Just checking

This made me recall an odd bank related situation that happened to me a few weeks ago, and which I am still a bit perplexed by.
Due to a couple of things coming up, I needed to stock up on some bills of various denominations. Nothing all that crazy, in my opinion, 20 $1 bills, 20 $5 bills, stuff like that, a few hundred dollars at most. Where else do you get bills like that? The bank, I assumed.
When I got up to the teller, I explained that I needed to pull out X amount from my account, and I that I needed specific number of each denomination. She looked at me like I was asking something completely unheard of. She even told me, I don't think I have the money for that as she shuffled through some drawers.
Eventually she asked another teller who told her she'd have to go to the central terminal (I don't recall the actual name they used) and make a request for each denomination. So the teller walked across the back of the bank to a computer that looked like it was from the 80s. After about 10 minutes of typing, with multiple people helping her, 2 people came out from a room, walked over to a floor vault and opened it. While one pulled out the cash I requested, the other stood guard. It was surreal. They counted the money twice, the teller counted the money twice, and then finally came back to the counter and gave me the deposit. She seemed to be barely holding back her level of irritation at me.
All that for just a few hundred dollars in cash. It had me really wondering if I was mistaken about the role and services provided by banks and whether I was out of line for asking to receive specific denominations. Was I supposed to leave a tip or something?
- It's amazing how stuff that was simple even twenty years ago is so unusual now. I'm in the UK and we simply do not have cheques any more, for example. About ten years ago I had to pay a supplier in the US by cheque and I actually had to go to my bank and get them to print one for me - the staff member who helped me said they'd worked there two years and it was the first cheque he'd had to produce. When I was a kid people paid with cheque constantly, everyone had a chequebook, though I've got to say I'm glad to see the back of them. If guess that withdrawing specific denominations of cash is the same. If I just wanted to withdraw an amount of money, I'd use my nearest cash machine, but to specifically ask for this quantity of that denomination is, presumably, a bit left field.
- Sounds like either your bank is a local one struggling on business or its run by really incompetent management who failed to properly stock up the tellers. As them to pull out some 2$ bills next time everyone likes those
- So what drugs did you buy?
  
  Humulin, amlodipine, and cetirizine. But how did you know I stopped at the pharmacy after my bank trip?
- Those are just terrible employees who likely have such a sedentary way of working that they serve the same dozen clients every week and feel put out by anyone they don't know.
  Go back and fucking do it again. Seriously.
  Punish them for not handling their goddamn job like professionals. In fact, when you go back to do it again, casually mention that you'll be writing the branch manager and you're glad they're able to go to such lengths for you. I am not even kidding, they're being passive-aggressive by performing this big act and deserve to lose even more of their time and patience. You don't owe them anything, much less an explanation, you pay all their paychecks. You're the person who has the money, they should be falling over themselves to make sure you, the guy with the money, is taken care of and secure. Their entire business model depends on making people feel comfortable leaving their money with them. You're the boss.
  edit: if this triggers you, you're probably an entitled employee. You either do not understand how businesses and employment work or you have an emotional issue and shouldn't be working a customer-service role. Seriously, if you call this "karen" attitude, you're emotionally spoiled. We have, unfortunately, a capitalist society where if you want to afford basics and succeed at all, you HAVE to work for it (unless you're born into wealth, in which case jump into a volcano) and if you don't understand what makes businesses succeed, you won't succeed, change your delicate little perspective. I get this site's demographic but you HAVE to work to survive, you're not toppling the system through fucking Lemmy. Go get a job and succeed at it so you have some money to throw around at your causes and be respected. Save money, break your bad habits, take control of your health, go fucking outside and breath. If you're getting upset about things you read on the internet you're part of the problem whichever side you're on.
  
  Oh my god FUCK OFF, KAREN. That first paragraph is entirely a product of a situation you - and you alone - imagined, based your own self-indulgent righteousness and prejudice. If the bank has bullshit processes, even the most egregious simpleton would see that by throwing a tantrum at the working class labourer who is as bound by them as you are, all you're doing is succeeding at making their life worse while utterly failing to address the systemic issue causing the problem. You want to write a letter to their boss, complaining that the worker was hesitant to address an unusual query, you UTTER FUCKING NARK? Get a sense of perspective. You soulless husk.
  
  They're just people doing a job that their boss made needlessly annoying. They shouldn't need to open a vault to get a couple hundred bucks.
  Don't punish the workers, punish the boss

That is a bank rush. It's how banks die if enough people do it.
- In most countries it's illegal to try get people to do one.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovfap2VtpHM

And that is why it's called a checking account. It's only there for checking.

And next time have it when asked or we'll do this again.
- You can easily do a same-day wire transfer of this amount. Technically there's no limit on the size of wire transfers. There's probably a point where the bank will start asking questions, but car / mortgage down-payment sized transfers aren't an issue.
  But, yeah, I bet cash withdrawals are another ballgame. Not least because the bank probably doesn't actually keep that much cash in typical customer-facing locations.
  
  What the heck is that giant vault for if they ain't got comically large sacks of money and so many coins, they cause an avalanche when opening the door?
- Is there not a security concern of doing basic checks before handing out cash?
  For instance, elderly woman gets a text message telling her the IRS needs $50k cash or they’ll take her house. The bank says they need a few days, she complains that the IRS wants it now…and then they help explain that it’s likely a scam.
  
