But the tubes are fun! I’ve always thought they were so, so, so cool. Now that I actually work with them, they’re still just as neat! I have this mental image of working in a bank where the men still wear sleeve garters, cars are still young and these new-fangled vacuum tubes will be The Wave of the Future!
The movie The Shadow has a clever sequence in which a message to The Shadow travels across the city in a maze of pneumatic tubes. Cool. 
I would imagine that one teller can work all three tube-lanes alot faster.
That sounds vaguely dirty.
FWIW, I prefer drive-through tellers if I’m making some sort of large transaction. If I just need $60 for a night on the town or something, I’ll go to the drive-through ATM. Much faster. But if I need to send off a money order for $300, I need to deposit a check from my granny for $100, AND I want an extra few bucks to go shopping, plus a roll of quarters so I can play with the vending machines at work, I prefer the option that lets me do all this.
What’s more, most ATM cards have daily limits. Mine is $300. If I flake off and suddenly need cash for rent (out of cheques or what have you), I need a teller.
See, in Canada this is what we actually get out of the car to do! If I needed to send off a money order or withdraw $600 I think it would warrant parking the car and walking the extra 50 steps. And I wouldn’t piss off the person behind me who drove up to only take out $20. I think we just found another contributor to obesity in the US.
Well, seeing as I’m the one from Bakersfield and I said that I haven’t seen a single bank with them in years. . . yeah. Your point is moot. I know, I know, it’s fun to take a swipe at Bakersfield’s expense, but the person speaking most of these tubes is zweisamkeit who is from Detroit. So, ya know, it isn’t just us backwards hicks that are, well, backwards.
Perhaps someday, if we work hard, Bakersfield can join the cool kids club like Davis. I mean, hopefully our city (which supports a huge chunk of the state’s economy with both oil and produce, all while giving jobs to our 312,000 citizens) can someday match the greatness of Davis and its population of 64,401.
In the mean time, I’m going to go back to using my antiquated what-nots, marrying my brother, and cow tipping. :rolleyes:
(Sorry, this is just one of my pet peeves. It gets annoying that my wonderful city is a punching bag for the rest of the state. What’s even worse is that the punching is usually done by people who have never been here or have just driven through on the freeway – which doesn’t even go through the city).
What a lovely little worm you have on your hook dangling behind your boat while you cruise slowly through the waters of The Pit.
I don’t think I’ll bite.
Hey, it IS the pit after all. Anyway, seriously I’ve never seen one of these canister arrangements and can’t comprehend the need.
You’d appreciate it in the winter if the alternative was a gingerly walk across an icy parking lot.
Well, we certainly have our share of icy parking lots in Canada, and not one single canister bank in the country, as far as I’m aware. Weird.
My Mom was notoriously lazy when I was a child. Accordingly, we always went through the drive through at the bank. It got to the point where I thought the only reason people went inside was to open an account.
Have ever tried to conduct business in a bank next to someone with three screaming kids?
You’d pray for a drive-thru.
Personally, I appreciate it in the summer when to step out of the car is to risk instant immolation.
And I suppose I have a fat butt, but it’s that way from a general lack of exercise that a once-monthly strut up to the bank teller is unlikely to cure.
My former local bank is entirely a canister bank now, indoors and out. This is so it can’t get robbed. Swear. The only ‘real people’ in the building are a few loan officers and such at their desks.
And if a person is just getting $20, they can go to the ATM, which is in a different line from the canisters. And it’s faster.
Ditto. I’m fascinated by the sound they make: schweppp . . . PHOOO
Beautiful. Your child will grow up to become a great Doper; (s)he’s learning the language already!
We already have those. It’s called the Internet.
Speaking of Detroit, I was there a few weeks ago and went to a drive through ** White Castle** that used the tubes… or elevators, or something like that… I made sure I drove to the far lane so I couldn’t just get the food from the person in the window…
It was certainly a strange experience - You had to put your money into a cup to pay - and it went up the elevator and over to the cashier/order taker/cook. Then your change came back in a cup, your teeny-tiny burgers came over and then the fries and drinks…
I’m glad I don’t live there - I’d weigh 700 pounds - being able to buy White Castles, and a new way of getting them at a drive-thru - does life get any better?
Oh, and then I’d have to throw my garbage out the window, or put some of it back in the elevator, because it’s their fault for making it all so fun!
You mean the pneumatic tubes that make the “schweppp . . . PHOOO” noise that Sharky mentioned? We have them all over them place here in Baltimore. I don’t know what ‘canisters’ are, unless it’s just another word for the tubes.
My bank in Rocky River (a suburb of Cleveland) has 3 lanes of Schwepp-Foo tubes. Sounds like they’re an ancient Chinese/Yiddish banking practice.
I am really lazy. I don’t even leave the house to do my banking!!
Online banking rules!!
I just got back from my lovely Martha’s Vineyard vacation, and it was fan-fucking-tastic, thankyouverymuch.
But there were a couple of trashy instances that really burned my well-tanned butt.
For one, every morning I’d wake up to find the porch littered with beer cans, empty wine bottles, and paper bags. One night I witnessed a guy take a bottle out of a paper bag and just throw the bag on the ground. And there was a trash can not 20 feet away. Of course, this was the same guy yelling into a cell phone. No, not one he was talking on. One that his buddy was on. “Tell that faggot that he’s a faggot! HA HA HA HA! Faggot! Hey faggot, you’re a faggot! HA HA HA HA HA!” I’m pretty sure that he’s the guy that Peter Griffin was based on.
And I saw a number of women changing their baby’s diapers. In the ocean. And dumping the diaper contents in the ocean. And washing baby shit off of baby’s ass with ocean water.