Two cashiers were servicing a patient (and growing) queue of customers. Occasionally a beep would ring out, coupled with the Greek equivalent of "cashier number 1 please", but without a "please". As we were ninth in line, it gave me ample opportunity to survey our surroundings whilst we waited.
One quarter of a large room was condoned off for the tellers, whilst the remainder was given over to a selection of desks, arranged without order. Each desk was piled high with papers, but with space left for a computer terminal, over which some operators smoked. People shuffled paper without obvious reason. A man I presumed to be the manager, seemed to be moaning conspiratorally to those customers he knew, his voice hushed so that his colleagues could not hear.
Over at the tellers counter, one cashier left. Where he went I do not know, but he was replaced by someone counting money, gazing at the queued customers as he did so. The remaining single cashier answered his mobile phone occasionally, so that at these times, no one was being served. Meanwhile, the queue got bigger.
The entry arrangements from the street were not simple. Two electronically locked doors formed an air lock so that no one could rush in or out. To confuse matters, it was fitted with a time delay, so that once admitted to the small chamber, it took many long seconds before the next door opened. Despite being made of glass, this was claustrophia inducing. The customers then greeted an opening door by pushing in to the tight space before those wishing to leave had done so. The effect was to recreate the world record attempt for the number off people in a phone box. Inspector Clouseau would have managed it better.
The manager reacted by doing nothing: clearly customer service was not a core objective. His colleagues behind their desks, gazed laconically at the queue whilst more paper was shuffled.
So, joy of joys, we got to the front of the queue. In all of this time, the cashier had been unsmiling, neither greeting or acknowledging any of his customers, a courtesy he extended to us. Clearly his day would be better if no-one troubled him.
We were, we gathered by the gesticulating cashier, at the wrong place and sent to one of the desk jockeys. She looked at the cheques as if they were a proffered laxative, said something to her colleague behind us and started looking through many folders. We seemed not to be there. Her colleague took the proffered phone number and spoke English to American Express - but not to us. In the meantime more desk jockeys stepped around us silently: clearly we were just more annoying customers.
The call was finished and the lady walked off with our cheques, with us in hot pursuit. A conversation ensued with the "friendly" cashier and we were invited to take another queue ticket: only 10 people and 40 minutes in front of us. We were able to persuade her we should queue jump.
Now we faced Mr Grumpy Bank Employee 1973 again (an honour he has maintained religiously every year since), who took our cheques once more. Paperwork was done - lots of it. Computer keying was done - lots of that too. He disappeared into the safe room, returning to hand a vast tray of cash to a colleague over the partition. Bundles of €500 notes were passed back, which confused Mr Grumpy as he did not know where to put it all: I felt it would not help our cause to make any suggestions.
And then! A bundle of notes was pushed through the counter window to us: but not counted out. So we checked the cash, smiled at Mr Grumpy and left. Neither he or anyone else spoke or acknowledged us. It was banking from the dark ages, a historical treat we were charged €15 to witness.
So the morale of this tale is, do not bring travellers cheques to Greece and avoid the banks here.
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