  Yes, typically. I don't know if that trumps "the bank has to give you your money when you ask for your money."

Hmm, are you still covered by the FDIC if you deliberately engineer a bank failure? Let's say all of Bank of America's customers decided that they just really wanted to fuck BoA hard. So they arrange to all demand the complete liquidations of their accounts, all at once. Or maybe people arrange a series of bank failures as part of some broader political movement. But hypothetically, if a group of people deliberately caused their bank to fail, would their deposits still be FDIC-insured? In other words, if you deliberately arrange a bank run, will you still be covered by FDIC insurance?
- It exists to cover bank runs and it is your money. There is nothing wrong with wanting your money in any given moment. That’s just my take though, I’m not a lawyer.
  I think it’d basically defeat its preventative purpose though if a story got out that people weren’t covered, even in an engineered bank run. What if you’re not in on the plot? What if it happens tomorrow at your bank? Are you just fucked too? Better withdraw all your money to be safe
  
  What a potentially powerful tool of protest. Imagine if you got a movement of a few million people. They all move to a target bank. A few months later, they all demand their full account liquidation. Then you move on to the next megabank. One by one, drop them like flies.
- It'd be hard to prove a single participant. An organizer, maybe? But if you just heard everybody's doing a bank run on the 20th and you're scared of the stability of your bank, so you decide to withdraw your money on the 19th so you can put it into another bank, that seems reasonable.
  (i know nothing about digital transfers between banks)
- Hi, I don't think my withdrawal of $20 from my collective accounts with BOA would really cause a failure... but I'm willing to try! Sincerely, -Poor
  PS there are no ethical millionaires

You: buys a digital thing from an online store
Store: takes your money right away with no waiting time
You: Decide you don't want it anymore, too expensive to renew
Store: okay, you'll get your money back in 5 to 10 business days
- I don't think the store takes your money right away? They mark it paid when the transaction starts not when they receive the money.
  
  Yes that's correct, I've worked in the field, when you place an order online there's a workflow triggered in the background between your bank, the vendor and visa/Mastercard in the case of credit cards. When you place the order, an authorization is placed on the card, at that stage it goes through a few checks (balance, fraud checks, creation of the transaction ID, etc). If it's successful, it'll move to a pending status, at this point it's just an authorization, during this time the company will prepare your order for shipping. Once it ships, the authorisation gets converted to a settlement, which is when money actually starts getting transferred. Even then it'll take a few more days for the banks to actually process the transaction before the vendor can refund it.
  Of course, this is all just the way it's done, I'm not saying it's the right one. Companies use this process because it's nice and safe, guarantees you won't be losing money through the cracks, but nothing would stop them from just refunding before this whole transaction shenanigans is fine, they just take more risk.
  
  Depends on the online store I guess, regardless, refunding the money always takes WAY longer

Of course, sir. Your 45 thousand will be deposited after we take the service fee

Lol imagine anyone having 50k
- I have 50k in my hand right now.
  It even has a cool picture of Ho Chi Minh on it
  
  Thank you for telling us about how much dong you're holding.
  
  Uncle Ho always was a wily one.

I struggle to understand what modern insurance companies actually exist for, apart from money people donating money to them for nothing in return.
- Insurance prevents people from hoarding money that they would need in case of a (personal) disaster to rebuild/repair/re-purchase their losses. If you know insurance will cover your house if it ever burns down, you spend the money, which helps the economy.
  
  Huh? Most people don't have enough cash to pay off their home, let alone save up enough to be able to buy a backup home. That's what insurance is for- it protects you from expenses that would be ruinous if you had to pay them out of pocket. The insurance company takes in more than it pays out, but it's worth it for home insurance (and health insurance in the good old US of A). It's why buying insurance on some $100 tech thing is always a ripoff.
  
  Even if someone worked very diligently to save money, it would take a whole lot to save enough to be able to afford an entire second house.
- Some are mandated, like auto insurance. Some are because your relative loss from buying insurance is waaaaaaaay less than your loss from an actual disaster. I for one don't mind paying (and this is an example, lol, like I can afford a home in my area) $200k over 40 years when the cost to rebuild my home after a fire, flood, hurricane, tornado, earthquake, or godzilla would be >$400k.
  Health insurance is the real head scratcher. It's almost a guarantee that you'll need it at some point. Pet insurance falls under this as well. A friend was telling me that it was a no brainer unless you're the type to shoot the dog as soon as it gets mildly sick. It's something along the lines of $40 a month, which means you're paying $480 a year, or maybe $4,800-$9,600 over the 10-20 year lifespan of the dog (it's a dog in this example because my fingers like the d more than the c). You know how much a single emergency with a dog can cost? Probably the entire amount you'd pay over a 10 year life span. If it is a longer problem, it balloons even more. And, importantly, right now pet insurance is where health insurance was at years ago, where they didn't scratch out your eyeballs over every payment. It may take that turn here soon, once the industry is more established. That's what my buddy actually wants to do, is review cases for pet insurance companies. I might have to toss him out of the car one day if it gets to the point of our human health insurance.
  
  I might have to toss him out of the car one day if it gets to the point of our human health insurance.
  Just take him for a walk...
  
  (it's a dog in this example because my fingers like the d more than the c)
  Come again?
- It is reverse gambling.
  
  Except when you need the insurance it is gambling whether you get it.

Funny that this came up in my feed immediately after: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/two-americas-one-bank-branch/

Infinite money glitch.