Doing Business Slowly

As we were twenty minutes early for Cherisse’s violin lesson this morning we decided to stop at the bank and make a small deposit. Cherisse makes her big annual deposit right after Chinese New Year, when she collects more money than I ever saw until I was in my early twenties. But the tooth fairy has been making a few visits lately, so I figured a trip to the bank might be a good experience for her.

This bank had three separate queues: one for their priority customers, one for corporate accounts, and one for us regular slobs. There are ropes for crowd control, and the posts from which these ropes are suspended have small signs advising us to be patient, and the first one predicts we will be served in 15 minutes, while the next one estimates 10 minutes. There is no sign before the 15 minutes marker, meaning you could spend a few hours there. There are no clocks visible to remind you of how your life is passing you by as you wait for slow customers to be served by slow tellers.

We got into the queue just after the 10 minute mark. Several other non-priority and non-corporate customers arrived afterwards, extending the queue to what would have been the 25-30 minute mark. There was one lone teller assigned to serve us all, except for the two special lanes. In the priority lane was an Indian woman who remained there the entire time we were in the bank. Judging from the complexity of her transaction, I believe she was a member of the Mittal family and was financing the purchase of a new steel mill.

In fact, I get the impression that Singapore is a nation of billionaires, because nearly everyone took a long time to do their business. It seems this is always my experience whenever I go to the bank. I’m the only one who can get my business done in under three minutes. Maybe I need to increase my fees.

Periodically an employee from the back room would come out to one of the three tellers and do something before returning to the back room. She would walk with military precision, with her head straight, straining to avoid all eye contact with customers. Were she to meet a customer’s glare there might be some tacit recognition of the need to sit herself down at one of the several empty stations and start serving customers. I wonder what goes on in that back room? I imagine a bunch of employees are watching us customers on closed circuit TV, laughing at our pained expressions.

Our estimated 10-15 minute wait approached 20 minutes before we were served. Cherisse asked me what the bank’s initials stood for. I replied: Doing Business Slowly. (I have a policy of never identifying businesses I write about if the experience is less than flattering!)

Why not move our business to another bank? Like the People-Only-Standing-By-while-the-queue-stretches-out-the-door-and-down-the-street bank? I’ve thought about it, but they all seem pretty much the same. Singaporeans are used to waiting in queues, so why should any business waste money to serve their customers faster?

So our little adventure was instructive after all. Cherisse learned that banks only care about money, not people. And I learned that taking her to the bank once a year is maddening enough, but any more than that is insane. We’ll just hold on to all future gifts from the tooth fairy until after Chinese New Year 2011.