One Man’s Journey: 1947 to 1983
by Howard W Powell
I was working as
a cashier at a Branch next door to the office for Registration of Births, Deaths and Marriages, I had a queue to serve and a man who
must have waited some time finally arrived in front of me and said "Is this where I register a birth?" "No," I said and before I could
say more he added "Me and the Missus just had a baby" with such intense pleasure that I was sorry not to be able to help more. I sent
him next door but wondered later whether he thought everyone in my queue had either a birth, a death or a marriage to register.
As
a cashier at the Head Office of the Bank it was necessary to pass back to counter clerks any pass books or signed forms for checking,
the cash till had a built-in drawer that automatically locked if pushed too hard and, in turning round to pass back documents, it
often happened that the drawer locked and it had to be reopened with a key so it was usual to leave the key in the lock for convenience;
unfortunately, in turning round it was possible for the key to slide into one's trouser buttons, this being the days before zips and
one could find one, two, three or more fly buttons undone whilst standing in full view from the waist up at a counter. The trick would
then be to do them up before or after serving each customer and hope for someone who wanted to ask a question and you could reply
without using your hands above the counter. To a keen observer this must have seemed most odd but for the cashier, I can confirm it
was most worrying and, unfortunately, took one's mind off the prime job of serving the customer.
It was considered to be good
training for cashiers to move from one Branch to another for short periods on relief when other cashiers were away on leave and this
meant that you learned to work in all sorts of Branches and with all sorts of managers. I once upset a manager who spent the first
hour doing the Times crossword puzzle by asking him a question and whilst listening to the answer spotting an answer to one of the
clues; I pointed this out to him and he stood up, glared at me indignantly and said "Get on with your work and do not interfere with
mine." This seemed a little unfair so I remarked that what he was doing was not quite work at which he gave me the management answer
"You are paid for what you do, I am paid for what I know." There's truth in it.
On the day of the funeral of King George VI in 1952 it was left to the manager's discretion whether he actually closed his Branch to the public at the appropriate time for two minutes as a sign of respect, my manager at that time was not sure what to do until a lady came in just before the appointed time and commenced to complete a slip for her transaction, the manager shouted to her to enquire if she knew the time and the significance of it and she became very apologetic and offered to leave and return later, but the manager decided to serve her if she was quick and, while she was being served by me he stood quite close and talked about respect to the monarchy and made her feel quite uncomfortable. He walked round to the customer's side of the counter as she left and closed the door behind her, turned round to me and said "Let's have a smoke and, for Heaven's sake get the kettle on, we've got a couple of minutes."
Because of my interest in writing I became
Editor of the In-house Bank magazine and later the Trade union magazine for the local Branch and I also joined the Staff Association
reaching the position of Chairman. I was always surprised to be a part of these sort of jobs because I had never considered myself
to be a "committee man" but I enjoyed them all.
One learns not to accept anything at face value; a thin and youngish man came
into a Branch with an elderly, rather large lady and asked to speak to the manager who came to the counter to ask what they wanted,
after some conversation the man left and the lady went into the manager's office, the manager informed me that the man had returned
home for some necessary document and would I tell him to go into the manager's office on his return. When he came back I said "Your
mother is in the manager's office, please go straight in" and he gave me a most withering look and said "She is not my mother, she
is my wife." Never take anything for granted.
As I worked my way up the promotion ladder I reached the dizzy heights of Relief
Branch Manager which meant that I was able to take charge of a Branch during the temporary absence of the manager, I waited in fear
and trembling for my first day of being in charge because I knew that every customer would have some sort of complicated query and
I would not know the answer and the telephone would be out of order so I would be unable to get help. It turned out, of course, that
the most difficult question I had on my first day in charge of a Branch was a telephone call asking what time the Bank closed. So
do we build up our own stresses and pressures? but perhaps it is part of our human nature to be afraid of feeling inadequate like
the opening batsman who takes the long walk to the wicket, the steady look round the field and is out first ball.
Communication
between people is important when some sort of help is needed or there is a question to be answered; it is necessary to be quite sure
of the facts and the details before giving a positive reply and this is illustrated in the case of the lady who approached a young
cashier who was dealing with customers at a till for the first time. The lady asked what the cashier thought was "Will you take the
Gas Bill?" and, from what he heard, he answered quite rightly that he could do so not only today but any day except Saturday when
it was preferred that the Bank dealt solely with Bank transactions. The lady was overwhelmed and produced several religious tracts
and leaflets with most grateful thanks, one of the leaflets was clearly headed "Will you take the Gospel?" It took a little sorting
out but fortunately this episode on his first day did not dampen the cashier's enthusiasm for the job.
