Everyone hates banks these days. Somehow the friendlier they pretend to be, with their smiley cashiers who know you by name and will sit and help you work out where all your money has gone without pointing out your online bookies bills or the 130 pounds a month you spend on specialist ointment from Boots, the more we hate them. When bank managers were distant, dusty old men in rooms that smelled of stuffed deer heads rather than shiny gameshow types who go to the gym and seem sympathetic to human problems they seemed to have more respect.
Perhaps it’s something to do with the negative press that they’ve been getting over the last few years. You know, banks causing the downfall of the Western world, bonuses, tax avoidance schemes etc. It’s no wonder they aren’t top of the Xmas card list. Unless your family owns the Xmas card factory.
People have stopped believing in banks. And in some kind of reverse Tinkerbell effect, the less faith people exhibited in banks, the quicker they disappeared, so much so that in Uplands (and many other places) we are left with no banks, just the old abondoned husks of NatWest, Lloyds and if memory serves me an HSBC somewhere.
But it’s ok because of the internet. Online I can check my balance, extend my overdraft, transfer money to accounts in other countries, access an ISA and so on. In fact I can do pretty much everything except the one thing that I really need a bank for.
To pay in cash.
But never mind. I’m sure that my trips into town, in the rain will be worth it when we see what they’ve been made into.
Haircuts anyone?
Tinkerbell effect http://www.swarthmore.edu/Documents/academics/psychology/durgin/JoCS_Durgin2002.pdf
People's Republic of Uplands 