They haven’t come after me yet
A year after I graduated college I began working for a bank in Rochester (NY), Lincoln-Rochester, which became Lincoln-First, and is now allied with Chase.
It wasn’t my first job, but was my first where my college-degree seemed to apply.
My first job was as a clerk in the tailor-shop of a large clothing-store called “National Clothing Company,” in Rochester. That store tanked perhaps 10 years after I left.
It was supposed to be Christmas-work, but turned into year-round employment.
It was fun, I enjoyed it.
I was learning a filing-system, and had it under control.
The tailor-shop was altering clothes, and had to keep track of what it was doing.
If a customer protested, I could look up what the tailor suggested, and been done.
The job turned into more than the tailor-shop.
I remember taking inventory one night for a big sale of suits from the Second-Floor. The Second-Floor was the premier men’s clothing outlet.
Most notable was the manager grabbing suits off the racks, and tossing hundreds of suits on-the-floor for counting. He was also rearranging things.
The floor was carpeted, but somewhat dirty. I was taken aback. Suits worth hundreds of dollars were being thrown on-the-floor. Some were worth $500; what now would be thousands of dollars.
I also worked the freight-elevator; it wasn’t automatic.
But I was shielded from the public.
Customers used an automatic elevator to get to the Second-Floor. There they were met by a greeter at the elevator-door who smiled and shook their hand and then directed them.
NO WAY was that clothing-store having me do that. I was perceived as scary and threatening.
Which was fine with me. I’m not a people-person.
I befriended quite a few people who had emigrated to our nation and found employ as tailors in our tailor-shop.
In other words, ferriners = non-honkies.
One Hungarian couple suggested I work at the bank next door. That it would pay more than my minimum-wage pay-rate, which at that time was $1.60 an hour.
Their son was a rising-star at that bank.
They helped me pick out a suit — actually two suits — and tailored them exquisitely.
I thereupon applied for a job at the bank. They hired me as a chief-clerk trainee for $100 per week.
I worked at that bank three years, and found I wasn’t a banker. Most loathsome was their penchant for breaking rules — like banking-law.
“Rules are made to be broken,” I was told.
The Chief-Clerk position was also being ended.
At that time each bank-branch was its own entity. The Chief-Clerk was to balance the branch and supervise tellers.
First I had to do teller-training. I was assigned to a busy bank-branch, and did okay — meaning I got so I could balance.
I then transferred to a busy city branch as “Head Teller.”
I wasn’t “Head Teller,” but I was doing large transactions.
It was during this time I learned the Chief Clerk there, a girl named Sandy, called herself the “Chief Jerk.”
Sometime along in here I was transferred to another bank-branch across from Kodak Park.
It was fairly busy, but was taking in huge deposits of unwrapped bills in grocery-bags from a nearby liquor-store. Christmas was coming, and everyone was buying liquor.
We were amazed the liquor-store owner never got hit; he was putting grocery-bags of unwrapped 20s in our night-deposit.
Years later he finally got robbed.
We had to wrap everything, and ship it to headquarters.
Other bank-branches were ordering cash perhaps once per week; yet we were shipping it three times per week.
I was then assigned to a suburban branch to learn the loan department.
The suburb was somewhat ritzy, and the Note-Department was essentially the Chief-Clerk, one Frank Welch, a farm-boy.
At that time each branch was its own loan-department, although only business loans.
That is, a business-owner might need a couple-thousand to purchase inventory. In which case the bank would loan him that money for a promissory-note kept on file at the branch.
When the note came due, the business-owner might pay it off in full, or just pay the interest and re-float the loan.
Such loans had no collateral, except loans to car-dealers, where the car would be collateral.
The other loan mechanism was demand-loans. They had no due-date, but -a) needed collateral, and -b) interest-payment.
This suburban office really had only one loan customer, an Executive Vice-President at Xerox.
He had hundreds of thousands of dollars in demand-loans, all collateralized by Xerox stock.
I remember him visiting our office one day, fat yet dapper in his Bermuda-shorts and tasseled golf-hat.
Everyone bowed and scraped. After all, this guy was our branch’s income.
With him I learned the bank’s favoritism toward large customers.
The branch-manager regularly approved the guy’s checking-account overdrafts. —That’s an interest-free loan!
Yet if some small-potatoes account bounced anything we were supposed to threaten the Sheriff.
