As I walked down Fraser Street forgetting to buy stamps, I saw something sparkling through the leaves. Someone’s engagement ring! I was going to take the situation seriously if I found an engraving but instead I discovered tacky souldering and a half-missing “stone” on one side. Regardless, I felt bare so I put it on and headed to the bank. I needed to anyways.
Vancity and I speak only when necessary and without eye contact. I have all my account numbers memorized so that they don’t have to ask, just do. The silent sour relationship between us started on my first trip to France, when my account wouldn’t let me access money from overseas ATMs. Changing my account to enable this was like phoning the city of Vancouver to stop the rain so that I could go home dry because I forgot my umbrella. On my second trip to France I was secretly charged $70 CDN for a €20 withdrawl after the Euro-USD and USD-CDN conversion and ran out of money, thinking I had about $200 more than I did. My third trip to France, I withdrew all my money before I left (at the Vancity ATM, to save $1.50, I am so efficient!) so that Vancity would never have to know.
Needless to say, we are not friends, but only one of my jobs does automatic deposit so I am forced to engage in brief monthly encounters which seems to occur when the ratio of employees on lunch break totals one hundred per cent and the line of bleary customers fills the authoritatively logoed zig zag lineup and the closed captioning on CNN is either phonetic Tagalog, or the captioner fell asleep on the “B” key.
Today at the bank I was offered customer service. You know what happened? I gained electrons. Seriously, I went in asleep and hardly noticed the schizophrenic televisions and left with a newfound energy. I skipped across the street before noticing there was no walk signal while narrowly missing getting flattened by a WonderBread van. It was fabulous. Customer service prevents death!
It may have been because I got a fresh, motivated teller who was genuinely interested in helping me get an interest rate higher than Zero Kelvin, but I think it was because I had a potential joint checking account phare marqueeing from stage left. Or she saw my Starbucks paychecks and wanted to reciprocate the Lucy in the sky with diamonds sort of euphoric service before withdrawing into her reality of term deposits and interest maturity.
I took some free Badam Katlee on my way out, courtesy of Diwali.
Some of my favourite sentences I’ve ever read are in this post.
Part of my HK pride is our customer service.
I was satisfied with how this post turned out, all interestingly sentenced and quick. It took me less than 20 minutes!
Customer service is a front row seat to comedy. I both love it and hate it.
[...] blood boils, this somehow enables me to funnel my ideas into concise snippets of bloggery, Vancity Vancity and I speak only when necessary and without eye contact. I hold and have held many a proverbial straw to its merciless jaws and have literally just let the [...]
[...] Plateau And The Precipice June 27, 2009 Filed under: Daniella — daniella @ 7:52 pm My first post about Vancity described both a of rejuvenation of faith in customer service as well as a wholly [...]