Painful Banking Experience

After two days of the Banks being closed due to a nation wide strike called by the Bank Employees Union, today’s visit to the bank and the ensuing harrowing experience was inevitable.
Anyway while I was walking down to the bank, I finally decided to click a picture of this epic venture. Formerly “Hotel Raat Din”, this building has been under renovation ever since we moved into our office in Feb 2007. I have been watching this building from our office window, nearly everyday, for the past two and a half years and it seems to be a never-ending project. Considering the time and energy being spent on the build, I am quite certain this is going to turn out to be a fabulous Hotel when it is completed.

Anyway back to the bank. I wasn’t surprised to find a serpentine line outside the ATM outside the bank and what lay in store inside was even worse. All the teller counters had queues longer than I had ever seen. So I also got in one of the queues. I had a cheque and some cash to deposit. After standing in line for what seemed to be forever, one of guards announced that teller no. 11 was collecting only cheques, so I reserved my place in the queue I was in and popped over to teller no. 11 and deposited the cheque. One down, one to go I thought to myself once I rejoined the original queue. After about an hour there, I realised this could take forever and still not get done. The amazing thing was that our teller counter had a novice sitting in; probably just a week old at the job. I was quite amazed how the bank could have someone like him sitting in the booth on a day such as today when all hell was breaking loose.
Anyway, after over an hour in the queue and seeing negligible movement, I realised I would have to spend the rest of the afternoon in the bank if I wanted to deposit that money. I decided to find out from the help desk if there were any branches open on Sunday and decided to do it on Sunday at leisure.