What's your box number, m'am?

nobody@vox.com(P-Dragonfly) — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 16:35:58 -0600

A bit of randomness...

Today at work, I traveled to a distant branch to be part of the Saturday rotation staff there. A woman came in to close out a safe deposit box. I got another associate to tell me where the keys for the safe deposit box room door were and I escorted her into the vault area. I asked her box number and she said it was printed on her 2 keys. It was and I gazed upon the wall of boxes (this particular branch has MANY more than we do at my regular, home branch) and I found her box number... I inserted her key and my key. I turned. Nothing happened. I turned again. No luck. I took her key out and tried her other key. Still, no open safe deposit box. Strange, I told her... but let me try the other key on the key ring I am using. Again, the box will not open. I try her other key again. Nothing. At this time, she's kind of wandering around the room. She says to me, "Oh. Here's another box with my number." To my amazement, she's correct. Not only is there a duplicate of that number, but there are MANY duplicated numbers that are the same exact size. We try keys in that box. Still, it will not open. At this point, I am somewhat exasperated as to why I can't get a set of keys to open ONE of the TWO boxes. Then, it seems as if in unison, we turn our gaze to the other side of the vault room where we discover ANOTHER box with the same number! That's right, 3 boxes, the same size, with the same number!! It would seem that a financial institution as large as we are would have enough sense not to have 2 boxes the same, much less 3!?!?!

As it turns out, one of the associates who normally works at that branch had stopped in to check on a loan he was working and offered me his keys and assistance. After an unsuccessful attempt at one box, he did manage to get one of the remaining two open so the poor lady could get her stuff out. What a mess. I suppose that it's to be expected in a merger, but this just seems like a really bad decision on someone's part... placing multiple safe deposit boxes of the same number and size in a branch is really just silly.

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