Every day my husband puts the spare change from his pockets into a sizeable jar that we keep on the nightstand. After a few months, the jar is full and he takes the coins to our local bank. They have a Money Counter and they do not charge any fees for totaling the amount you submit. This is a great convenience for us.
I received a phone call this morning from my bank. The teller told me that the money counter that they use to sort and add coins was broken. She proceeded to explain that it broke in the process of sorting through our change that my husband had left earlier that day. The reason the machine broke, according to the teller was because there were paperclips and hairpins mixed up with the coins.
Of course I apologized and offered to pay for the repairs. The teller said that there would be no charge for fixing the Money Counter but to make sure that we clean out our change before taking it to the bank. She continued to complain that there were many people waiting for their change to be counted and she had been left with bags and bags full of coins because of our carelessness.
I apologized again. I felt awful about breaking the Money Counter and I was going to make sure that it wouldn’t happen again. After she continued to complain about her plight she finally finished the conversation with a pleasant, “This is why the money counter is always broken. People need to be more considerate.”
This final statement got me a little irritated because I didn’t storm into the bank after the third order of checks that I placed with that same teller didn’t go through. I did not complain that we had to go to the bank in person to have checks typed up for us because someone forgot to send our order to the printing company. I felt bad about the Money Counter but that feeling was being washed away by her attitude.
I talked to my husband about the broken Money Counter and he reminded me that he is a sheet metal worker. He doesn’t carry paper clips and he has never worn a hairpin. Come to think of it there are no hairpins in the house. It turns out that there is no way that our change contained the damaging items. He is paying them a visit.