LIFE GOES ON... at home and work (Part 115f)
I’d
calculated that it would be almost a month until I was able to take out a
loan against my trust account. I’d really been hoping for a decent
raise but, in reality, knew that even if I’d gotten what I’d hoped for
it wouldn’t put much of a dent into what I owed. No matter what, I was
going to have to wait until April.
One positive at work was the
budding relationship between Jerene and Laura. Trish had come up with
some clothes for Laura that were better suited for work than what she
had but, because of a size difference between the two, they were ill
fitting. Jerene, before starting at the bank, had worked in her family
upholstering business and her primary job was to sew the material. In
the course of getting to know each other Jerene volunteered to alter the
skirts that Trish had given her. I wasn’t a party to any of this until,
as I remember it, the first day Laura wanted to wear one of them to
work. Her mother saw how short it was and had a “hissy fit”, according
to Trish. I could see Laura was upset just by looking at her with her
eyes all red and puffy. I asked Trish about it and she explained. She
also said that she was going to take Laura home that afternoon and try
to reason with her aunt about it. After Trish told me I took a look at
Jerene and the hem of her skirt wasn’t the shortest of all the tellers
with Cee and Katie holding that honor. It was about three inches above
her knee and I felt that she probably wouldn’t have gone above that for Laura. I
didn’t dwell on it as I had more serious things to consider with the
interest period (or busy period, the term that the tellers used
derisively among themselves) coming up quickly.
I wasn’t all that
surprised to see Laura arrive in one of her cotton dresses the next
morning. What was a surprise to me (and just about everybody else) was
to see her about ten minutes later. There she was wearing one of Trish’s
tweed skirts and it was about three inches above her knees. She also
had on a frilly blouse and the combination on her was stunning. I looked
down the teller line to where Jerene was standing and she had a great
big smile on her face. I liked it! As soon as I could I asked Trish what
was going on. She had a half smile on her face, almost a Cheshire cat
grin. She hadn’t made out well with her aunt, being told it wasn’t any
of her business and, in fact was given the skirt back. Trish was almost
laughing at this point. When Laura had walked in that morning she intercepted her and
gave her the skirt and one of her blouses and told her to go change in
the ladies room. It was obvious that Trish was quite pleased with herself.
By
the end of the day quite a few of the others had complimented Laura on
how nice she looked and she responded by wearing a smile for most of the
day. In a deal orchestrated by Trish and with the help of Jerena, that
became the norm for
Laura. Arrive wearing one of her out of style
and out place dresses and then, almost instantaneously, transform
herself into an attractive, in style young woman. Jerena’s part became
expanded when she realized that Laura could wear some of her clothes as
well. I definitely remember both Bret’s and Hobie’s reaction. Neither
had paid much attention, if any at all, to Laura’s hiring but, with the
change in looks, they both became very aware of her presence.
The “busy
period” started the following Tuesday and it was pure chaos. We had a
number of teller machine breakdowns which slowed things down
appreciably. There were still many people in the teller lines when 3pm
came and the doors were locked for customers wanting to come in. I don’t
remember what time it was when the last of them left but I do remember
it was well after 6pm before I left. To me it was a bad omen. By 9am the
next morning all the teller machines had been repaired but it was now the
bookkeeping machine (the one that I’d been led to believe was a computer
at the first bank I worked for) that was acting up. It would take way to
long to explain the system we used for posting transactions to ledger
cards. Suffice it to say, the chaos continued.
There was no way
to explain the long lines to the customers. All we could do was to wait
for the repairs to be made and listen to their grief. The machine was fixed on Thursday but the
hangover from the loss of it for that time was tremendous. Lorie and Mala stayed late
and came in early on Friday to try and get the postings up to date. But,
what turned out to be the real problem was that so many ledger cards
had been pulled from the file bins and, in the hurry to get them back in place, a lot of them were misfiled and that became our next problem. The complaints were numerous enough that
Bert (the president) met with Hobie and I about it, telling us that we
had to get it fixed before we opened the doors on Monday. The only
solution we could come up with was to completely refile all the ledger cards.
I remember shaking my head when asked what I thought about it. Since I
didn’t have any ideas I felt it best to keep my mouth shut.
After
a strategy meeting, with Bret included, Hobie felt it best that he be
the one to tell the tellers, one on one, that they would have to come in
on Saturday. Because of the short notice, to be fair, we’d decided that
there would be two four hour shifts with the first from 8am to noon and
the second from 1pm to 5pm. I suggested that the bank buy pizza for
lunch with both groups able to partake. The women got to chose
which shift they wanted based on seniority. After the expected grumbling
it was explained they they would get paid as if they worked a whole day.
That changed things, dramatically. We only had seven tellers but Elena,
the mortgage teller, volunteered to help and then both Lorie, the
bookkeeping machine operator, and Trish did also. As expected, the “old
timers” elected the morning shift. Bret said he’d come in to supervise
that group and I volunteered to buy the pizza and be in before noon and then take the afternoon shift. I
can’t say anybody was really happy about it.
To be continued...
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