting light gray skirt about three or four inches above her knees. After the interview, when she walked away, I could see the outline of the leg elastics of her panties. You probably won’t believe it but it was the first time I’d see her backside. In any case I stood there congratulating myself on a good choice, especially for the backside view.

One of the problems that I’d discovered early on in my employment was that there had been no consistency in the training of new tellers. Now I had a chance to remedy that so called Mala over to my desk. She was still a bit leery of me and I could see she was apprehensive. I started by praising her work during the busy period. I’d worked up the statistics and found that she’d waited on more customers than any other teller and that included the day she’d left for her “problem”. I told her that I wanted all new tellers to emulate her and was asking her to be in charge of training any new tellers that might be hired. He reaction was the exact opposite of what I expected. I thought that she’d welcome the praise and recognition for a job well done. She asked why she was being punished.

I won’t go into a diatribe on Polish people but this was one of my first lessons on their convoluted thinking. To make this short, she turned it down. Cara was the next best teller but she was also Polish so I made a quick decision not to ask her to take on the training I envisioned. Remembering how well Corinne had done on the front line under pressure I decided that since Katie would be working the drive up window that I’d ask her to do it. When I presented it to her she was really excited about it. A 100% opposite reaction to that of Mala. Slowly, I was learning.

To be continued...