Poor Frank! I drove him crazy with my questions, but I did successfully learn the notes.
I also nonplussed him when I pointed out our daily interest-accrual was inflating branch income by figuring interest on interest.
Changing that was impossible. To do so would decrease income from each branch, and branch-managers would be up-in-arms.
Interest-income should be figured on loans due, not loans plus interest due.
All bank-branches were doing this; the entire bank.
Plus we’re working with humans. A point-of-analysis might be beyond the bank’s employees.
After that loan-training, I was moved to a new branch trying to take root out in the hinterlands. I worked as a Chief-Clerk (“Jerk”), but under the actual Chief-Clerk at that branch, an old hand named “Nellie.” She had transferred from our busy Monroe Avenue branch in Rochester, a branch that made its money loaning to mobsters.
I remember my wife working at that branch. She hated the branch-manager, an avowed Christian profiting from mobsters.
That manager stridently professed his Christian faith, yet coddled gangsters and killers.
Nellie and I had a rollicking good time — she enjoyed her freedom from the madness that had been the Monroe Avenue branch.
But our new branch was failing.
Our manager had been an Assistant Branch-Manager at Monroe Avenue, and it was he that told me “Rules are made to be broken.”
He was breaking rules willy-nilly in a fervent attempt to make his branch a success.
But we were too early. Our area was not as well-developed as it would be 30 years hence.
After that branch I was named Chief-Clerk (“Jerk”) at our busy office in Henrietta. (“Deepest-darkest Henrietta”).
I was supposed to be the savior. I was supposed to straighten-out the Loan Department, and bring order-out-of-chaos by putting in a new lunch-schedule for my tellers.
I should have known. I laid out a new lunch-schedule, as asked, and my tellers promptly called in the branch manager, who reversed my lunch-schedule.
At this point I should have slammed the door of the branch-manager’s office and confronted him.
“You asked for a lunch-schedule, I do same, then you override what you asked for.
Who’s supervising the tellers, you or me?
If it’s you instead of me, cut me loose!”
But callow youth that I was I didn’t do this.
The Loan-Department was another hairball. It was goofed-up because a teller had been assigned to it, and she was clearly over her head. No one was giving her guidance. She had no training. —She didn’t understand what she was doing.
As a result, the daily income from the Loan-Department was way too high, discovered by audit.
So I refigured it, causing weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth from the branch-manager, because my figure was much lower. (Gasp!)
The manager questioned my intelligence in front of the staff. Leadership by me was clearly impossible.
Being Chief-Clerk at this branch was turning into madness, yet callow youth that I was I continued.
At one point the Assistant Branch-Manager went toe-to-toe with the Branch-Manager. It’s what I should have done.
I began to hide. I’d go down to the lunchroom and rearrange the bottles in our soda-machine.
Upstairs I was parrying madness.
My daily input fell to putting out fires.
I did a lunch-schedule, but it had to be approved by both staff and manager.
Management’s suggestion was to have tellers put out the fires. A nice idea, but I’d have to show them how.
About all they could do was alphabetize signature-cards.
I did training in double-entry bookkeeping, but only one of my students got it.
Another insisted I skip the background, and just show her the motions.
(Which was why our Loan-Department got screwed up.)
I had to monitor customer-lines. If tellers started getting lines, our manager would go ballistic. I’d be loudly castigated — like I should be able to predict when lines would form.
“Where’s Maddy?” the Branch-Manager would bellow.
“Out to lunch,” I’d say; “per your lunch-schedule.”
“Go get her anyway,” he’d scream; “we’re swamped!
At this point I should have said “Oh you want me to endure the wrath of Maddy, not you.”
I’d go get Maddy.
“But Bob,” she’d say; “I’m out to lunch.”
“The boss needs your help.”
“Oh, in that case.......”
Maddy was queen of the teller-line.
Everyone loved Maddy. Customers always went to her because she knew everyone, and would cash their checks without question.
Every branch seemed to have a queen. Nellie was one, and then there was Pat Chatterton, an Assistant Branch-Manager.
At that office across from Kodak Park, the Chief-Clerk was the queen; and our office in Brighton had one whose name I think was Helen. She was Head-Teller. She supervised the tellers, relieving the Chief-Clerk of that duty.
Maddy was queen of the Henrietta branch, She also lived nearby.
