In a drive through that’s far enough away from the teller that I can barely even see them? Like, were talking nearly 40-50 feet and in this case (and 50% of the time for that matter) I was blocked by another car. What am I supposed to do? Stare at the tinted window and watch a blurry figure move around when I’m not looking at the side of the car next to me?
Sorry, I really don’t see how it’s rude to screw around on my phone while I’m waiting for a teller at a drive through to do her thing. Face to face, sure. At a drive though, no. And it’s not like I’m ‘conducting business’. I send the tube to her, she does what she needs to do and sends it back. It’s not like there’s a lot of questions or any kind of conversation. They say hi and then they say ‘anything else? Okay, have a nice night’ and I’m off with no other interaction from me.
And, again at least at this drive through, I can barely even see the teller, she doesn’t know if I’m looking at her, playing on my phone, reading a book etc.
Also, if it makes any difference, like I said earlier, I go to the bank a lot, I’ll bet I’m sitting in a bank drive through, on average, 10 times a week (Mon-Sat, 1-3 times a day).
Just an observation: You have probably burned five times as much time expressing your annoyance, reading and writing posts in this thread, and sparring with us as you spent waiting for your turn at the bank. It’s not like you ended up in the emergency room. Let it go.
That’s one reason the tellers want to have a little conversation / greeting/ banter with you. You are a frequent customer. It would seem odd to not talk to you a bit if you are there 10 times a week. Even if you don’t have a TV screen to see her, I bet she has one to see you. I get a friendlier greeting and more conversation at places I frequent often.
This reminds me of the thread about not wanting any interaction with the supermarket clerk.
At my bank, there are 3 drive-in lanes, but only 1 of them will accept deposits of coins, or even large amounts of cash. So sometimes I have to use that one.
The teller should handle transactions as she gets them. The ten seconds that it takes for a car in lane A to drive away and the next one to take its place is time she can use to keep lane B moving. May not be the fastest for any one customer, but gets everybody on their way.
However, it sounds like the bank needs to fix the sign. One teller for two lanes only works if the customers know they can use two lanes. An ‘open’ sign that you can’t see until you’re at the machine doesn’t cut it.
And for the OP, yes, you give your attention to someone you’re conducting business with. Even if they’re 40 feet away. Even if they’re on the other side of tinted glass. Even if they usually make some idle chit-chat. When they talk, you listen.
As a former teller, when I’m the only one and a line starts to form, I try to handle first come first served. However, if one transaction is really long or complicated or requires looking things up, and one is a simple deposit, AND they come in basically on top of each other, I’ll run the simple one first. I didn’t tell the customer, just because it’s more time I’m not working, and they may get annoyed if they were waiting longer.
I’ve been behind someone at a bank drive through that’s taken ages, and when I got up to take my turn the other line got to go first - because that’s the way it’s done. Lines alternate. I expect them to - so yeah I think that teller should either have shut up and taken the other car without telling Joey, and he wouldn’t have noticed, or she should have taken care of his deposit first since he was the next alternate up.
Do you guys mean you learned there are **still **manned drive-through banks? I mean, they’ve been around at least since I was a kid, which was 40+ years ago.
Can’t use an ATM with business banking. Withing going into examples to be picked apart, lets just leave it at the fact that it’s not a possibility.
How so? Seriously, how? What difference could it possibly make if I’m looking in the general direction of the window or the general direction of my phone.
How about her actually holding up the line so she can get my attention as if she has an actual question about my deposit to ask me again how my day was because I misheard her the first time and said “yes” instead of “good”.
Let’s be honest, we’ve all bumped into someone and they said “Hiii, how long has it been” and you say “good thanks, what have you been up to”. It happens, you were expecting ‘how are you’ and got a different question, you realize it a second later and move on. If you think that’s treating someone like shit, I guess you have a different perspective on life than I do. Maybe I think she’s treating me like shit for calling me out on it every single time.