I took charge of one Branch
where the manager was on holiday and there was a break-in overnight and, when I arrived in the morning and opened the front door,
papers had been scattered about and a futile attempt had been made to jemmy the safe door open; the police were called and finger-prints
taken particularly round a back window that had been shattered and where, no doubt, entrance had been made. Several weeks later five
or six young teenage boys were arrested for this and other offences and I was required to attend Court as a witness although I had
made a full statement at the time of the break-in. I was called into the witness box quite interested in the proceedings and prepared
simply to say I had discovered the mess when arriving at the Branch in the morning. "You say in your statement entry was made through
a window at the back?" asked a gentleman who was representing the boys "Yes," I replied. "You were with them, then?" he asked, this
seemed to be a daft question but I smiled sweetly and said, "No." "Then how do you know they came in through the back window?" Well,
of course, put like that I didn't and I saw the possibility that they had somehow got hold of a set of keys, entered and left through
the front door and broken the back window from the outside as they left. Almost holding out my hands for the handcuffs to be fitted,
I said, "I assumed they broke in that way." After a little lecture to all assembled about the veracity of my statement which contained
admitted assumptions, I was allowed to go. I learned that conclusions should be based on known facts, not on assumptions whatever
the circumstances may suggest. There was a slight follow-up when a policeman called at the Branch and chatted to me about the case
finishing up by telling me that this gang always left one boy outside as a "look-out" because he was the best in the business and
added "this is probably because he's stone deaf." I couldn't resist the question and I was told "If you were on look-out, you would
be distracted by all sorts of noises and you would be concentrating with hearing and sight alone, this lad seems to sense whether
anybody is about, he doesn't get distracted by odd noises and he concentrates hard to make himself a useful member of the gang in
spite of this disability." Do not make assumptions that things are or are not possible until you have accepted the impossible as a
possibility and thought about it.
I found as an appointed Branch Manager much of the work was routine but the pleasant part was
in being able to help people. It is sometimes necessary to deny help because of rules and sometimes because you consider the help
they are requesting is not the help that is best for them under the circumstances and alternatives can be tried; such discussions
are usually appreciated by people who tend to have tunnel vision about the solutions to their problems until they are made aware that
there may be other avenues to explore.
After several years as a Branch Manager in various Branches each successive one being
a little more important than the last, I was promoted to the position of Bank Inspector. Now Bank Inspectors to me had been officials
who came unexpectedly into my Branch, checked all the money, randomly checked files, watched the cashiers at work, checked the security
and all aspects of the Branch work; sometimes they would be there for days and other times would be out in an hour or two. They loved
tea and the kettle must be on as soon as they arrived. They were mysterious people whose job it was to ensure that rules were kept
and work was efficiently carried out so, on my first morning as an Inspector, I reported to my immediate Boss and asked "What do I
do as an Inspector?" he replied "Wherever you are and whatever you are doing and however you are doing it, that is where you should
be, that is what you should be doing and that is how it should be done. Alright?" I did not have that sort of independence every day
but I enjoyed the responsible informality of it, the unpredictability because anything could happen where an Inspector would be required.
I
heard a story of Inspectors which I must stress was in another Bank where two of them turned up one day at a Branch in unfamiliar
territory to both of them, they produced their Identity Cards saying they were the Inspectors, the cards were quickly scanned as a
formality and they started to count the money; one of them looked up and saw a building on the other side of the road showing the
name of the Bank he worked for, he sidled up to his fellow-Inspector and asked "Have you ever been in this Branch before?" "No," was
the reply. "You walked up to the front door, I thought you knew it." "I've never been here before and this is not one of our Branches,
let's get out quick." If it isn't true it ought to be because it is remotely possible, there are so many Branches of so many Banks
on so many corners.
If a cashier failed to balance cash at the close of business and was short of an appreciable amount in the
till it was an Inspector's job to go to the branch involved and carry out an immediate investigation and often, where it was thought
that overpayment to a customer could have been made, to visit that customer and ask if he/she would check the amount withdrawn
if only to eliminate them from the investigation. I recall making such a visit, introducing myself as from the Bank, and asking if
a check could be made on the amount paid, the gentleman said he had made the withdrawal, the cash was still in his pocket untouched
and he would check it in front of me. I was hoping the cashier had overpaid him by £40 and I could easily recover the amount. He counted,
looked up with delight and said "I can't believe this. What wonderful service, your cashier has made a mistake and given me ten pounds
short and you have come all the way to my house to bring it. This is really wonderful service." Speechless does not quite describe
how I felt. Fortunately his wife came out of the kitchen to see what was happening and he told her this story of how I had come to
give him ten pounds and she said "Don't be silly, I had ten pounds out of that money, I told you when I took it." I felt him look
at me as I dropped from grace, my halo in tatters and I became, to him, a suspicious character making enquiries about his Bank account.
