SUMMER HEAT... so much going on (Part 161f)

SUMMER HEAT… so much going on (Part 161f)

Walking out to the parking lot I could see mayhem. Cars were blocking the entryway and some were even out into the roadway. I went up to one of the cars and asked why they were here so early since the grand opening wasn’t until 10:30am. The answer… she didn’t care. She wanted to be one of the first to open an account and to get her mixer. A check with a few others brought forth similar answers. Any questions about the effectiveness of our advertising was answered by the gaggle of cars within my view. However, I had no idea what to do about it. While trying to guide a few cars up onto the lawn so as to make a pathway a local policeman walked up. He wasn’t too nice when I tried to explain the situation. As I was already stressed I didn’t need more. While we were ‘discussing’ the situation the Trustee/attorney that had been added to the Board because he was from the area walked up. He identified himself and in what I termed as typical “political jargon” proceeded to “suggest” that the officer call for some additional help to “smooth out the chaos”. He, quite nicely, mentioned that the town Supervisor was soon to be arriving and that if he knew what was good for him he’d get it quickly squared away. He did! The branch was located on a road that was also a state highway and, as such, parking was not allowed unless there were curbs. Other than the few hundred feet of the branch property there were none. Within 15 to 20 minutes there were three policemen acting as parking guides. By the time the ceremony was to begin there were cars parked on both sides of the road for at least a quarter of a mile.

The ribbon cutting was, as expected, a little late in getting started. When the doors finally opened it was our trustees who entered first almost filling the lobby. As I explained way back when the branch idea was first conceived by them the decision was made to keep it small. Cost was one concern but since they had no experience in branch banking they had no idea what to expect for acceptance. I didn’t either but I had no idea that there would be so many people there at the opening. I was between a ‘rock and a hard place’ in that I needed to get the Trustees out of the way so the customers could get in and open accounts. I was thinking "what a bunch of dim bulbs!" I spied Gee, the Trustee/attorney from the main office, and told him of my dilemma and he said he’d take care of it. He got the other Trustee/attorney and between them they then got the other Trustees to at least leave the lobby. It was after 11am before the first account was opened.

In spite of the pandemonium before my eyes I still had the main office on my mind. The new account campaign was kicking off for them at the same time. With both Hobie and I at the branch and Jerry no longer there it was left up to Bret to oversee the office. I got through to him before noon and I could tell he was ‘frazzled’. After listening to him I understood why. Even though the bank had been using data transmission since the first of the year there were a lot of new customers who had come in to get their free gift for opening an account and had not experienced it. They just plain didn’t understand how it worked and wanted someone to explain it. Poor Bret was the only available. I did manage to get an indication of how the gifts were being accepted and, much to my surprise, blankets were winning out followed by the electric hand mixer. The electric hand drill was a distant last. It was way to early for me to tell what was happening at the branch but it was nice to have Bret’s information as a guide. I found Hobie and gave him the update. When I did he took the hint and said he’d return to the main office to help Bret out. I busied myself by replenishing the various gifts as needed from the storage trailer and answering questions from customers at the new account tables.

There were still at least a dozen people waiting to open accounts when we shut the doors. It had been so busy that we brought two of the tellers out to process the new account paperwork leaving the other two to input the deposit information to the data center. You might have noticed that I haven’t mentioned Jerry up to now. Because he was THE branch manager he got in all the pictures with the politicians and Trustees. Then he just sort of hovered around casually speaking to the customers proudly telling them that he was the manager. I made sure not to interact with him while the Trustees were there primarily because I still had no idea who his benefactor was. It made me almost sick watching him preening around as if he’d been the one to put the whole thing together. And, by the way, his wife was there for the whole opening celebration. She sat in his office making it basically unusable to open new accounts until after the last of the politicians and Trustees were gone.

There had been no time for a lunch break and once the last customer was gone I called for a “time out”. My observation was that all of them had done an exemplary job and I wanted them to know that it would be noted in their employee file. There was no reason to keep the temporary help any longer so they were excused. I told the others to take some time to “unwind”. While they were doing that I tried to get a tally of how many accounts had been opened and the distribution of gifts. A quick run through showed just under 100 accounts. When I went to the teller machine to get the dollar figure I was disappointed. To be eligible for a gift the deposit had to be a minimum of $500 and the total deposit for the day were less than $75,000 or an average of $750. I surely hoped the main office had done better than that. It was something to think about.

The office only had two rest rooms, both unisex. One was for the public and the other for the staff. That one was in the small “break” room that had a table and six chairs. The ladies quickly claimed that as theirs relegating Jerry to using the public one. I remember seeing his reaction when Betsy told him. He just put his fingers together (as he usually did when hearing news he didn’t like)  holding them out in front of his stomach. Nary a word. As I’d mentioned, storage space was at a minimum in the building and there were some gifts stacked in there as well. So, with the seven females in there together it was ‘close’. After a bit I reminded the four regular employees about doing Their proof to make sure everything balanced. I had my fingers crossed that it would go fairly well so we could all get out of there. It didn’t…

To be continued…