I Don't Like Angry People

I had a very angry foreign customer this morning. The type who is so angry he throws stuff at his teller. Alright, he only threw papers, but still.

For those too lazy to order new checks, for each transaction they need to make, they just waltz into the bank and have us make a cashiers check for them. I can understand ordering a few-- we got one for our safety deposit for the apartment. However, there are the customers who are so reluctant to use their own checks, they come into the bank for every check they need to right. Their monthly rent, the gas bill, the money they owed their brother for fixing the deck... everything.

So, a family walks in (man, wife, their daughter) and asks for a cashiers check for August rent. Their apartment company has some funny impossible to spell name and I mixed up and 'A' or an 'E' when I printed it out. So, the guy is very unhappy and has me print another, and apparently there is an 'S' wrong somewhere on that one. So, he yells and insults me and throws his papers at me and continues yelling for a while. Since I kinda like my job, I kept composure-- asked if he'd prefer another teller complete the transaction or if he could stop yelling and let me print out another one.

My supervisor appears next to me.
The security guard from the branch materializes beside the irate customer.
Needless to say his wife is absolutely mortified.

So, I quickly print off a third check, and my supervisor signs it and sends him out before he has a chance to read it. We put a note on his account profile Is rude and aggressive towards associates -- very satisfying teller pay back. And I get props for keeping my cool.

The first week in August is 'fiesta'. Our neighbors gave us a brochure with a few details and stressed the importance of staying uptown-- much more 'classy' there. My coworkers have gone on and on about how late the bars are open and how awesome the parties are. I don't know what quite to expect. I was hoping on cashing in on the parade and ethnic food aspect of the whole festivities. We'll see what unveils.

Suprise Visit from the Regional Manager

I arrived at the bank this morning and saw one of my coworkers wearing pantie hose! I knew something must be awry. Sure enough when my Supervisor checked me in this morning he informed me that the boss's boss was at the branch today; we were going to open many more accounts today and we were going to be perfectly polished and professional. I myself wore a nice sweater for the occasion-- forgetting that our normal 'arctic freeze' air conditioning is currently broken.

So our manager James was on his best behavior which rubbed off on the tellers. I got to meat the regional manager briefly. By the end of the day before I left James told me that she had pointed me out above all the tellers because I smiled at every customer and had the Bank of America Spirit. It's good to have been noticed by the branch manager this early on in the game :-) So, in the end my manager is happy with me.

Charles has started receiving lots of mail from UCSB. It's nice to be reminded finally why were all the way over here in California. He's been pouring over the course listings and the TA training schedule. He plans on taking as many qualifying exams before courses start-- I'm so proud of him.

In the mean time, he likes to make sure that he's done something around the apartment before I've come home from work. Did you vacuum the carpet? Where'd the dirty dishes go? Not to mention he makes me lunch and dinner everyday. And coffee in the morning. :-D I'm really digging this whole newly wed thing.

I'll have to make sure and make it up to him some how-- maybe packing his lunches once classes start.

The Ins and Outs of Santa Barbara

I went to the bookstore last Friday night at 11:30-- even thought I had to work early on Saturday, just so that I could get my hands on the LAST HARRY POTTER BOOK. We bought 2 copies so that Charles and I wouldn't have to share, although Charles finished reading it much faster. I alas, have work, so I am almost finished but not quite.

I do enjoy my new job as a teller. As I get better and more efficient I seem to get less angry customers. But there's always a few. I've had a lot of trouble with the California drivers licenses. Apparently the DMV thought it would be cool to encode the license number and expiration date on a magnetic stripe on the back of the card so that you can swipe them just like a debit card. Of course anyone over 20 thinks that by swiping their license I know everything about them and am trying to steal their identity. People get surprisingly angry when asked to swipe their license, and I had one customer ask for my manager and then proceed to yell at him for 15 minutes because I asked him to swipe his license. Needless to say, I given up on the whole swiping thing. If someone comes in without a skateboard in hand-- they'll want me to look at their license the old fashion way.

Most of the people in California have lived here their whole lives and have no idea what even the rest of their country is like. All of my coworkers ask me all the time, "So what's it like in the ATL?" They have a hard time believing that Spanish isn't a prominent language there, that there are indeed lots of black people, and that the weather could actually get hotter then 78 degrees. Here, 75 degrees is considered 'hot'. I love it!

There is a horrible real estate bubble here. Lots of people move here, but there is not room to build more homes, so an equal number of people are moving out. There are basically 2 demographics here-- college students who cram into condos and apartments which they can barely afford, and then wealthy people who can afford to drop $8 million on a home. Because of this, there's a desperate need for jobs at the entry level. There just aren't enough college students to fill them all. At the bank, 2 girls were hired to the teller position a couple weeks before me, then a week after I got there a fourth person was hired. And after all that, there's still a sign on our door declaring that the bank is still hiring for this location. It's crazy.

Let's go to Hollywood!

One of the beautiful things about living in Santa Barbara is that LA is a short 2 hour drive away (when there is no trafic whatsoever-- usually takes twice the time, but that's not the point). So if one wanted to, say, see the new Harry Potter movie in Hollywood, it's no real big.

OK, maybe it is big. Really big. IMAX screen as big as a football field big. And when it comes to movies, big = super cool.

