I’m Gonna Dock You

I went to Bank of America.  Normally Bank of America is a person in a call center.  Usually this call center is in Arkansas.  Bank of America is a card that is sometimes frozen.  Bank of America is the code they send my mother’s U.S. cell phone because they aren’t equipped to send anything to international numbers.  Bank of America isn’t people. Certainly not people I'll ever deal with twice.

Out at the ATM there is a woman waiting before me to use the machine.  She is talking loudly.   This is America, so I understand every, single word she says.  “I’ve only got fifteen minutes for my break.  I have to get this shit done at the bank and get back there or there gonna dock me.  My manager was like: I’m gonna dock you for every minute you’re late.  I’ll be counting.”  This woman is my age.  I remember having to deal with managers like that when I was sixteen.  I consider having to put up with conditions like that as a fifty year old.

Inside I sit down with a young man to get a replacement on a credit card. He’s a very serious young man.  I feel like the person is going to be very thorough with me.  He asks me some questions about my work and when I mention that, in addition to my main business I also teach MBAs.  He informs me that he has just secured his own MBA. 

We talk about where he would like to travel and what he’d like to do.  Behind me a man stands in line for a teller.  He reaches the counter and ploughs right in using Spanish.  The teller doesn’t blink and SHE begins to tell him of what he’ll need to apply for a replacement card.  I feel proud and perhaps surprised that Spanish is a default service option here in Poughkeepsie.  No one would have expected that twenty years ago. 

The Bank of America has real people who run the local branch.  Real people come in and use the facilities.  I feel vaguely attached to these young Poughkeepsieans.  I consider working in a bank and having to strive for my best within the local Bank of America branch office system.  I consider the career paths towards manager.  Then perhaps you’d try for something outside of the branch.  Maybe you’d way the trade offs of heading  into the big city. I wonder about the utility of an MBA, within a bank branch. What do I know?  Geography can nurture as well as retard. 

Monday, 7/24/17