The Mysteries of a Large Bank

[rowyn]

One of the oddities of working at a large bank is that, since I am doing reports that are viewed by far more people, I get a lot more questions about them. Naturally, I also get more of the same questions, over and over again, from different people.

 

And then there are the mystifying questions.

 

Loan Officer: "Why is this loan on my past due list? It's not matured!"
Me: "... because it's past due? Just like the other past-due-but-not-matured loan on your list of three past due loans?"

 

Loan Officer Assistant: "Why isn't Loan 123 on the matured loan list? It's matured! Oh, and so is 456. Why aren't they there?"
Me: " ... um. They are on the matured loan list. Right where they are supposed to be?"

 

I got nothin'.

Comments

[argonel.livejournal.com]

I keep asking myself why competence seems like such a high bar to pass.

[rowyn]

I work very hard to avoid exposing my ignorance to others by asking them questions like the ones I got today. Clearly other people are not so ashamed to be seen as ignorant. n_n

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

That first one is kind of... what? Did he used to work at a furniture store or something, where they try to trick you into not paying off your loan by the maturity date so that they can add back-dated interest?

[rowyn]

The furniture store deals are even sneakier than that! It's more like "We will put you on a two-year repayment schedule with interest waived for nine months. But back-dated in if you don't pay off in nine months."

The loan officer's reply said that the customer was on auto-debit so it didn't occur to her that he'd be past due. Why her first instinct was to assume there was a problem with the report instead of a problem with the autodebit, I can't say.

[the-vulture.livejournal.com]

I can't say I stunned or surprised, but then, my years of doing tech support have left my expectations for humanity rather low. :P

[rowyn]

Scott Adams has a lovely story where he complained to a tech about some 'broken' thing -- I forget what -- and the tech took the device, turned the piece Adams' had not inserted correctly around, and handed it back to him, now working. The moral of the story: we are all idiots some of the time. n_n

[the-vulture.livejournal.com]

Probably a sim card...

[octantis.livejournal.com]

"There are photons bouncing off or being emitted from the indicators for the loans in question. I recommend capturing these photons on your retinas to best facilitate your search for the files you seek."

[rowyn]

*laughs!* ♥

[duane-kc.livejournal.com]

It is a sad commentary on the modern school system that so few people can actually *read*, and can correctly *interpret* what they do read. I run into this problem all day every day with my job.

[rowyn]

Oh, I didn't even mention the person whose question I answered with a cut-and-paste from the email I was replying to. Humans have been trained not to read certain kinds of text -- to dismiss it as boilerplate or irrelevant -- and since this is true 99% of the time, I don't really blame them for not reading it the 1% of the time that it matters.