I remember what a hard time I had getting my tellers to reduce their cash-drawers.
Mega-millions in the cash-drawer seemed to be a point of honor.
Before my being at Henrietta a teller was robbed of $33,000.
Well of course it was $33,000. $33,000 was what she had in her till.
“What I need is about $500 in your till —excess in your cash-truck. If you’re gonna be robbed, $500 is more reasonable than $33,000.”
Plus the Chief-Clerk position was ending. No longer would a bank-branch be its own entity. Everything would be proofed by headquarters, and headquarters would balance the branch.
Management thereupon guided me toward front-desk duty; meeting the public.
For which I was totally unsuited.
Headquarters thereafter decided I was unsuited for what was happening, so they got mad.
They decided the only bank-employ I was suited for was some kind of auditing from central dungeons.
I wasn’t interested, so the branch “laid me off” — or so they claimed.
The branch-staff held a big going-away party for me at some restaurant. Another good one ruined.
I remember the restaurant-staff congratulating me on my promotion.
“Yeah,” I said; “promoted out the door!”
I left behind a giant “pending-pile” in my desk-drawer. Stuff not important, but too difficult to farm out.
I always wonder what happened when they discovered my pending-pile.
But they haven’t come after me yet.
No one at headquarters ever questioned that branch-manager about excessive management turnover.
His branch was making money hand-over-fist.
But I would say it wasn’t him. It was more that the town around that branch had been heavily developed, and that branch was first in the area.
• RE: “Kodak Park........” —For a long time Rochester was a one-industry town, namely Kodak. Kodak’s manufacturing facilities were in a large area in northwestern Rochester known as “Kodak Park.” Kodak Park had its own fire-department, police, and railroad. Film was manufactured therein, along with Kodak cameras. With the recent ascendency of digital photography, Kodak Park has become moribund, and many of its buildings torn down. Kodak also declared bankruptcy. Kodak Park has become a large industrial-park, with new small start-up industries occupying old “Park” buildings. —The bank-branch was across from Kodak Park.
• “Deepest, darkest Henrietta” is a rather effusive and obnoxious suburb south of Rochester.
• “Brighton “is a suburb southeast of Rochester. It’s between Rochester and Henrietta.
It wasn’t my first job, but was my first where my college-degree seemed to apply.
My first job was as a clerk in the tailor-shop of a large clothing-store called “National Clothing Company,” in Rochester. That store tanked perhaps 10 years after I left.
It was supposed to be Christmas-work, but turned into year-round employment.
It was fun, I enjoyed it.
I was learning a filing-system, and had it under control.
The tailor-shop was altering clothes, and had to keep track of what it was doing.
If a customer protested, I could look up what the tailor suggested, and been done.
The job turned into more than the tailor-shop.
I remember taking inventory one night for a big sale of suits from the Second-Floor. The Second-Floor was the premier men’s clothing outlet.
Most notable was the manager grabbing suits off the racks, and tossing hundreds of suits on-the-floor for counting. He was also rearranging things.
The floor was carpeted, but somewhat dirty. I was taken aback. Suits worth hundreds of dollars were being thrown on-the-floor. Some were worth $500; what now would be thousands of dollars.
I also worked the freight-elevator; it wasn’t automatic.
But I was shielded from the public.
Customers used an automatic elevator to get to the Second-Floor. There they were met by a greeter at the elevator-door who smiled and shook their hand and then directed them.
NO WAY was that clothing-store having me do that. I was perceived as scary and threatening.
Which was fine with me. I’m not a people-person.
I befriended quite a few people who had emigrated to our nation and found employ as tailors in our tailor-shop.
In other words, ferriners = non-honkies.
One Hungarian couple suggested I work at the bank next door. That it would pay more than my minimum-wage pay-rate, which at that time was $1.60 an hour.
Their son was a rising-star at that bank.
They helped me pick out a suit — actually two suits — and tailored them exquisitely.
I thereupon applied for a job at the bank. They hired me as a chief-clerk trainee for $100 per week.
I worked at that bank three years, and found I wasn’t a banker. Most loathsome was their penchant for breaking rules — like banking-law.
“Rules are made to be broken,” I was told.
The Chief-Clerk position was also being ended.
At that time each bank-branch was its own entity. The Chief-Clerk was to balance the branch and supervise tellers.
