Growing up in pre-liberalisation days a career in one of those PSU banks was considered a consolation prize for those who were not brainy enough to make it to engineering or medical colleges – the two high roads to yuppie-dom. However, with the coming of foreign banks it became on par with the other two. Anyone pursuing anything else was considered a huge burden to the society, worthy of being shot if Pol Pot were ruling our country.
During my student years I too had made some unsuccessful attempts to clear bank tests, though in hindsight I feel relieved that it did not happen - as I often break into cold sweat while dealing with bank related matters such as writing cheques, forms and counting currency notes.
Writing a cheque reduces me to a bundle of nerves with checks and re-re … checks. A good old quote (don’t know who said it) comes to my mind – “A banker can write a dozen bad poems and nobody says anything about it, but one poet writes a single bad cheque and he's in trouble.”
Often the initial process of tearing the perforated portion of cheque leaf from the book itself goes wrong. The left end of the cheque resembles the spikes and troughs in an ECG reading (a bit of exaggeration, but something on those lines). A couple of times I had to discard the cheque leaf as the spikes were embarrassingly deep.
The next hurdle of course is filling in the particulars. With the RBI recently announcing zero-tolerance towards overwriting and counter signing, writing every cheque makes me feel as if I am riding a bicycle with its carrier laden with crates of eggs on a road dotted with potholes.
While writing date, amount etc it takes a huge effort to make myself sure that it is indeed correct. Sometimes the mind goes blank and even commonplace spellings seem elusive – how the heck do we spell 12?
In my case the main reasons for return of cheques include wrong date (a couple of times ended up writing the succeeding year, instead of the current one!) and then the amount in figures and words were not tallying. Thankfully the banks never had any issues with my signature, though I have personally felt that they were at times a bit off-track. For many of my friends the signature is the biggest bugbear.
After gingerly going through all the check-list regarding the cheque, I still have a few butterflies in my stomach while inserting them in drop boxes. Even after that I keep pondering whether I missed out on something.
Counting cash
Sigh! This is something I could never make myself comfortable with, let alone master, and found myself at sixes and sevens.
In the pre-cash counting machine days I used to marvel at the way the nimble fingers of cashiers used to count cash. While performing the task they may even exchange pleasantries with their colleague in the next counter or interact with the peon, but no question of getting distracted.
Within seconds they used to perform their task and hand over the money to me to ‘re-check’. My goofy fingers perform the same task at more than double the time and with an error margin of 1-5 currency note denominations. And no points for guessing my conclusion – the cashiers are always right. In fact, it used to give me a big thrill when during one of those rare moments my tally used to match with that of the cashier.
Now of course their position has been taken over by cash counting machines, but the verdict remains the same.
During my student years I too had made some unsuccessful attempts to clear bank tests, though in hindsight I feel relieved that it did not happen - as I often break into cold sweat while dealing with bank related matters such as writing cheques, forms and counting currency notes.
Writing a cheque reduces me to a bundle of nerves with checks and re-re … checks. A good old quote (don’t know who said it) comes to my mind – “A banker can write a dozen bad poems and nobody says anything about it, but one poet writes a single bad cheque and he's in trouble.”
Often the initial process of tearing the perforated portion of cheque leaf from the book itself goes wrong. The left end of the cheque resembles the spikes and troughs in an ECG reading (a bit of exaggeration, but something on those lines). A couple of times I had to discard the cheque leaf as the spikes were embarrassingly deep.
The next hurdle of course is filling in the particulars. With the RBI recently announcing zero-tolerance towards overwriting and counter signing, writing every cheque makes me feel as if I am riding a bicycle with its carrier laden with crates of eggs on a road dotted with potholes.
While writing date, amount etc it takes a huge effort to make myself sure that it is indeed correct. Sometimes the mind goes blank and even commonplace spellings seem elusive – how the heck do we spell 12?
In my case the main reasons for return of cheques include wrong date (a couple of times ended up writing the succeeding year, instead of the current one!) and then the amount in figures and words were not tallying. Thankfully the banks never had any issues with my signature, though I have personally felt that they were at times a bit off-track. For many of my friends the signature is the biggest bugbear.
After gingerly going through all the check-list regarding the cheque, I still have a few butterflies in my stomach while inserting them in drop boxes. Even after that I keep pondering whether I missed out on something.
Counting cash
Sigh! This is something I could never make myself comfortable with, let alone master, and found myself at sixes and sevens.
In the pre-cash counting machine days I used to marvel at the way the nimble fingers of cashiers used to count cash. While performing the task they may even exchange pleasantries with their colleague in the next counter or interact with the peon, but no question of getting distracted.
Within seconds they used to perform their task and hand over the money to me to ‘re-check’. My goofy fingers perform the same task at more than double the time and with an error margin of 1-5 currency note denominations. And no points for guessing my conclusion – the cashiers are always right. In fact, it used to give me a big thrill when during one of those rare moments my tally used to match with that of the cashier.
Now of course their position has been taken over by cash counting machines, but the verdict remains the same.
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