Wouldn’t the drive through tube that just popped up next to you be a good signal that I’m ready to ‘conduct business’. Do you think I’ve since fallen asleep in my car? I mean, even if I did, you can still make my deposit right? I can’t speak for other customers, but the majority of my transactions don’t require a whole lot of input on my part.
But if you’re a teller working for a Mega Corp then maybe taking customers in line out of order based on your opinions about their readiness to do business with you probably isn’t a real hot idea. I assure you, even if I unintentionally, say 'good thanks, to your ‘good morning’, I’m still capable of grabbing the receipt when you send it back. I’ll bet I can even answer a real question if you toss one to me.
However, that’s not what happened and not really what I asked about. Also, I can assure you, I can handle
Frankly, that constitutes a good chunk of the questions on this board. “What order should the teller take customers at the drive through in” was a question based on an experience I had. Yes, it left me annoyed, but if every thread on this board that was about something that happened to someone required it to have life altering implications or land them in the hospital, we’d have a lot less questions.
Not that it matters, but, I don’t go to that bank 10 times a week, I go to all different banks about 10 times a week (total). I probably hit that one 3 times a week or so. If she can see a camera on my car, I don’t know. There isn’t one in the spot where I put the tube. Off the top of my head, there may be one above and way in front of the cars, I’d have to look.
Regardless, I’m not all that concerned with her giving me a friendly greeting. All the other ones at this and the other banks do and I don’t do anything different there, and, as mentioned, I’ve heard from another person that this is just what she does. I’m assuming based on that, that it’s not just me, or us, it’s her.
Also, to be fair, I just always considered it a mild annoyance I had with her. Nothing I’ve ever so much as spoken about to anyone else until now and that was only in the context of there being another issue AND someone else happened to mention that it bugs them too.
Little harsh there Robot?
Christ people, I do listen. But I sometimes misst the first few seconds of, as many of you have called it, idle chit chat. In fact, many of the tellers don’t even say anything (I guess they’re all even ruder then me). I send the tube to them, a few seconds or a minute later I’ll hear “All set, do you need anything else?” or “Anything else Joe?/Okay, see later”.
Look at it this way, you pull up in line at your favorite fast food place, you get to the board and the drive through speaker says “Hi, Order when you’re ready” like it always does and you start rattling off what you want, only to be stopped so they can say "Excuse me, I said “How was your day today”. Everyone here thinks that’s okay, right? CookingWithGas, LSLGuy, Orwell, Robot Arm, anyone else that though I was the rude one?
Let me put this a different way. There is no requirement here for questions to be profound, and I do not mean to dismiss your question on the face of it. My point was that you got annoyed; you got so annoyed that you sent a complaint to the bank, and you got so annoyed that you posted about it here. That’s a lot of annoyance to nurture for a minor inconvenience. You were annoyed because you feel your time was wasted, but you are spending a huge amount of time just continuing to express your annoyance. I am just observing an irony. And I am spending a little too much time myself just doing that
When it comes down to it, I might have been annoyed too. I just happen to be biased against people who always have their nose in their phone.
How do you know what she said to you the first time? You keep dismissing it as “how’s your day”, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe she said “the other customer has been waiting for a long time, do you mind if I help them first?” and you just left the question hanging.
Yes, we all have our inattentive moments. It’s a fairly minor faux pas as these things go, but most of us acknowledge that. When she asked if you heard her, you could have said “oh, I’m terribly sorry, I was a bit distracted. Could you repeat it please?” and life would have gone on. But you didn’t. You’re even in this thread complaining about her annoying small talk and your perfect rightness in ignoring it.
If I was at a drive through window and the guy said “order when ready”, and I was ready and started telling them my order, and he interrupted with “how was your day”, I’d think it was a bit odd. I’d probably chalk it up to some technical glitch, like he was also serving a customer at the counter and hit his microphone switch by accident. If he did it on purpose, no, it’s not okay.
