When I was about 14 years old, my mom thought it prudent to open savings accounts for her sons. We’d deposit whatever meager earnings we’d collect from mowing neighborhood lawns, or watching neighborhood kids.
As we got older and we made more money, the savings account actually took on a purpose. No longer was $300 a lifetime’s worth of cash, and multi-day, multi customer lawnmower’s income reflected that.
Not long after, the halcyon days of a $1,000 summer nest egg lasting for the entire year was gone, and the bronzed skin of life-guarding, and the check that came with it, began to go to my head.
I could easily live on $6,000 for an entire year. That would be no trouble. Gas was cheap, car insurance was cheap, movies were cheap, and I could eat at the Olive Garden with my succubus of an ex-girlfriend for about 18 bucks (after tip).
Then, the real world set in. Insurance went up, gas went up, and if it weren’t for the student discount, I wouldn’t ever go to the movies. (What? You don’t still use your student ID to get cheap tickets?) I got a job at the university, and to avoid the school losing my checks* I enrolled in direct deposit with the state credit union.
The credit union treated me well, and their interest rate was better on their savings account, so I went to close my old account.
Though I was 18, I was apparently still under my mother’s custodial care. They wouldn’t let me close the account even though I deposited 50% of my paycheck there every other week for the past year.
I spoke to my brothers about this, and they both had no problem closing their accounts, so I asked the tellers again on another trip.
No dice.
So I let my money sit there, and squander, for a few years. Then when I was buying a car, I thought about how an extra $500 would be great, and remembered that I had about that much at the old bank. I was 23 at this point, and figured it would be no trouble to close a custodial account and give me my money.
No dice.
They claimed that they couldn’t be sure if I was supposed to have access to the money in the account. I asked them why the hell they had so easily withdrawn the money for me every Friday for 3 years when I was 17-19. They didn’t have an answer and told me I’d have to come back with my mom.
2 years later (and $1.85 worth of interest since I had last used the account 6 years prior) my mom and I go to the bank so I can get a cashiers check to use as a supplement for house-purchasing costs. I figured we could close the account while we were there.
They gave us a huge bunch of rigmarole, then finally agreed to hand over the money, claiming I could have closed the account any time I wanted.
Oh, yeah, absolutely, I said. I just wanted my money to sit there untouched for 6 years accruing what could possibly be the lowest amount of interest any bank in the country will provide.
So, the fuckers handed over the cash, and now I can wash my hands of their shitty, terrible, no-good, piss-poor, awful banking practices.
*If you don’t have a great memory, you may want to go back to the other story. This is a really, very, terribly, long aside.
I worked for the student newspaper for a while, and they paid $10 per article. One semester I wrote 2 reviews of bands that had swung through town. I filed the paperwork, just like a good little student.
8 weeks later, when I was expecting my $20 (this was a reasonable timeframe at my school) and I went to collect it, they told me they didn’t have it. I figured it was just a bump in the system, and I’d have it soon.
I wait, and wait, and forget. Meanwhile, I’d taken a position at the Physical Plant side of the university. Every other week I got a check at the Physical Plant office. Once week, it didn’t show up. I called payroll, and they told me my check was at the Student Union. Thinking that was odd, I ventured over to pick up my check.
I spoke to the payroll woman over there, she gave me my check, and told me that the check delivery location had changed because a previous payroll code superseded it. I asked her what she meant, and she told me that a $20 payment that she had gotten earlier that week was filed prior to my employment with Physical Plant. So, here I was, a little over one year later, and I was finally getting my $20.
I asked the woman if all of my payroll checks were going to go there from then on, she said she thought that would be the case, and she gave me a form to fill out to get the checks back to the Physical Plant. How long would that take? Oh, only about 8 weeks.
I told her that there was no way I was going to fill out that form. She gave me a form for direct deposit, and I filled that little form out as fast as I could.
A few weeks later, a check was deposited to my new credit union account. Not long after, I got a new position on campus, and it never failed that a week after everyone else would get paid, I’d get my paystub in an intercampus envelope that went from the office of the woman down the hall from me, to the Physical Plant, to the Student Union, and then to me.
