Take a book with you
There is one task that I really dislike and tend to put off if I possibly can … going to the bank.
Today I didn’t really have much choice.
I don’t like keeping a lot of cash in the office – especially since the attempted robbery that we experienced eighteen months ago … there is something about having a knife held to your throat does that to you. Unfortunately, however we had run the kassa down really low and I have a couple of bills that have to be paid, so I had to go and withdraw some cash to pay them.
Why do I dislike going to the bank? well, it’s like this … as I used to say whenever I was what advice I would give to people thinking of investing in Kyrgyzstan, I would sometimes flippantly say “Don’t go to the bank unless you have at an hour to spend – preferably two”.
To be fair, they are not all the same – we use four different banks and there are significant differences between them. Two of the biggest are “International” and you might be forgiven for thinking that they are amongst the most efficient. Unfortunately, in my experience, that’s not the case. Although I can sometimes be “in and out” in five or ten minutes, I have found that you have to choose your time carefully or else you can find yourself in a long queue waiting for a teller.
Today, for example, when I arrived at 10:37 and took my ticket from the machine at the door, (however, the time on the ticket was – as usual – wrong – it said it had been issued at 11:04, and – as usual – I wondered what had happened to the lost half an hour), I was client number 93, but the electronic counter about the teller’s position indicated that the last client called up to one of the six tellers was number 67 – there were at least twenty five people before me in the queue.
I say at least, because there are several different queues – for different types of business. One of the banks has separate queues for Individuals and Businesses … which I one reason I have my personal account in another bank … If I want to do both personal and company business then I would have to join two queues. What’s more, some banks have different people acting as tellers and cashiers – so you have to join one queue for the teller who processes your transaction and then, onc e it’s been authorized, you have to join another queue for a cashier.
At one bank, I even had to go and into a third queue to show the ticket from the cashier who then entered the transaction into the account records.
Because of the queues, the machine normally stops issuing tickets some time before the bank closes for lunch or the end of the day. Unfortunately, you can’t predict when that is going to be and three or four times I have been turned away because I am just too late.
They are not proper queues – no-one stands “in line”, as the Americans put it. The banking hall is a big space with tellers at one end and some seats, (never enough, or so it seems to me), in the space opposite. The bank I visited today, for example, used to be a major shoe factory and following the conversion, the banking hall on the ground floor occupied a large open space of what used to be the main workshop.
I usually take a book with me to read whilst I am waiting. You can normally do that whether you are able to get a seat or or have to stand if all the seats are occupied. At the moment I am reading “News from Tartary” by Peter Fleming, about his trip across China back in the 1930s. I clearly, remember putting the book out ready to take with me, but once I had braved the security guards, the metal detector and got my ticket from the machine and had sat down, I opened my briefcase to discover that I had forgotten to pick it up. Arrrghhh!
Twenty five people ahead of me in the queue and no book to help kill the time. Arrrghhh!
Fortunately, however, I did have some paper with me, and as I have been prepared to prepare a talk to some students next week, I took a sheet of paper and a pen and started making notes. So the time wasn’t wasted.
My thoughts were interrupted from time to time as the electronic counted ticked over with its customary “bing bong”. Each time I looked up to see if I was getting closer to the front of the queue or if this was for someone in one of the other queues.
I remember how, on one occasion, I was waiting in the queue and the speakers weren’t working … so there was no comforting “bing-bong” to indicate how much closer you were getting to the front of the queue … and for some reason the tellers went through an extremely speedy patch – maybe there were a spate of clients who had given up and walked off, but I looked up at the counter and there were still several people ahead of me, but the next time I looked up, the numbers had passed me by. I went up to the reception desk and asked what I could do – did I really have to take another ticket? No, fortunately, they agreed for me to be the next person to be called up to one particular teller. Unfortunately, the person she was dealing with at the time had some complicated business, and I saw person after person being called up to the other tellers … and all I could do was wait. Still, it would have been far worse if I had been told that I had to take another ticket and rejoin the queue.
As it happens, today wasn’t so bad. At 11:13, (by my watch – not the ticket machine’s), I was called up to the teller’s desk. She was quite efficient – well it was a straight forward transaction – and was able to speedily click through the various computer screens – making notes and clicking the OK boxes – ignoring the numerous pop-up message windows, (or so it seemed to me, because she she was so quick she couldn’t possible have read what they said).
All the same, it still took her five minutes to deal with my transaction. It wasn’t until 11:19 that I found myself walking round the metal detector, (they don’t worry about it on the way out), past the guard and out of the front door. Less than an hour … but then more than an hour if you count the time walking to and between the bank and the office.
As I said, there are a number of different banks, and they all have their own system – some are better than others. Some are quicker than others. On the other hand, it often seems like “pot-luck”.
Today wasn’t bad … it wasn’t the quickest I have ever been – but by no means the slowest.
But I did make a mental not for myself … “Next time, be sure to take a book with you!”
Bishkek