My wife and I are moving our retirement accounts from one bank to another. Once we get the accounts set up at the new bank, we want to invest the money — nothing fancy, just standard retirement account stuff. Our previous bank let us choose some pre-made options based on risk tolerance, and we want to do something like that again, like a target retirement date fund.

But I can’t see any way on the bank’s website to actually invest the money in our retirement accounts. I call the bank and ask how to find that option.

Representative: “Oh, no, we don’t put that option on our website. We want everyone to come in and talk to us first, you know, so that we can get a sense of your financial situation and give you some advice with anything you need.”

Okay, sure. We agree to stop by the bank and make an appointment to come in on a Saturday morning. When we arrive, we’re led to a little office where [Representative] tells us that he’s going to run through a series of questions to determine how we might best invest our savings.

The questions are normal enough — salaries, debts, etc. — but they go on for a long, long time. My wife is four months pregnant, and she’s at the point where it’s painful for her to sit in one place for too long. This meeting lasts for almost three hours, blowing right past lunchtime, so toward the end, we’re also extremely hungry. But we think that if we can just make it through whatever this meeting is, we’ll be able to invest the savings and move on with our lives.

But no! The meeting ends, and that option is never discussed.

Me: “So, now that we’ve done this, how can we invest the money in our retirement accounts?”

Representative: “Oh, no, that’s not something we’d do now. We need to have another meeting to continue the conversation and really understand what kind of parameters are best for you.”

We agree to another meeting because we’re just desperate to get out of there. (I know, we’re fools.) The second meeting comes around, and again, we’re constantly under the (foolish) impression that we’re about five minutes away from the meeting ending and us having the answer we want.

But there’s another person who joins the second meeting: [Financial Advisor]. He introduces himself and starts singing his own praises, basically telling us how lucky we are to have his financial advice. (Side note: during the meeting, he gives us one specific piece of advice, telling me that I really should sell a certain stock — the only stock I own — because the CEO of the company is in poor health, and if the CEO dies, my stock will crash. I ended up separately taking his advice. The CEO did indeed die soon, and the stock soared.)

Throughout this meeting, I’m getting more and more upset that we’ve been tricked into what are clearly long-form thinly-veiled advertisements for [Financial Advisor]’s services. We reach the end of another multi-hour meeting, and again, when I ask how we can invest the money in our retirement accounts, he says he’ll call me to follow up.

At this point, I’m done with this guy. (I know, I should have been done with him much earlier.) He calls a few days later, and I ask him point-blank how to invest our money.

Financial Advisor: “That’s a great question! That’s the kind of thing we can discuss at our next meeting.”

Nope. I tell the guy — still politely — that we are not interested in paying for his advisory services, we never wanted such services, and we simply want to make our own choices about what to invest in.

Financial Advisor: “I wouldn’t feel comfortable telling you how to do that because that’s the purpose of our meetings. The advice I’d give you as your financial advisor—”

Me: “Please just tell me: is there a way I can simply choose what to invest in and have the bank invest in it?”

Financial Advisor: “No.”

Me: “Then if that’s something I want to do, you’re saying I need to use a different bank.”

Financial Advisor: “Well… that’s technically true, but I really recommend—”

Me: “Got it. Thanks for your help.”

I immediately withdraw all of our money, open an account with a different bank, and select what to invest it in. The process of selecting investments takes all of three minutes.

But the story isn’t over! When I check my account statement from the first bank, I see that they’ve charged me $225 as a processing fee for terminating the accounts. I call the bank and talk to the initial representative, explaining why we’re dissatisfied and why I’d like my $225 refunded.

Representative: “Sir, you came to us. You wanted financial advice.”

Me: “No, I didn’t. I wanted to choose what to invest in, and that’s it. [Financial Advisor] kept trying to market his services to us, and we didn’t want them.”

Representative: “That’s not the way I remember it.”

We went back and forth a bunch, and he kept refusing to refund the charges. It was maddening.

Finally, I was able to extract from him the email address of some higher-up to whom I could make a complaint. I wrote a long letter detailing all of this, and a few weeks later, I got a very apologetic phone call and a refund of $225. Phew.

At my very first job, we used to have a girl who did bank runs, taking the cash from any cash transactions that we had over to the local bank in a deposit bag, where she would sometimes use what is known as a Night Drop.

One day, [Coworker] went out to do the deposit. Then, she was supposed to come back to help me close the store for the day. This left me to clean, because the walk to the bank was a bit of a distance — our town was very safe, so she had no worries about doing this on foot — and it normally took her a while to get to and from the location.