Communications have all sorts of subtleties that we aren’t always aware of. There are gestures, and eye contact, and changes in tone when one person finishes speaking and someone else wants to start. An audio-only channel loses a lot of that. When she says “how’s your day” that may really mean “I am establishing communications with you. I am ready to process your transaction. If you desire some extra attention, such as particular denominations of bills, or to have a confirmation sent to you by e-mail, I am now ready to hear it.”
I’d say Robot Arm just nailed how I understood the OP’s scenario and his attitude. Overall it came off as more attitude than the situation warranted when at least a dollop of blame lay with the OP for being inattentive when it was his turn to be paying attention.
I’m sorry I triggered a bit of a pile-on. I think the rest of us probably displayed more attitude here than the OP warranted. And thus the wheel of less-than-ideal karma gets another spin.
Yes, I’ve certainly been guilty myself of zoning out just as my turn came up. I try to be self-honest enough to recognize when it’s me, not them, who derailed the process. I don’t always succeed. But there are some people that cannot imagine themselves as being in any way at fault; it’s *always *the other guy. It sounded to me like the OP was in that mode at least this once. It seems I was probably wrong.
There’s also a big difference between sitting in a drive through (and FTR, I’ve made no mention of what I still had to do for the day, if I was in a hurry, if it’s ‘already been a long day’ etc) vs [checks OP time] sitting in my recliner at home at 10pm watching TV.
As some would say…that sounds like a you problem. Considering that part of it didn’t really have anything to do with anything, I could have left it out and just said that I misheard what she said, you really shouldn’t be letting that prejudice play into it. In which case, we’re now on the same side. I was annoyed, you’d be annoyed. Go us!
Now we’re getting somewhere. I know this started out as a side conversation, but this is the issue. You changed up they hypothetical a little bit, but same idea.
IOW, when I said something back, even if it was the wrong thing, being idle chit chat, I’ve now ‘established’ that I know she’s working on my transactions and am probably ready for any real questions she might have. Waiting and reasking my how my day was because I didn’t answer it properly strange.
And, to be honest, I try really hard not to dig my heels in. It’s why I’ll sometimes go a day without reading the thread.
Looking back, the actual OP probably should have been “Who’s next in line” and not “Was I right to be annoyed”. That’s probably what set this off in the wrong direction.
I think now we’re all mellowing out a bit on this one.
I too have a real hard time when I write something that gets mischaracterized compared to the result I expected. Whether I did a crappy job writing or somebody else did a crappy job reading it’s real hard for me to not dive in and try to “correct” the misunderstanding with another blizzard of words. Which usually makes the situation worse not better. I’ve walked away and am sitting out two threads like this right now. Fortunately I’m not the OP in either.
It’s useful for me to take a step back and remember just how [sub]un[/sub]important all this stuff is. We’re all friends here even though sometimes we each fall into this trap: xkcd: Duty Calls
Let me tell you a short story. I was reminded of this after my previous post.
My parents were divorced. I grew up mostly with my mom, but I lived with my dad for a while during college. I remember the phone rang once, he answered, and then called “Rob,[sup]*[/sup] telephone.” I honestly can’t remember if I answered him back, but if I did he must not have heard it. I picked up the upstairs telephone, talked to whoever it was, and didn’t think anything more about it. Later my dad was rather annoyed. He said something like “I called for you when the phone rang, didn’t you hear me?” In fact, I think that situation happened more than once.
It wasn’t until much later that I figured out what was going on. My mom’s habit in such a situation, and what I’d grown accustomed to, would be to yell “Rob”, and I’d yell back “yes, what is it?”, and then she’d say “telephone for you.” We would establish the channel first, so we both know that we’re within earshot, and that the other is listening, and then the content of the message was delivered, and no further acknowledgement was needed.
