Bank
Queue
Today is
school holiday to make up for Saturday’s Parents’ Day. What better than
fulfilling my duty as a good daughter – helping my mom with bank matters!
We first had a good dim sum lunch – a rare pleasure on a week day! Then we walked in the bank. There were already several queues of various lengths. People at the long queue looked frustrated. As my mom’s account was one of those privileged priority accounts, we didn’t have to wait for too long. My mother wanted to update her signature which had become quite different from the one she gave years ago. But as it was an integrated account with quite a few other accounts attached, there were a lot of forms that had to be filled in and signed. She also wanted to withdraw some cash and to transfer some of her money to do time deposit. The whole process took one full hour. During the whole time, I was standing while my mom was seated on the bench nearby. She popped up every now and then when her signature was required. This 87-year old lady with a stick simply couldn’t be on her feet for that long!
During this one-hour long close encounter with the counter lady, I could empathize what a stressful job she had. Since it was taking her so long to serve me, the customer who stood right behind me complained that he had waited far too long and that he had to rush off to work. Then there were her colleagues probably new ones asking her for advice over various matters. All of a sudden, a lady walked up and demanded the counter lady to come out to talk to her. All these happened when she was either filling in forms or counting notes.
Though working under such pressure, the counter lady kept her smile and even apologized several times for not being able to speed up the procedure! This is the kind of service Hong Kong is proud of!
