Frustrations

I had the most frustrating visit at the bank today! Because my Norsk class now meets at a different school, I’m much farther from the center of town but I figured I could literally run down to the bank, make my deposit and run back all within 30 minutes. What was I thinking? All the banks here have a lobby set up almost like a living room with overstuffed chairs, coffee tables with magazines, couches, and lots of ambiance – THAT should be the first clue nothing is going to be quick. There is no line to wait in - when a customer walks in they must go over to an electronic ticket dispenser and select which type of service they want and take a seat. It’s not the simple grab-a-number-and-wait-for-it-to-be-called scenario, it’s more sophisticated than that -but sophisticated ONLY if one understands Norwegian fluently. For me, it’s a crap-shoot. “Push this button if you want blah blah blah,” or “push this button if you want bleh bleh bleh,” is how I read the screen because I have no idea what the other words mean. So, I pushed a button, hoping it was the right one because my odds were 50/50 it would be. As it turns out, it didn’t really matter. There was one teller working behind the counter and one person working behind a desk in a cubical. (In that way, it’s a similar set-up as American banks.) Apparently, if one needs the teller, they press one button, if more detailed attention is required – press the other button. They also have a “robotic teller” in the lobby. It’s a little kiosk with a computer screen and a place to dump coins, or a place to feed in cash bills, but a bank card is required to use that service so I was out of luck because I didn’t have a bank card for that bank (I just opened a savings account there a few weeks ago). So there I stood with my #19 ticket, waiting. Number 15 was being waited on by the teller and #505 was being helped by the woman at the desk. I was sure, with only three people in front of me, I could make it back to class within the thirty minute time frame. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I waited and waited, as each person took an incredibly LONG time at the teller (one customer even made the teller wait while he took a phone call). When the woman behind the desk was done, and no one else was waiting for her particular services, she took the next teller customer, which I hoped would decrease my wait time. Wrong again. The only reason I stuck around was because I had a lot of cash I wanted to deposit (I’ve been withdrawing some everyday from our American bank while the exchange rate is still good) AND Kaleb wanted to skip the afterschool program today and come home early to get all his homework done so he could play with Tobias afterwards. If I went to the bank after school I’d miss my bus home. So, there I stood, waiting. And after a painful 25 minutes, when I knew for sure I’d be next, in walks a guy that didn’t even take a number, and just goes into the cubical and sits down and talks to the woman behind the desk for a good five minutes. I wanted to scream, but that guy happened to be the attorney that Kory works with on The Sinking Houses – and he is a VERY nice guy, but I wasn’t thinking nice thoughts about him at that moment. After a good 30 minute wait, my number came up, and I explained (in Norwegian) to the women behind the desk that I had set up a new account and I didn’t have a bank card yet so I needed her help to deposit the cash. So I hand her my cash and she asks me if I have ANY kind of bank card and I tell her that I do have one from a different Norwegian bank where I have my “checking” account. Then she puts the frosting on the cake by telling me that I could have used THAT card in the “robotic teller." I learn something new every day here but this lesson was painful. So then she shows me how I just needed to use that card to engage the machine but then I can punch in any account number and the money gets deposited there, whether it’s the same bank or not. After a huge sigh, I stood there for another 15 minutes feeding the machine all the paper money because unlike the teller’s money counter which can take a massive stack of cash and count it in a split second, the robot can only handle a little at a time and doesn’t work nearly as efficiently. So all in all, it took just shy of an hour to make a deposit. I’m thinking whatever interest we earn by putting that money in the bank wasn’t worth the price of admission – plus I missed the last hour of my Norsk class (which perhaps could have taught me some those blah blah blah banking terms I didn’t understand!)

Kory too had a most frustrating day as it took him over 30 minutes just to get the van up a hill to get to his job site. Because of all the ice and snow, he kept going up, and sliding back down (sometimes doing an uncontrolled 180 degree spin in the process). In many “difficult” spots on roads around here, the Kommune puts a big box on the side of the road full of sand with a little shovel inside so people can help themselves to sanding the spot. Kory had to sand the entire hill in order to make it all the way up. And Kaleb came home frustrated that he didn’t get enough gym time today. So I should have served cheese for dinner as it would have gone nicely with all the whine we had in our house tonight.