My dad was different, and I wonder if LSLGuy can guess where this is going. My dad was a pilot, and the way he was delivering a message to me was exactly how air traffic control communicates with pilots. They say who they’re talking to, and deliver the message, and then the pilot repeats the relevant portion of the message to indicate he’s heard it correctly. I wonder if my dad wanted the reply “Roger,[sup]+[/sup] telephone.” There’s nothing wrong with communicating that way; in fact it’s probably more time efficient. But it’s not what I was used to, and it’s not how most human interaction happens.
So go to the bank and put up with the chit chat. It’s like air; vital, but so normal you forget it’s there.
Yeah, but that’s not what happened. You didn’t mishear the teller - you made no attempt to hear them. You were engaging in a transaction with a human, where there is the possibility - however remote - that their might be a need to exchange information. You were rude by not making any attempt to be aware of possible information/questions.
Your nonresponsive response did not “establish that you knew she was working on your transaction,” because she specifically told you she was NOT working on it. Nor did you signal that you were “probably ready for any real questions.” From my perspective, you signaled that you were wrapped up in your phone and oblivious, so why should the teller make additional attempts? She should have just let you wait, after you indicated an unwillingness to receive her communication.
But other than that, I do not know what the bank’s policy is regarding signage. If an unlit sign is intended to indicate that the lane is closed, then they should not have accepted your transaction. You suggest that there are CLOSED signs. If so, and if it was not lit, then I would assume (as you did) that the lane was open. And once I pulled into an open lane, and the tube accepted my transaction, I would expect my transaction to be processed in the order it was received by the teller - NOT dependent on how long other customers chose to pile up in the other line.
So yeah, you have the right to be somewhat annoyed, but you should also try to be more aware of the world outside your phone.
@Robot, I’m not sure how your story applies. Your dad didn’t hear you respond, therefore he had no idea if you answered the phone of if the person was still waiting for you to pick up. That has little, if anything, to do with my story. I may have misheard the teller, but I responded, even if I did give the answer she was hoping for, it still shows her that I could hear her.
The fact that I’m far more annoyed at the stupid fucking sarcastic shit like this then I was when I simply got a bit annoyed when she took my transaction out of order. Not just this one post, but several others upthread. I think I’m going to bow out of my own thread.
You guys are absolutely more than welcome to continue the discussion and I’ll probably keep reading it, but I’m not interested in everyone one that reads the OP for the first time over the next few days telling me I’m a rude sack of shit, again, because I didn’t catch if the teller said “Are you having a good day?” or “How’s your day so far?”
Honestly, folks, this has nothing to do with my phone. I shouldn’t have mentioned it. It’s really no different then finally getting up to the front of the line at the drive through, waiting from the cashier to say something through the speaker and then saying “good, thanks, I’ll have 2…” to be stopped and having them say “Excuse me, I asked if your day was good so far…”. I’m guessing most of you have answered that question wrong and most of you probably wouldn’t say about yourself what you’ve said about me in this thread.
PS, and bite me for telling me if I misheard her or I didn’t make an attempt to hear her. I go out of my way not to make assumptions about what other people are thinking or make things up based on facts I don’t know. If you want to, go ahead, but don’t do it about me.
I know well from experience, that it sucks to ask folk for their opinions, and then be dissatisfied when their opinions differ from mine.
You just don’t get it. It’s not that you didn’t catch if she said “Are you having a good day” or “How’s your day so far” - BECAUSE SHE SAID NEITHER OF THOSE THINGS! She might have said, “You forgot the deposit slip”, “I’d like to jump your bones”, “Your car is on fire” - you would’ve responded “Hi good thanks”, and gone back to whatever was so captivating that you couldn’t bother to play your part in the transaction.
You are right - it has nothing (or at least nothing unique) to do with your phone. If you’d been inattentive to the interaction because you were zoning out staring into space, rocking to a good tune, or digging deep for a crusty booger, you would have been equally rude.
Perhaps your company might be better served by selecting someone to conduct business transactions who is willing to be minimally aware of the possibility of communicating with other people during the course of those transactions.
