Life Lesson

Life Lesson: The reason old people are so evil? It’s because we are granted a certain amount of patience over the course of our lifetime. By a certain age, we’ve used all our patience up.

This is an old story, but I am using it for the Life Lesson for my first blog post.

My father granted me Power of Attorney yesterday so I could begin putting his affairs in order. One of my first tasks was to collapse his multiple accounts and different banks into one checking account and one savings account.

I can only visit the bank on Saturday s until my contract with is up. Thus, it took me two weeks to take care of this simple task.

To be fair, I did visit the last bank later in the day. Why? I had to drop my father’s car off to get an estimate of the cost of repairing the damage (Please, God, let me find the auto insurance information soon) and visit another bank first.

I arrived at Trifling Bank about an hour before closing. This bank has no on working at the desks. I waited in line for the teller and introduced myself. I showed her the Power of Attorney document, my ID, and my father’s ID.

The teller had never before seen a Power of Attorney document, and implied it was something I made up for nefarious purposes (note: my father and I have the same last name). Okay. I am patient because she appears to be in her early twenties. Lord knows that banks do not train their employees and she’s rather young to have encountered this issue in her own family.

I ask for a manager. The teller leaves. After about a twenty minute wait, the manager comes back and says she cannot help me. I will have to come back during the week once they have had a chance to view the Power of Attorney document with their lawyers. Why?

The manager has never heard of a Power of Attorney document either. She does not know what powers it grants me. Hello!?! You are a bank manager and you have never heard of a Power of Attorney? Could you be any more incompetent?

Fortunately, I had the bright idea to visit another branch of Trifling Bank the next weekend. This one was staffed by an intelligent teller and manager that were able to help me.

I ended up closing my father’s account at Trifling Bank with his blessing; neither one of us believe in supporting the stupid. I sent Trifling Bank a long letter detailing my unhappiness and why.

It should come as no surprise that I never got a response.