The time had come for Mrs. Watts to go to the bank to take out some cash. She has accepted technology to a point, needing to obtain a debit card and learn how to use it, but she was generally old school and not about to change due to her advancing years. You might say she has been there and done that, was now a widow, having married a successful business man, never had a family as that was not their focus. She had a lavish lifestyle, lots of good times, but a hunched back came along as she aged and she walked with a cane. She had heard that some businesses did not want to accept any cash since it could be coated with the virus, but Mrs. Watts was not about to change her ways as she always paid for any consumables with cash, and she was hoping that she would not have any issues.
She knew her days were nearing an end but she has managed to struggle along in her loneliness during time of pandemic where one needs to keep your distance and stay at home as much as possible. Fortunately she had some company in her home in the form of a maid/ housekeeper named Melanie, but she was not able to give Mrs. Watts much stimulation when interacting since she lacked business prowess and could not understand her level of thinking. Melanie's loyalty was undoubted since she had immigrated to England from Indonesia and needed a steady source of income. She therefore was hired to take care of the house, garden, and cooking and she treated Mrs. Watts like royalty.
Mrs. Watts also had a chauffeur to come by when needed in a shiny black limousine to pick her up from her mansion on the hill. She did not really know his name, but did not have to and so just called him James since this seemed to be most appropriate. This little old lady was quite set in her ways, or stubborn if you prefer, but quite well respected in the community and she remained as sharp as a tack. However, it took some time for the maid and chauffeur to convince her to wear a mask in public and to keep her educated on the troubles of the world, to do what is right, and for heaven's sake, please wash your hands. She was doubting how much she was up to the challenge and so struggled to adjust.
Wearing her business attire from bygone days, adjusted and loosened to better fit her current physical stature, she lacked some confidence when it came to her sight as she had some macular degeneration. When she swept her hand around the dining room table, this triggered Melanie's curiosity:
“Madam, what are you doing?"
“I am looking for my glasses dear. Have you seem them?"
“Yes, Madam, they are on your head, in your hair as you had pushed them up earlier."
“Oh yes, thank you.” That is when Mrs. Watts took a second look at her maid.
“Now then, you can stop rolling your eyes and wipe that smirk off your face there, Mellie. I will have none of that,” as she pulls her glasses back down onto the bridge of her nose.
Well she seems to be a little feisty this morning, thought Melanie. Just then she heard a car pull up to the front door and the car had a familiar sound about it.
“Madam, your chauffeur just arrived. It is time for you to go.”
Mrs. Watts struggled to get to the entrance, almost shuffling her feet, having come up with some arthritis and poor circulation in her limbs over a period of time. Then she almost stumbled on a step going out the door which made her a bit cranky:
“James, for God's sake, take my hand, you worthless loaf! You can see that I am having trouble!"
“So sorry Mrs. Watts, but you usually do not like to get helped!”
So James, who is really Robert uncomfortably takes her hand. As he knew she would have trouble walking, he parked the limo really close to the step, so much so, that Mrs. Watts had to shuffle sideways a bit to get around the car door, then shuffle towards the seat. She muttered something under her breath but did not share with others. Then before taking a plop into the car seat, she sent out a request:
“Mellie, I need to take my garden gloves.”
For you see, Mrs. Watts had this pair of garden gloves for the 'occasional' adjustment made to the flower beds when she felt like it and happened to see something that needed to be fixed, but these gloves were like 35 years old and quite ragged. Melanie chose to challenge her decision:
“What for Madam? What on earth do you need your garden gloves? They are grimy, black with bacteria and with other stuff on them, and they even smell a bit!"
“That's exactly why I need them, 'cause I need to open up the bank door and if there happens to be a virus on that handle, the bacteria and chemicals on those gloves will soon take care of it!"
“But I will open the door, Mrs. Watts., piped up James, er Robert. He then added further comment so she would hopefully rethink her strategy:
“You will not want to take those gloves with you into the bank as they are not who you are! Surely you would not use your gloves to give the teller your bank card, or to count your cash!”
Mrs. Watts saw some holes in her strategy, and gloves for that matter as Melanie picked them up along the side of the step by pinching them with her index finger and thumb. With a scrunched up nose and a rather painful expression on her face Melanie could only say “eeewwww”.
“Fine then, but you will have to go upstairs and get my black gloves in my bedroom closet and bring them to me”
Melanie gladly ran up the stairs and came back with her dress gloves, along with a little bottle of disinfectant, and, oh yes, a brand new N95 mask.
“Oh, bother, I need my mask too! How silly of me, my dear, thanks for that! Too da loo.”