About twenty-five minutes later, [Coworker] called me and apologized, telling me that she would be late coming back because she had to call EMS to the bank. When she came back, I asked her what had happened, and the story unfolded as such.

[Coworker] arrived at the bank, but there was already someone using the Night Drop, so she waited. While she was standing there, a very good friend of hers saw her at the branch, parked his car, and got in line behind her without her noticing.

Once the other person left, [Coworker]’s friend put a hand on her shoulder and said, “Give me all the money!” You know… as a joke…

Well, [Coworker] whipped around and belted her friend in the face with the deposit bag. Now, this is a vinyl sack with some bills in it, so it didn’t do any damage but it did scare him, which caused him to jump back. As he jumped back, his foot rolled, and he fell down and knocked himself unconscious on a handrail.

[Coworker] had to call EMS, and the police also arrived to take statements and get an idea of what had happened. They agreed that [Coworker]’s friend was an idiot.

In order to prevent him from having to pay impound fees and such, [Coworker] asked the police if she could take his car. I’m not sure what conversation she had with them, but it ended in a “yes”, and she was able to drive back to our shop and then pick her friend up at the hospital the next afternoon when he was released from observation.

The best part was that I got like an hour of overtime because I couldn’t leave the shop unsecured since I wasn’t a keyholder.

Me: “Thank you for calling [Company]. How can I help you today?”

Customer: “Jim Smith.”

Me: “One moment, please.” *Transferring*

Two minutes later, the phone rings again and I give the standard greeting.

Customer: *Annoyed* “Jim Smith.”

Me: “Please hold.” *Transferring*

Two minutes later, the phone rings again.

Customer: “JIM SMITH!”

Me: *Confused transferring*

This time, I transfer and then make a quick jog to Jim Smith’s office to make sure the calls are going through. He’s in a meeting with someone, but I see the light on his desk phone blinking, clearly indicating that his voicemail is indeed picking it up. I shrug and return to my station.

And the phone rings again…

Customer: “What the h*** is going on?! I want to speak to Jim Smith! Why do you keep giving me his voicemail?!”

Me: “If he’s not available to take any calls, it will go to his voicemail. Leave a message, and he’ll call you back.”

Customer: “Well, why didn’t you tell me that before?!”

Me: “…because that’s the way all phone lines function? If someone is busy and can’t talk, they’ll set the phone to silent and have the voicemail pick up?”

Customer: *Slams the phone down*

Not sure what kinds of businesses he’s been calling where someone is available in their office 100% of the time…

About ten years ago, I was working as a bank teller. I was pretty new, so I followed all the rules about checking IDs, even when my coworkers would sometimes be lax about it.

A man came in to cash a check drawn on our bank, but he said he didn’t have an account. I asked for his ID, required to cash all checks if you weren’t a customer of our bank. He pitched a fit (which happened a lot in that area), but he eventually handed it to me. It immediately looked… off. So, I asked him for a second form of ID. The fit escalated and he asked for my manager. We didn’t have one, but my supervisor was there, so I got her.

She took one look at the ID.

Supervisor: “We can’t accept this without a second form of ID.”

Man: “I don’t have one. Demanding that is illegal! I’m going to call the cops. They’ll tell you it’s a real ID, and then you’ll have to cash the check!”

Supervisor: *Very calmly* “We are not advising you to do that, but we also can’t stop you.”

The man made the call anyway. Around this time, the man’s companion, who had been waiting in the car, came in to see what was taking so long.

Man: “I’ve called the cops! Now we’re waiting for them to tell these people that my ID is real!”

The companion looked panic-stricken.

Companion: “We need to leave. Now.”

The police showed up. The companion looked like she was going to spontaneously combust. The man handed over his ID.

Man: “tell them it’s real, so they’ll cash my d*** check.”

The cop looked at the ID.

Cop: “Can’t. Where’d you get this?”

The man pointed to the companion now trying to go out the front door. 

And that’s how a guy called the cops on himself and his girlfriend for making and using fake IDs and got them both arrested.

I used to be a bank teller. The worst was the yearly onslaught of seniors demanding “new” bills to give out during the holidays.

We couldn’t actually order “new” bills — we only got what the Fed sent us — so we’d preemptively sort through the vault and drawers to find the best bills for people who would ask for them.

My favorite was this lady, who complained when we tried to give her some bills.

Customer: “These bills don’t smell new enough! These are wholly unacceptable for my grandchildren!”

As if her toddler grandchildren would have given a rat’s a** or even known what they were getting.