First I had to do teller-training. I was assigned to a busy bank-branch, and did okay — meaning I got so I could balance.
I then transferred to a busy city branch as “Head Teller.”
I wasn’t “Head Teller,” but I was doing large transactions.
It was during this time I learned the Chief Clerk there, a girl named Sandy, called herself the “Chief Jerk.”
Sometime along in here I was transferred to another bank-branch across from Kodak Park.
It was fairly busy, but was taking in huge deposits of unwrapped bills in grocery-bags from a nearby liquor-store. Christmas was coming, and everyone was buying liquor.
We were amazed the liquor-store owner never got hit; he was putting grocery-bags of unwrapped 20s in our night-deposit.
Years later he finally got robbed.
We had to wrap everything, and ship it to headquarters.
Other bank-branches were ordering cash perhaps once per week; yet we were shipping it three times per week.
I was then assigned to a suburban branch to learn the loan department.
The suburb was somewhat ritzy, and the Note-Department was essentially the Chief-Clerk, one Frank Welch, a farm-boy.
At that time each branch was its own loan-department, although only business loans.
That is, a business-owner might need a couple-thousand to purchase inventory. In which case the bank would loan him that money for a promissory-note kept on file at the branch.
When the note came due, the business-owner might pay it off in full, or just pay the interest and re-float the loan.
Such loans had no collateral, except loans to car-dealers, where the car would be collateral.
The other loan mechanism was demand-loans. They had no due-date, but -a) needed collateral, and -b) interest-payment.
This suburban office really had only one loan customer, an Executive Vice-President at Xerox.
He had hundreds of thousands of dollars in demand-loans, all collateralized by Xerox stock.
I remember him visiting our office one day, fat yet dapper in his Bermuda-shorts and tasseled golf-hat.
Everyone bowed and scraped. After all, this guy was our branch’s income.
With him I learned the bank’s favoritism toward large customers.
The branch-manager regularly approved the guy’s checking-account overdrafts. —That’s an interest-free loan!
Yet if some small-potatoes account bounced anything we were supposed to threaten the Sheriff.
Poor Frank! I drove him crazy with my questions, but I did successfully learn the notes.
I also nonplussed him when I pointed out our daily interest-accrual was inflating branch income by figuring interest on interest.
Changing that was impossible. To do so would decrease income from each branch, and branch-managers would be up-in-arms.
Interest-income should be figured on loans due, not loans plus interest due.
All bank-branches were doing this; the entire bank.
Plus we’re working with humans. A point-of-analysis might be beyond the bank’s employees.
After that loan-training, I was moved to a new branch trying to take root out in the hinterlands. I worked as a Chief-Clerk (“Jerk”), but under the actual Chief-Clerk at that branch, an old hand named “Nellie.” She had transferred from our busy Monroe Avenue branch in Rochester, a branch that made its money loaning to mobsters.
I remember my wife working at that branch. She hated the branch-manager, an avowed Christian profiting from mobsters.
That manager stridently professed his Christian faith, yet coddled gangsters and killers.
Nellie and I had a rollicking good time — she enjoyed her freedom from the madness that had been the Monroe Avenue branch.
But our new branch was failing.
Our manager had been an Assistant Branch-Manager at Monroe Avenue, and it was he that told me “Rules are made to be broken.”
He was breaking rules willy-nilly in a fervent attempt to make his branch a success.
But we were too early. Our area was not as well-developed as it would be 30 years hence.
After that branch I was named Chief-Clerk (“Jerk”) at our busy office in Henrietta. (“Deepest-darkest Henrietta”).
I was supposed to be the savior. I was supposed to straighten-out the Loan Department, and bring order-out-of-chaos by putting in a new lunch-schedule for my tellers.
I should have known. I laid out a new lunch-schedule, as asked, and my tellers promptly called in the branch manager, who reversed my lunch-schedule.
At this point I should have slammed the door of the branch-manager’s office and confronted him.
“You asked for a lunch-schedule, I do same, then you override what you asked for.
Who’s supervising the tellers, you or me?
If it’s you instead of me, cut me loose!”
But callow youth that I was I didn’t do this.
The Loan-Department was another hairball. It was goofed-up because a teller had been assigned to it, and she was clearly over her head. No one was giving her guidance. She had no training. —She didn’t understand what she was doing.
