“How was your weekend?” asked Stacie, a teller at my bank.
“It was … it was great,” I stammered, pushing the deposit envelope just a bit. I had to quit doing my banking on Mondays or Tuesdays. The tellers always asked about my weekend.
I would try to change the topic, but these people are very persistent. “Did you do something exciting?” Stacie would press on.
“Yes, I did.” I was in trouble now. I had nothing interesting to tell her.
“What was it?” she asked.
“Stacie, I’ll take the cash I just withdrew int three, fifty dollar bills,” I instructed her, hoping to reduce the time of the financial transaction and thus shorten the length of the mini-interrogation. I knew I had just had a weekend; I just couldn’t remember it.
The bank employees were only trying to be friendly, but they are all in their 20s and probably had a rip-roaring Friday and Saturday night. The truth is for me, simply getting a little dough out of my checking account is about the peak of my adrenalin rush for the week.
For a few weeks, I tried telling the absolute truth, so when Stacie asked me about my weekend on a Monday, I’d say: “We watched Blue Bloods on Friday night, made a stop at Sam’s Club on Saturday to pick up one of their awesome barbeque chickens, watched Meet the Press on Sunday morning and that evening went to MCL about 4:30 for the baked tilapia.” Then Stacie would give me the money I had withdrawn, but she also probably wanted to give me a cane or go with me to MCL to blow on my soup.
That’s when I decided to go to the bank on Fridays, assuming the previous weekend was too far in the past for the staff to inquire about. But then Stacie questioned whether I had any big plans for the coming two days. I was honest again. I told her: “We planned to watch Blue Bloods on Friday night, make a stop at Sam’s Club on Saturday to pick up one of their awesome barbeque chickens, watch Meet the Press on Sunday and the head over toMCL about 4:30 for the baked tilapia.”
The expression on her face was not only sympathy for my pitiful weekend plans, but terror that one day she would be a senior citizen, too, and this was what she had to look forward to. I do think the bank should show interest. But only in principal.