The Other Coast by Adrian Raeside for February 19, 2024

Sadly, they’ll soon be Gone With The Wind…

Years ago, a bank teller for the Royal Bank was telling me how the bank was going to make changes that would free up the tellers from interacting with the customers so they could concentrate on other “products” and how wonderful it was going to be for the clientele.

I asked her: “Did they ask the customers?”

Don’t be silly! When was the last time a bank valued a customer enough to listen to them?

Dad passed years earlier, when my dear Mom sold her home and deposited more than $350,000 at Banksters of America. They immediately steered her to their residence stock broker at the bank. Luckily I was there with her. Sales guy was so nice, a smooth talker. Yes, of course my 92 year old Mother would like to pay a large sales fee upfront for that mutual fund in the stock market!

B of A was very shifty. Their Cd rates were awful. They charge you to keep your money. I transferred Mom’s account to Schwab. I set up a CD ladder for her at Schwab based on her budget. We could shop for the best CD rates there. Her monthly income covered her expenses. She always worried if she would have enough money. I projected that in-spite of her luxury accommodations at the senior residence community (I would live there, it’s nice), she had enough money to live to 140 years. She made it to 99, God bless her. Her and Dad skipped me and my siblings in the will. As executor I got to distribute their remaining wealth to my kids, and nephews and nieces per their will.

So now it’s my turn, I guess. Maybe I should have saved some money….dunno, they just keep printing it….Just paper right?…… ;-)

When corporate greed overpowers the human need for human contact.

A I is everywhere.

I guess things will eventually windup that way, but I have a hard time believing that the ensuing loss of those once highly valued personal business relationships will prove a good thing at the customer’s end.

If you talk too much she’ll kindly say “Leave me a loan.”

Do more with less

The biggest enemy of human contact is not these “robots”, but cell phones.

Only so far.

Same lack of human contact at my library. You return books through a slot and check out by computer. Only librarians are behind a screen doing whatever they’re doing.

This is like calling some outfit and getting a recording and spend 20 minutes pressing buttons and half the time either getting the wrong department or getting disconnected ……. “BUT” the other day I called and a live person answered …… almost went into shock ….. after I recovered, she said, with a chuckle, that most people have the same reaction ….. :)

Reminds me of a scene from “The President’s Analyst”.

We’re just one step away from that…..

My local bank branch did away with tellers. I changed banks.

Does anyone remember the days before ATMs? I do. There are reasons ATMs became wildly popular, both customer reasons and corporate reasons. Is anybody nostalgic for having to physically deposit paychecks during “banking hours” and standing in the lines? How about writing checks at the grocery store for $20 over the amount in order to get cash?

dealing with a couple snotty clerks the other day at the garden shop, i was wishing they had self-checkout…

The banks will be the first place to replace all their customer reps with AIs. They’re 90% there anyway.

The future is now. We’ll soon have windup humans making deposits.