Well, that sounded better and she settled into the car and managed to do up her seat belt. The chauffeur could see she had her purse and so felt relieved that so far, so good. She was indeed in the car with her stuff, and then it was Melanie's turn to close her car door saying:
“Too da loo, Madam, now don't forget to put on that mask so you will be ready while James is driving you to the bank, and don't forget to...”
“I know, I know, wash my hands and keep my distance. You know maybe that can of RAID over there could come in handy if anyone gets too close...”
Now that's more like Mrs. Watts with her dry sense of humor. It must be the added attention she was receiving from her paid staff.
“Now, now, Madam, behave yourself and I will have lunch ready for you when you get back.”
James, er Robert knew he had to keep his speed down and she needed the time anyways to get her mask on, as each task is a challenge these days. He occasionally glanced in the rear view mirror to see how she was progressing: one string loop over one enlarged ear, wrap the gag over your nose and mouth, try to hook the string over the other enlarged ear, first string comes off, wrap the gag over your nose and mouth, try to hook up the remaining string, drop the mask, knock your glasses sideways in the process, and start over and then some!
“Madam, set your cane down and use both hands!"
“James... just drive!” she said with her raspy stern voice.
“Righto”, and so the chauffeur stayed focused on the road.
They managed to get to the bank with its solid brick face and fortunately the bank did not look that busy. James, er Robert pulled up as close as he could to the door, even driving the car onto the sidewalk for her convenience. He really needed this job during the pandemic and so he had to do whatever it took to keep her happy. He could see that her mask was on, sort of, she had her purse and cane, and so he climbed out of the car, ran around to open her door and pulled her up out of the car by her hand.
“Owww, ouch, be careful! Don't pull so hard!”
“Oh, watch the step, Madam, here let me open the door for you.”
The chauffeur had parked the limo so close that other customers were waiting for the limo to get out of the way. He managed to get the bank door opened with Mrs. Watts using her cane and heading in the right direction towards the teller area, and so he let her go, like a boy releasing a toy car running on batteries hoping she did not crash into something. Another sigh of relief and then he quickly got back into the limo to drive it off the curb and find a parking stall. Then he knew he needed to get back to that bank in short order to check and see if she was progressing as planned with her bank transaction.
Mrs. Watts knew what to do, because Melanie had drilled her so many times. There was one masked man ahead of her in line and so she looked on the floor where she needed to park her feet so that she was exactly two meters, or 6.5616 feet from him! She never liked metres, but any instructions given to her were in metric and so conversion to imperial was in order, as she was good with numbers. When she was thinking about how on earth do they know that she is 6.5616 feet away, the man with the mask in front noticed the little old lady, then asked with a muffled voice:
“Pardon me, madam, but would you like to go ahead of me?”
Without waiting for a response, he gingerly stepped aside to let her advance. She may or may not have heard him correctly, but saw his action to assume his good intention and so graciously nodded her head as she moved up. She decided that, well, he must be a British gentleman! She noticed next there were three tellers on the go and started wondering who was going to be freed up first. There was a young lass on the left who had a big "Trainee" sign next to her protruding cleavage and so was hoping that she was not going to be the one!
But of course, it is going to be her and sure enough her glassed in till opened up first and it came time for Mrs. Watts to make a move. When she advanced to the counter both teller and client paused for a moment to study one another. For the young teller was indeed the exact opposite of Mrs. Watts in so many ways. She was so vibrant and groomed, with her eyebrows as a sleek black smear perfectly tapered along each side to nothingness and perfectly balanced, with flashy false eyelashes and lets no forget some botox and lip injections, ruby red lipstick, soft smooth tanned complexion to perfection, and, oh yes, snow white perfectly aligned, sparkling teeth. Note no mask.
Then there was Mrs. Watts with her smokey grey scraggly, curly hair, who was three quarters gone from the start to the end, who had bushy grey eyebrows, with deep wrinkle cracks all around her mask caused during her smoking days. And don't forget long single strands of grey hair coming out of her ears! Her mask was also on upside down with one string wrapped around one arm of her glasses that were still on crooked. Now this did not make her look that "with it" and the young lass was wondering what she was getting into! She knew she had to be at her programmed best, ready to react. She also thought about commenting about her mask, but chose to ignore, not wanting to cause embarrassment, or create a scene on her new job, and not feeling that comfortable dealing with the elderly. So she piped up with her standard greeting of introduction:
“Good morning dear, what brings you here this fine day and what may I do for you love?”
Mrs. Watts kept staring for a moment because either she did not hear, or she was too fascinated noticing how one of the teller's eyebrows moved up and down more than the other when she spoke.
“Huh, what did you say?”