Somehow I got away but even now I wonder what I would have done if his wife had been out.
It is always difficult to deal with
people who are honestly convinced that what they are saying is correct when it is not. I recall an encounter with a lady who was paying
in money for her aunt and she was sure she had four hundred pounds, counted by her aunt the previous night, counted in front of the
lady in the morning, wrapped up in newspaper and brought directly to the Bank and handed over to the cashier without the necessary
paying-in slip because she was not conversant with the procedure. The cashier counted the money, completed a slip for two hundred
pounds and asked the lady to sign it at which point the balloon went up. I was called in and the lady was still in the Bank wanting
to know the answer to one question only - How had the cashier managed to pocket two hundred pounds without the lady seeing her do
it? - she agreed there was two hundred pounds on the counter but insisted that she had brought in four hundred, checked twice at home,
wrapped and handed over. I had no doubts about the integrity of the cashier but I also had no doubts about the sincerity of the lady
so I suggested that we took the money, wrapped as it was originally, back to the aunt. We arrived at the aunt's house and I asked
immediately "How much money did you send to the Bank?" The answer: "Four hundred pounds, counted last night and checked again this
morning," so I unwrapped the package, placed the bundle in front of her and said "Will you please count it for me now?" "Of course
-ten, twenty, thirty .... she looked up at me. "They're five pound notes, aren't they?" she said. "I was thinking they were ten pound
notes." There was much apologising to me and afterwards personally to the cashier but it proves that it is very difficult to convince
people they are wrong when they are sincerely convinced they are right.
It is customary to place various notices round Bank counters
and on the walls to bring important or interesting matters to the attention of customers and, inspecting at a Branch one day, I was
irritated to see a notice placed on the wall at a distinct slant, sufficiently so for me to point this out to the manager who referred
me to his first assistant, a man known to me for occasional odd ideas. He admitted having placed this notice on the wall and continued
"I have put up a lot of notices but I have never had such overwhelming interest in the content of one before; everybody who comes
in comments about the slant and then wants to discuss the information on it." There is a lesson for advertising executives - if you
want to catch the eye, do something different, but then all of them will do something different and it will become different if you
hang it "straight."
From the rank of Inspector I was appointed to the office of Area Manager where I was in overall charge of
ten Branches for staffing purposes and acted as Branch Manager of the largest; later promotion took me to the rank of District Manager
where I was in overall charge for all purposes of twenty Branches. I had an office next door to Dennis Moore who was in charge
of twenty Branches in the next district to mine and we shared a secretary.
One of the jobs in this position was interviewing new applicants
who wanted to work for the Bank and serving officers applying for promotion. We usually had a panel of three to question the promotion
applicants and each of the three of us would put questions for seven or eight minutes, there would then be a general discussion and
the interview would last about half an hour, sometimes longer if we required more time. The questions were designed to test the officer's
knowledge and reactions under certain circumstances and it was always of interest to me to press an applicant to the utmost, closing
all avenues until he/she had to make a decision. To do this I became a customer who was returning to the counter after being served
and I was complaining that I had made out a withdrawal form for one hundred pounds and had been given eighty pounds only. Can I have
my twenty pounds quickly because I have to catch a train and I haven't much time. Most of the answers would commence with the idea
of the cashier balancing the till and, if it is twenty pounds over, handing over the money. This is countered by the information I
now give that the cashier has tried to balance the cash in the till and it is fifty-five pounds forty-three pence short. Obviously
there is some miscalculation which could take some time to discover, in the meantime I am getting to be a very impatient customer.
The next suggestion would be to telephone for advice from a senior officer and here, I would regret, the telephone engineers are working
outside and the telephone is temporarily out of use, meanwhile I point out I am getting to be a very irate customer indeed. As each
move is blocked the applicant is forced either into silence, into admitting that he/she would not know what to do or into a decision
of some sort; the one I liked best was the girl who would pay over the twenty pounds and accept the responsibility for the decision
rather than delay and antagonise the customer further. This question was most effective in the days when cashiers balanced their tills
manually but would not have the same impact or relevance with the modern computer methods used by today's cashiers.
