Cornered by Mike Baldwin for November 23, 2023

The machines need to learn “people” skills.

In Japan, they’ve done away with human tellers; you deal with a teller on a screen!!

Human tellers are an endangered species at my local bank. Instead of the two to four tellers it used to have all the time, there’s one…if you’re lucky. The bank is pretty much forcing us to use a cash machine—or go through the rigmarole of using its app to deposit our checks. I’d love to have some human interaction.

This actually happened to me a few weeks ago. I went to my bank to make a deposit. We can do that at the ATMs that are equipped to accept cash (no coins). On that day there was software problem that made the all the ATMs unusable. Everyone was forced to use the tellers to make any kind of transaction, pick up cash, make a deposit etc. There were huge lines. Waiting times were at least an hour. The person that was informing customers about how to use their new ticket system for selecting a position in the queue was poorly informed about the situation there and at the other bank branches. I ended up going to a different branch, It took me 10 minutes to get there and the ATMs there were working perfectly. I was glad I decided not to wait.

Oh, it is not broken, it is just set to randomly choose who it will serve next.

“I miss the convenience of banking sans human interaction.”

And that’s not comic sans.

my bank usually has one over-worked teller and a greeter that stands there and watches the over-worked teller.

Between ATM’s and self-checkout at stores, I’m enjoying no human interaction, too!

It’d be a lot better… if I could just put an ATM in my car!

She looks a bit old to be saying something like that.

So do they……

After they “fixed” our local bank, the “teller” was a guy who stood around in a corner of the room and came over to tell you where the cash machine was located. I don’t bank there anymore. I know where the cash machines are located.

She misses human intervention, what about the poor bank robbers.

You teller lady!!

I’m sure she’s happy to be there too.

Yes, from those smiling, happy, underpaid tellers…