Not knowing for sure how loud she should talk and not being able to rely upon previous experience for how much she should raise her voice, she came across loud and strong next time for the whole bank to hear:
“GOOD MORNING, WHAT BRINGS YOU HERE THIS FINE DAY AND WHAT MAY I DO FOR YOU?”
She was so loud that a startled Mrs. Watts took a half a step back and so the teller knew she needed to tone it down a few decibels next time. Mrs. Watts regrouped, then using her black gloves pulled out her debit card from her purse and as she started to hand the card to the young one, she said very business like:
“Could I please get fve hundred pounds out of my chequing account.”
The teller had a response memorized for every question raised:
“Our banking rules state that for any withdrawal of one thousand pounds or less, we are asking our clients to use the ATM, as there is a demand for tellers to perform other functions. There is an open ATM right behind you that is available. All you need to do is feed your card into the machine, enter your code... (blah, blah, blah)."
With a noticeable frown on her face, Mrs. Watts chose to stop listening as she was not into ATM's and she certainly was not about to try one. She has seen such a machine swallow a card for a person and the ATM never gave it back! This was her card, her identification, and her security.
“No, I would rather not as I just want you to give me the money and so here is my card,” as she slid it to her through through the opening in the glass. Mrs. Watts could still be assertive and forceful when needed. However, the teller held her ground, pushed the card back and encouraged Mrs. Watts to get with the times stating:
“I am so sorry my love, but we are not allowed to do this anymore, as there are other clients behind you that need my service, so please go to the ATM and...(blah, blah, blah)."
They were at a standoff between the one who knew too much and the other who thought she knew it all. No one was going to change their mind. So Mrs. Watts's adrenaline started to flow, and her brain switched into overdrive.
“Well, tell you what then. I would like to take all of the money out of my bank account in cash”, handing her card back to the teller.
The teller put her card into the reader and Mrs. Watts thought her eyes were going to completely pop out of her cheeks, for you see Mrs. Watts had consolidated her funds and her bank account had as a balance... 3.5 million pounds!
“Omigosh! You are that Mrs. Watts I heard about!”
“Mrs. Gertrude Watts, that is,” she replied. “I am glad the bank knows about me."
As the teller had a rather startled look on her face, her supervisor came right over and there was lots of quiet talk happening behind that glass that Mrs. Watts could not hear. There was definitely a look of concern on their faces. It was time for the supervisor to speak.
“Mrs. Watts, this is a lot of money you are requesting and quite frankly we do not keep that kind of cash in our bank. We would need 48 hours to make it available and so why not come back tomorrow when the bank manager is in so you two can have a chat to figure out what your plans are and why you need so much in cash?"
“Fine then, just give me 50,000 pounds for now, but I do not want it all in big bills.”
James, er Robert had made it back to the bank and could see that she had indeed made it to the till and was trying to complete her transaction. He could not figure out from a distance why things were not moving as fast as they should. He walked over to be by her side so that he could observe what was happening. Mrs. Watts was fine with this, but had to give reassurance to others that he was there to give her any assistance needed. With that understanding, the supervisor and teller got back to the task at hand, had some more behind the scenes discussion, and then they agreed to comply with her request.
“We do have some one thousand British Pound notes in the vault,” said the supervisor, “but we will also give you smaller denominations as we know it can be difficult to get other people to accept such big bills,” said the supervisor with a meaningless forced grin on his face.
So, you can appreciate what happened next as the supervisor and teller had to get the assistant manager to go with them, disappearing into the room with the big vault, getting the right currency out, completing the paperwork, and getting appropriate authority approvals along the way. Meanwhile, the lineup behind Mrs. Watts was getting so long that people had to start waiting outside two metres apart, almost to the end of the block! James, er Robert became concerned:
“Madam, what are you doing? Why is it taking so long? I thought you were getting just five hundred pounds?”
“Shhhhh. You know me well enough that I know what I am doing. I do not want to be forced to use the ATM.”
To count the cash out without causing a scene to others can be challenging for an amount of this magnitude. For you see Mrs. Watts can only hear so much; therefore, she had to witness each note denomination as the count was proceeding at a slow pace. Having carefully counted the money, slipping currency in an envelope, and handing it with card and receipt to her, they asked the usual spiel in this situation:
“Thank you for coming and meeting you was a pleasure. We are pleased to have been of service. Is there anything more we can do for you?”
Mrs. Watts paused briefly to absorb the verbiage and thought about whether the pleasure was mutual. She took out five hundred pounds from the envelope and carefully placed in her purse, then she slipped the envelope back to the teller:
“Now please deposit this cash back into my chequing account.”
“Now this is the Mrs. Watts I remember,” thought James, er Robert.