The Pencil-Less Bank - A Frightening New Millennium Story

Banks are like everything else in the 21st century- unrecognizable from anything related to what we knew in the previous millennium. Today’s banks are mostly empty with very few tellers behind the long counters, as most banking is conducted online.

There are empty desks where helpful agents used to sit because the banking business with those agents is now by appointment only.

One Walmart-type door greeter asks customers entering the bank what business brought them into the bank that day and leads them to where they need to go.

I walked into this new millennium bank, looking around the cavernous, empty lobby for an employee to show me where I could find Ms. Hernandez, with whom I had an appointment to discuss opening a new account.

Seemingly out of nowhere, the aforementioned perky “Walmart Type Greeter” appeared, asking how my day was going and if he could help me with anything. When I stated my business, he directed me to a walled-off cubicle, behind which Ms. Under-Age-35 Hernandez sat at the cleanest, shiniest, barest desk I had ever seen. Aside from a giant TV-sized computer monitor, there was NOTHING on that desk. Not a cup filled with pens and pencils; nor a pad of paper; a calculator; a nameplate; a family picture; a tissue box; a speck of dust; NOTHING. (The significance of this will become apparent later in the story.)

I told her that I wanted to open a checking/savings account. Click, click, click, went her fingers on the keyboard. She turned the TV-sized monitor around so I could see the pictures of my choices of accounts.

Fancy, colored icons appeared with $$$$ amounts listed within them:

No, I wasn’t going to keep $10,000 a month in my checking account. I don’t have $10,000. Too bad. That would cost me big-time fees. I have never understood how being poor and having NO money means you are expected to pay HIGHER fees, but that is a story for another time.

And so it went, icon after icon, thousands upon thousands of $$$$ needed in an account to keep me from exorbitant fees until BINGO!, a DIRECT DEPOSIT icon popped up. With Direct Deposit, which I do have with my pension, not only is the account free but no minimum balance is required.

Just as I felt I had hit the jackpot, the equivalent of a nuclear meltdown to Ms. Under-age-35 Hernandez occurred. While I was giving her the name and address of my Retirement Company, her computer froze. Frozen solid as the Titanic iceberg.

I told her to simply print the forms and I would fill them out with — a pen or pencil.

“No, I can’t print anything. The computer is frozen,” she said. Three employee helpers and 15 minutes later, their frantic clicking for naught, the computer was still frozen. Their solution was that I should return the following day to finish the transaction.

While four people under the age of 35 shrugged and were satisfied to end business because the computer was on ice, this over-35 dinosaur was not.

I did something earth-shattering. I asked Ms. Hernandez for a pencil and a piece of paper so I could write down the information she needed and informed her she could type it into the computer when it thawed out.

She looked at her empty, clean, shiny desk. Then she looked at me with a confused, quizzical expression on her face. She looked at me and the empty desk a second time, and said, “A pencil? A pen? Uh, I don’t think we have any.”

This, my friends, is why my stories are popular. I do NOT MAKE UP THIS STUFF. It’s REAL. It’s TRUE. It’s NOT POSSIBLE for me to make up this stuff.

I was dumbfounded AND angry, but I managed to hold my temper, grit my teeth, and ask, “Would you please go find a pencil or pen and a piece of paper somewhere in this bank?”

She was not happy with the request but trotted off, leaving me seething for almost 15 minutes, before she returned with a pencil and a six-inch square piece of paper.

While I was writing the information, the computer miraculously thawed out and 21st-century business as usual was allowed to resume.

As I was leaving the bank with a glossy folder filled with fancy paperwork related to my new account ( printed from the computer), I handed her the pencil she had dug through the depths of the equivalent of the Egyptian desert to find. Although she accepted it from me, she looked confused. She had no idea where to put it or what to do with it. There was certainly no place for it on that pristine desk of hers.

It is the year 2022. We have advanced (?) to the point at which we can buy anything we want with the touch of a computer key and have it delivered to our door within hours. We can see intruders at our door from a camera on our phone; our watches can dial 911 if we have a medical emergency; our cars can drive themselves; we can turn on music, lights, and timers, set reminders, make appointments, and make lists by speaking into an AI “Bot”. Our lives can be saved with robotic surgery. We are living the George Jetson life.

BUT…..our children cannot add and subtract without a calculator; they cannot write in or read cursive; they don’t know how to turn a page in a non “e” book; they are incapable of meaningful face-to-face communication; they have no attention spans beyond a two-minute phone text; they cannot tell time on an analog clock; they can barely print in block lettering; and as evidenced by my most recent bank experience, they barely know what a pencil is.

I am now inclined to agree with my brother-in-law (age 68), who is convinced that if technology crashed worldwide, no one under the age of 35 would have the skills to survive.

Do you think it’s necessary for youngsters to learn “old-fashioned” skills such as writing with a pencil, writing at all as opposed to typing on a keyboard, reading a paper book as opposed to an e-book, and working a mathematical problem in their head without the aid of a calculator?

I would like to hear the opinions of both sides — dinosaurs like me and the under-35 crowd. Tell us what you think.

NOTE: Next is a follow-up story about my experience at a “cash-less” bank. No, I didn’t make that up, either. A bank with no money.

Originally published in the Medium Publication, Crow's Feet

©2022 Joan Gershman