So, on Thursday Charles and I drove over to Universal City in Hollywood to watch Order of the Pheonix at the 3D IMAX theatre. Once we got there, we saw security people terring down the red carpet for another movie's premier. There were flashy lights and fun stores and LOADS of people. We went to a cute little toy store and I got myself a Harry Potter lunch box. Oh yeah, I'm cool.

We met Charles family, then went into the theater. Got our 3D glasses, then bought all the movie snacks we could afford. I must say the movie was amazing. I think they picked out the best elements to emphasize for the movie-- and left the fluff out. So one can condence 1000+ pages into a meer 2 hours. The whole scene when all the students go to the ministry of magic to find Harry's orb thing to the end of the battle there was in 3D. VERY cool. I enjoyed it. There was lot of cheering. Every time Dumbledore appeared in the movie a bunch of people cheered :-) But, I have to admit, the 3rd movie is still my favorite.

Work is going well. I'm mostly done with training and will start working with customers soon. That will sure beat hiding in the back room doing training on the computer. I like all my coworkers. They're all pretty cool and nice.

Oh, and I got my first paycheck. That makes everything worth it!

Starting work, Castle

I finally started work on Monday. I was very excited to finally start training. So of course the online-training tool wouldn't let me log in. So I spent all morning watching training videos. I think all aspiring actors should look into doing a few training videos. Apparently no actual acting ability is required. I watched several scenes in which a 'robber' with a ski mask walked into the bank and robbed the 'teller' who was about as terified as a person can be while completely focused on reading the teleprompter. Much fun. Since I still couldn't log onto the computer that afternoon, I obsered one of the tellers-- called 'shadowing'. Of course the bankwas so busy all the tellers were working at near light speed, meaning I didn't catch onto much that first day. But I did make a point to introduce myself to all the other tellers. Sounds like I'll being working with a group of some pretty nice people. At the end of the day i asked nicely for Teusday off-- explained that the inlaws are in town and all. Since there was a chance I may not be able to log in the next day, my manager felt that another day of shadowing may not help much at this point, so I'll return on Wednesday.

Today, we all went to the Herst Castle. That was pretty cool. It wasn't nearly as impressive as Biltmore-- not as big or grand. But he did have an excellent collection of artwork and antique/historic pieces. And he had eery ammenity for guests to his estate, including a heated indoor pool. I informed Charles that I want a castle and he should totally start working on that. :-)

Our First Guests

Well, the in-laws made it here safe and sound. Charles little sister, McKenna insisted that she did not want to fly back. If she started driving now... she might be able to get back home when her parents arrive by plane a week later. She didn't like that idea. My best friend Beth flies a lot and admits that she doesn't like it. I imagine being over 21 helps though...

We were able to spend yesterday evening with Charles's family, and I imagine most of today. They'll be here until Thursday (then some time in LA!) but I might be working most of the week.

We were browsing around down town Santa Barbara, and Charles and I had a particular costume jewelry store in mind that we wanted to show the girls. Needless to say they loved it. When you walk in the store, it's so big you can see the back! So, an hour later, I'm pretty sure we saw EVERYTHING in the store. I was impressed by McKenna's restraint-- she only HAD to have one bracelet.

We had forewarned them about the weather. It was and will be for the whole week amazing. A perfect 72 during the day, and then a refreshing 62 at night. Beets the heat wave back in Georgia.

Curtain Catastrophy

So, my time has been consumed with playing World of Warcraft-- an online role playing game. It's pretty fun. I have a character who can run around and whack enemies with her sword, cast spells, and summon some big blue blob that can whack enemies for her. I bought my character all the essentials, including a pet cat. Hey, if I can't have a pet in real life, at least I can have one in a silly little game.

I start working on Monday. I feel a little bad for idling around for so long-- but in my defense, it was their application process that took so long. So, soon I will have joined the working world.

Charles family is visiting come tomorrow. Charles is excited to show off his new culinary skills, so he's planning on cooking a big dinner for everyone. And now we have a table and almost enough chairs for everyone! So, he should be able to pull this off. We'll see how it goes.

In preparation for their visit, I had wanted to make curtains for all the windows. Charles insisted that we should wait a while before getting a sewing machine-- seeing that they can run on the expensive side. So we went to bed bath and beyond to buy curtains. Our first problem of course was my inability to measure the windows properly. I was shocked to see how much a rectangle of fabric with a hem on the bottom costs. It's outrageous. And then you need at least 2 panels for any window. And don't forget the valence and the sash and the draperies and... and...

So after dropping a lot more money at bed and beyond then any sewing machine would cost we came home with and arsenal of kitchen doodads and curtain stuff. I did't get a big enough rod for the living room window (note: return curtain rod) so instead I installed the one over the kitchen. Securing the curtain rod was a pain-- apparently our walls are concrete-like rock instead of sheet rock. After much toiling, I got the rod supports on the wall, only to find that the curtain rod does not fasten securely to the wall. It stays there, but comes off is a fury each time I try to put curtain up there. Plus the curtain are way too long (I can understand floor length, but these were ridiculous). I could always hem them... I'll I'd need in a sewing machine. (note: return curtains) So in the end purchased curtains have turned out to be a big ugly pain. I'm going to return them all and get the sewing machine I really wanted. Then I can make curtains that fit.