Monday, 14th July, 2008

Read a story in the news the other day about some guy who was fired by a bank but they didn't ask him to turn in his keys. He burgled the bank. Well duh!

Donkey's years ago I worked for a bank, I was the most junior person in the branch. In the morning I sorted the cheques, back in those days we simply recognised signatures, didn't check numbers or anything like that, can you imagine? In the middle of the day I manually processed the standing orders and direct debits and in the afternoon processed the 'waste' into the computer system - computer was a machine that looked like a navigation desk in a space TV show - rhymes with art wreck (in case you are wondering a show with a similar name is really picky about copyright) - and the waste was a balancing system that accounted for every penny transacted in the bank that day and sent the whole thing to head office. Everyone could go home as soon as I got it to balance and they would line up across the room glaring at me for every minute I took past the 3.30 p.m. closing time. One penny out and we had to start checking every transaction again to find it. Talk about pressure. I had never learned to type at school, did physics instead, but nothing improves your keyboarding skills like the foot tapping, disapproving sniffs of co-workers waiting to get to the pub.

BUT the point of this story is that the branch had two sets of keys, plus a duplicate of each set, to open the front door and also two keypad security codes to open the safe. Only one set of keys could open the door but both codes had to be entered to open the safe. We had a super security message system to make sure that no one was held at gunpoint and forced to use their keys. Before anyone else entered after the front door key holder he (and it was always a he back then) had to move a flowerpot along a windowsill. Seriously. OK even if a bad guy forced either the bank manager or assistant manager to open the door, he would only have one code so could not open the safe without the other one, and they never shared the codes with each other. Also the safe had this state of the art security system that was triggered by air movement, which sent a silent alarm to the local police station. Perfect!/

Or so you would think.... The bank also had this brilliant arrangement that each key holder could pass the duplicate keys down to the next in line if they were going on holiday, off sick, whatever, and also pass on the code to a subordinate and on and on down the line. Added to that, the air movement alarm was so sensitive that a fly could set it off. Which happened often. Often enough to really p*ss off the local police. So they used to turn it off.

Seven people worked in our branch. I was the bottom of the pile, a pile of people who liked to take time off. It was not at all uncommon for me to head out on a Friday evening holding both sets of copy keys and with two bits of paper with keypad codes on them, knowing also that in spite of what we told the world and head office, the alarm had been disabled.

You know what's really sad? I never robbed the bank. I'm sure I wouldn't even if I had that opportunity today but that's for another blog entry. I am tragically handicapped in that regard. I also discovered at that job that I am allergic to money. I'm not kidding. I had a terrible time going into the safe. Money is pretty dirty; think how many wallets and pockets and sometimes socks it has been in. My eyes would just stream and I sneezed. Sneezed? It was incessant. So maybe it's a good thing I never burgled the bank, they could have put out an all point bulletin: 'Look for a guilty looking young woman with red eyes and snuffly nose gasping for breath.'