If something
untoward happened at a Branch when it was closed, it was often necessary for the key-holder to be contacted, if the first key holder
could not be roused, the second key holder would be called. In my capacity as District Manager, my name and number were on record
as second key holder at all of my twenty Branches and I was often called out on cold winter evenings when a Branch Manager did not
hear his home telephone ringing. All the Bank keys were securely locked up and I had to contact security sources as I made my way
to the Branch. One cold night I arrived at a Branch after a call-out to find two policemen waiting for me to inform me that someone
had thrown a brick through a window. I placed the Yale key in the lock and turned and the key broke leaving the keyhole completely
blocked with no part of the broken key protruding and no way of unblocking it without a locksmith "What do we do now?" asked one of
the policemen. After some thought I said, "There is a window with a hole in it, I am going to make the hole big enough for me to get
through and I can then open the front door from the other side." "You can't do that," said the policeman. "I shall do it better if
you're not looking," I said. The two policemen got into their car and closed their ears while I set about the window with a handy
piece of wood and with great care until I was able to get through, unlock the front door and let them in. They satisfied themselves
that the only casualty was the window and they left me to telephone to the shopfitting firm that is always on duty to board up windows
under these circumstances. I made myself tea from the Branch supply and was ready to leave after a couple of hours, the window boarded
up, the front door without its Yale lock but with sufficient other security to take it through until the arrival of the staff. I went
straight to this Branch from home in the morning and discovered that the Branch Manager had an undisturbed night and I suggested that,
like me, he could have an extension telephone fitted in his bedroom. A member of his staff brought a cup of tea to me and I mentioned
I had made tea for myself during the night "Did you put any money into the kitty for it?" he asked, he was a lad with a sense of humour.
It occurred to me afterwards that, during my forced entry into the Branch after bashing through a window, no-one in the vicinity had
been sufficiently disturbed to have made any sort of enquiry.
Part of the job of a District Manager was to give talks at local
firms to men and women who were approaching retirement. I always based my one hour chat on the two important areas of health and wealth
pointing out that, if you could make the most of your health and use your capital and income to the best advantage, you could concentrate
your thoughts on getting the most out of your leisure time. John Cox was also a District Manager and he had the experience, whilst
giving a talk, of seeing two men at the back of the audience chatting together, he paused, they looked up at him and he pointed out
that he was a busy man who had plenty of work to do but he had given his time to come and talk to them and to help by answering questions
and he would have thought they would have afforded him the courtesy of listening, he then continued with his subject. Before he left
one of the men came up to him and said, "I'm not sure if you remember me but I was the man sitting at the back who you ticked off
for talking." "Yes" said John, "I must admit I felt upset about your lack of attention." "I can understand that," said the man "and
I'm sorry but what I was actually saying to my friend was what a wonderful talk you were giving and how tremendously helpful it was
going to be. I know it was wrong to whisper this while you were talking but I was so impressed I couldn't help it." "Thank you," said
John and moved quickly away. You never know what they're saying about you.
Every Branch had a Staff Room for tea-drinking and
eating sandwiches or food bought from local shops and it was customary for each member of staff to be allowed to take set times during
the day in this rest room, in most Branches the manager would take the last period of lunch-time so that, if he considered it necessary,
he could take a little extra. A manager came rushing out one day and said to his assistant, "There is a cardboard box in the staff
room," the assistant looked up and said "I know." "But it's walking towards me," said the manager. "Good," said the assistant "it
must be feeling better," and, possibly thinking some further explanation could be helpful added that he kept a few ducks at home and
one of them had been poorly so he had decided to bring it to work and put it in the staff room hoping it would sleep, he had placed
it in a box and turned the box over when he placed it on the floor to put the open part underneath. The manager made appropriate comments
and returned to his lunch.
It is surprising to me that I worked for the Bank for thirty-six years, the time does go quickly when
you are enjoying yourself as opposed to those other years of my life that seemed to be interminable. As the years pass by I suppose
there must be a physical and mental slowing down but this is compensated to some extent by the value of experience. This means you
can arrive at decisions in a shorter time, schedules are streamlined because you have more knowledge of what is reasonably possible
instead of trying to do too much, and you learn more about the art of delegation. When the prospect of retiring appears on the horizon,
it is a pleasant but worrying anticipation and it seems to have come too early because you don't feel that old. However, I had started
new lives before and I was quite happy to start this one particularly as it meant spending more time with Joyce.
(Reproduced
from One Man's Journey - Chapter 15 - by Howard Powell)