Don’t Bank On Cashing Out

I work at a bank, and if you didn’t know, banks do not keep a lot of cash on hand like you see in the movies. Otherwise, we would be robbed every week, which is bad for business. We don’t issue cashier’s checks for non-customers or brand-new account owners.

A man in his thirties comes in and hands me a check.

Man: “I’d like to cash this check, please.”

Me: “Okay, do you have an account with us?”

Man: “No, I don’t.”

I look down at the check. It’s for $210,000.00!

The check is from our bank, and I’m able to verify it with our customer who wrote it, but as I stated, we don’t have that cash on hand. Even if you totaled the cash at all the branches in our area, we couldn’t cash the check for him.

I explain that to the man.

Me: “Sir, the earliest we could get you that much cash would be a week. We’d have to order it in.”

Man: “Fine. Then I’ll open an account and close it in a week.”

We were hesitant to order the money at all; it is a big risk to have that much money coming in and for him to have that in cash.

It took an hour to get him to understand that there was no way he was getting cash for his check that day.