As a result, the daily income from the Loan-Department was way too high, discovered by audit.
So I refigured it, causing weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth from the branch-manager, because my figure was much lower. (Gasp!)
The manager questioned my intelligence in front of the staff. Leadership by me was clearly impossible.
Being Chief-Clerk at this branch was turning into madness, yet callow youth that I was I continued.
At one point the Assistant Branch-Manager went toe-to-toe with the Branch-Manager. It’s what I should have done.
I began to hide. I’d go down to the lunchroom and rearrange the bottles in our soda-machine.
Upstairs I was parrying madness.
My daily input fell to putting out fires.
I did a lunch-schedule, but it had to be approved by both staff and manager.
Management’s suggestion was to have tellers put out the fires. A nice idea, but I’d have to show them how.
About all they could do was alphabetize signature-cards.
I did training in double-entry bookkeeping, but only one of my students got it.
Another insisted I skip the background, and just show her the motions.
(Which was why our Loan-Department got screwed up.)
I had to monitor customer-lines. If tellers started getting lines, our manager would go ballistic. I’d be loudly castigated — like I should be able to predict when lines would form.
“Where’s Maddy?” the Branch-Manager would bellow.
“Out to lunch,” I’d say; “per your lunch-schedule.”
“Go get her anyway,” he’d scream; “we’re swamped!
At this point I should have said “Oh you want me to endure the wrath of Maddy, not you.”
I’d go get Maddy.
“But Bob,” she’d say; “I’m out to lunch.”
“The boss needs your help.”
“Oh, in that case.......”
Maddy was queen of the teller-line.
Everyone loved Maddy. Customers always went to her because she knew everyone, and would cash their checks without question.
Every branch seemed to have a queen. Nellie was one, and then there was Pat Chatterton, an Assistant Branch-Manager.
At that office across from Kodak Park, the Chief-Clerk was the queen; and our office in Brighton had one whose name I think was Helen. She was Head-Teller. She supervised the tellers, relieving the Chief-Clerk of that duty.
Maddy was queen of the Henrietta branch, She also lived nearby.
I remember what a hard time I had getting my tellers to reduce their cash-drawers.
Mega-millions in the cash-drawer seemed to be a point of honor.
Before my being at Henrietta a teller was robbed of $33,000.
Well of course it was $33,000. $33,000 was what she had in her till.
“What I need is about $500 in your till —excess in your cash-truck. If you’re gonna be robbed, $500 is more reasonable than $33,000.”
Plus the Chief-Clerk position was ending. No longer would a bank-branch be its own entity. Everything would be proofed by headquarters, and headquarters would balance the branch.
Management thereupon guided me toward front-desk duty; meeting the public.
For which I was totally unsuited.
Headquarters thereafter decided I was unsuited for what was happening, so they got mad.
They decided the only bank-employ I was suited for was some kind of auditing from central dungeons.
I wasn’t interested, so the branch “laid me off” — or so they claimed.
The branch-staff held a big going-away party for me at some restaurant. Another good one ruined.
I remember the restaurant-staff congratulating me on my promotion.
“Yeah,” I said; “promoted out the door!”
I left behind a giant “pending-pile” in my desk-drawer. Stuff not important, but too difficult to farm out.
I always wonder what happened when they discovered my pending-pile.
But they haven’t come after me yet.
No one at headquarters ever questioned that branch-manager about excessive management turnover.
His branch was making money hand-over-fist.
But I would say it wasn’t him. It was more that the town around that branch had been heavily developed, and that branch was first in the area.
• RE: “Kodak Park........” —For a long time Rochester was a one-industry town, namely Kodak. Kodak’s manufacturing facilities were in a large area in northwestern Rochester known as “Kodak Park.” Kodak Park had its own fire-department, police, and railroad. Film was manufactured therein, along with Kodak cameras. With the recent ascendency of digital photography, Kodak Park has become moribund, and many of its buildings torn down. Kodak also declared bankruptcy. Kodak Park has become a large industrial-park, with new small start-up industries occupying old “Park” buildings. —The bank-branch was across from Kodak Park.
• “Deepest, darkest Henrietta” is a rather effusive and obnoxious suburb south of Rochester.
• “Brighton “is a suburb southeast of Rochester. It’s between Rochester and Henrietta.
posted by BobbaLew at 8:07 AM
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