Rant #3,753: ? and the Mysterians

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I went to my local bank to take out some money from the ATM machine.

I wait my turn, and then i put my card in to begin the process.

I put in my pin number, and then--

The card was rejected 

I did the process again--stupidly thinking that I did something wrong--and again, the card was rejected.

I thought this was strange, because there was plenty of money in the account to draw from.

I went into the bank, went up to a teller, and asked what was going on.

He told me that a lock had been put on my card--

Not that anything was untoward happening with the card, but they do this as part of the "checks and balances" that they do to ensure that no hackers are infiltrating the system.

Now, what would have happened if I needed cash in a real emergency, and wasn't in a bank at the time?

I never got an answer to that, so I assume that the stop on the card was put onto it the moment I put the card in the ATM and wanted to take out my own money.

How convenient that was!

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Since I was there, and my transaction was now being taken care of by the teller himself--as the stop was taken off my card--I figured I would ask the teller a simple question:

"Can I have a couple of registers?"

The teller looked at me, and said--

"What's a register?

So to the bank teller, who admittedly was pretty young--I had to explain what a register was.

(As I am sure you know, a register us where you write down the debits and credits to your bank account, and it neatly fits right into your checkbook so you have the account's history right in front of you.)

Almost immediately, an old, decrepit teller who must have been all of 30 years of age came up to where I was conversing with the younger teller and said--

"We don't carry them anymore, because no one uses them anymore."

Funny, I do ... I mean, how do I reconcile what I have in my checking account without one?

I told this to him, and he gave me a register for a giant's checkbook (see photo)--

The register was twice as big as a normal-sized one, and the print in it was about three times larger than normal.

The last I looked, I was a giant 5 foot, 9-and-a half inches.

Not Andre the Giant.

i left this bank with the giant-sized register in my hand along with the cash in took out.

Onto the next bank ...

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I wanted to put the money i had taken out of one bank into another account I had in another bank, so as I have done hundreds of times, I got my money together, and drove to the drive-thru of this other nearby bank.

There were a couple of cars ahead of me--just one window--so I dutifully waited my turn.

Finally, it was my turn, and I gave the woman teller my cash, a check I wanted deposited, my driver's license, and my bank card so my transaction could be processed.

"Please put all of it into my (I am going to leave out where I told her I wanted the deposit made, because, well, I am starting to not trust anyone when it comes to banks and my money)."

I noticed that she was counting the cash very carefully, almost too carefully.

"I have to go up front ... give me a minute," she said, and since she was going up front, i asked her for a couple of registers (kill two birds with one stone).

The gist of the story at this bank begins here.

Why did she need to go up front?

Will I finally get my registers?

What else can go wrong?

Tune in tomorrow--

Same Bat time, same Bat channel ... .

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