Rant #3,173: Three Lock Box

I did something very interesting earlier in the week, a process which should have taken maybe 20 minutes that stretched through almost an entire morning, mainly because of complete incompetence doled out by a certain major bank that will remain nameless.

I emptied out my mother’s bank safe deposit box, which I don’t think she needs anymore.

This entire exercise was prompted by a letter we received in the mail attesting to the fact that she owed more than $500 on the box rental, even though she originally opened the box under a special plan for certain customers that gave her the box for free in perpetuity—a decision since rescinded by the bank on seemingly unknowing customers.

Anyway, I went to the bank branch that I thought the box was in, but it was the wrong branch, so I had to go to another branch—not anything terrible, with this other branch basically cross town.

When I got to the branch containing the box, the bank was busy, and I had to wait for someone on the floor to call me into his office to explain what I needed to do.

A bank associate called me into his office, but as I was getting out the letter that I had received about the box, he picked up the phone and started talking to someone, then he hung up the phone and said he would be right back, “because I am the only one in the bank that can do this,” whatever “this” was, I have no idea.

He then literally vanished.

After about 10 minutes of waiting, I stood up and peaked over to an adjoining office, where another bank associate was on the phone,

I sat down in total disgust, and I figured I would give the original bank associate another five minutes to return—which, by the way, he never did.

Finally, the other associate was off the phone, and he stood up and told me over the office divider that he could help me, that the other associate “got busy.”

So I went over to his office, showed the associate the letter, and told him that I wanted to close out the box and that I would fight the fees addressed in the letter.

He looked up the account, and to my surprise, my name was actually on the box account—something I did not know—and that this should speed the closing of the box.

“Do you have the keys?” he asked me.

“What keys?” I replied.

Evidently, the box had two keys used to open it, and I had no idea that keys were needed to open the box.

(I once had a safe deposit box in another bank, and all I needed to open it up was a code—nothing to do with keys at all.)

“You need the keys to open the box up,” the associate told me. “If you don’t have the keys, you are going to have to go to court to get an order to open up the box, and we are going to have to get someone in here to break open the box.”

I was perplexed, but I told him that I would be back with the keys, even though I had no idea where the keys were in the house.

I went back to the house, and gingerly asked my mother if she knew where the keys were—and Jiminy Cricket!, she had not forgotten, and knew exactly where the keys were!

I rushed back to the bank, had to wait again to speak to someone, and then, after about 20 minutes, someone came to help me—

Or so I thought.

She determined after about 15 minutes of trying to get her computer to the account that the machine was not working, and that we had to go up to the teller area to complete this action.

She took my two forms of ID--my drivers license and a debit card—and I didn’t see those two forms of ID for the next hour or so.

She admitted that she needed help in opening up the account, which involved getting the bank manager over to assist—and then I asked them again about the letter I had received, and that I was not going to pay the amount it said that the account owed.

“Oh, you don’t owe us anything, we owe you!” the bank manager said as she fiddled around with the computer.

“Then why does it say that I owe several hundred dollars on the account?” I asked.

“Don’t pay attention to that, we owe you money.”

“Then why do you send out such a letter?”

“Oh, I didn’t send out the letter. I admit, the letter makes absolutely no sense.”

“I am not accusing you, personally, of writing the letter, but how does a major bank like this send out such a letter?”

“I don’t know … why don’t you write your own letter and complain about it?”

“Because, I don’t have the time to write such a letter, that’s why … and how about the box and my two forms of ID?”

The bank manager told me that everything would be taken care of in a minute, which really meant about an hour from that point—and in the interim, she gave me the cash for what the bank owed me, and I still have no idea why both the letter was sent nor why they owed the account money.

Anyway, everything was finally completed on the computer, and now the moment of reckoning had come … to finally get the box, open it, and see what was in there.

We went to the area where the boxes are held in the bank, and I was told to wait there until the associate could open the door for me—

The problem was, in the interim, the associate decided to get some other work done, and the minutes ticked away as I was waiting.

Tick … tick … tick …

Finally, after about 15 minutes of waiting, she finally opened the door to the box room, and we entered—

The first problem was that she could not find the box number. She looked and looked and looked, and could not find the number.

Finally she found it—it was on the lower level of where the boxes were—and then she put in the keys along with a bank key, to open it up.

It would not open.

No mater how she put the keys in, the box would not open.

This went on for at least 10 minutes, and then she said that she had to get the manager again to help us.

I was so frustrated at this point that I plunked my butt down on a portable stairs that they used there to get to the higher boxes, taking both the weight off my feet and off my brain as my frustration was building.

Finally, the associate and the manager came back, and lo and behold, the manager could not get the box open, either.

But after a lot of jiggling the keys, she finally got it open, and I was given the box to go through and take out its contents.

That was the fun part of this entire escapade, as I found in the box no valuables, but what I would call “family heirlooms,” like my grandparents’ citizenship papers and a certificate my father received when he completed a cooking course—in the Marines probably more than 70 years ago—

And a mysterious key … more about that later.

I took out everything, pushed a bell so the associate could come back and take the box from me.

She finally handed me back my IDs—they had not been in my possession for about an hour, exposed so anyone could see it on a desk in the teller area—and I walked out of the bank, finally, with a ton of paper and a key that I had no idea what lock it was designed for.

I went home, and showed my mom the key … and she also had on idea what it was from, either.

It is sort of an old fashioned key, a key that was probably made decades ago.

Since I have no idea what lock it opened, I surmised my mother kept it in the box as a memento … I do believe it was a key that was used in my father’s old butcher store on Delancey Street in Manhattan, a store that closed about 60 years ago or so—

Or at least that is the story that I am going to tell others when I show them that key, and it is truly a family heirloom no matter what lock it actually opened.

So there you have it … a supposedly easy exercise that once again, unnecessarily turned into torture for me.

I must have that perpetual black cloud over me, and I just cannot get rid of it, no matter what I do.

Have a good weekend, I will speak to you on Monday, and hopefully, there will be no more boxes to befuddle me now or in the future.