9.18.2006

Fun At Work



(This is a cell phone photo of the office where I work. The cubicles are all behind those heavy wooden forbidding double doors. I have to use a magnetic badge to unlock said doors. It was pretty cool... for about a week.)

Today was the big day! The day that Data Entry, Exception Processing, and, uh... a few other departments were separated into Lender Teams. In layman's terms, this basically means that each processor will only work in 2 or 3 banks, increasing their knowledge, accuracy, efficiency and production. For the occasion, the management busted out mad decorations: colorful signs, balloons (in the company colors, of course--blue, orange and green), and streamers along the sides of the cubicles.

I thought I was an adult working at a respectable company, but I guess I'm just a 4 year old at a birthday party.

Oh, and did I mention that the Lender Teams worked perfectly on their very first day? In order to "clean up the mess," in my boss' terms, I and most of the others worked in, let's see... HSBC, New Century, USCL, OSB, Regions, Sovereign....



I found a few more interesting names and places last week, for your enjoyment:

"22816 East 29th Street Lane Court South" in Blue Springs, Missouri--they couldn't decide on a direction or a street designation, so they just went with them all.

"Annabelle Yee"--could have been a great poem title, if Edgar Allan Poe had been Chinese.

The city of "Amissville, VA"--something's amiss here! If only we knew what it was....

A state motto: "Wild, Wonderful West Virginia"--any state that has to try that hard to come up with an interesting motto can't have much to offer. Do you really think West Virginia is wild and wonderful? Yeah. Me neither.

And finally, the city of "Floydada, TX"--this city wasn't named by its founder, but by the founder's two year old son.



Lastly, allow me a short rant. Despite the fact that I was listed on the HSBC team (it made me laugh when I saw that, since I'm part-time now, everyone else had a "1" by their name and I had a "0.5" by mine), my primary two banks are Regions and Fifth Third. I've gotten used to hearing and saying "Fifth Third Bank" by now, but at first it gave me pause. I actually remember seeing a Fifth Third Bank branch several years ago, driving through Fullerton. I stopped (fortunately I wasn't driving, so, I guess I really didn't stop) and wondered, "What the heck? 'Fifth Third?'" To be truthful, I have no idea why it's called Fifth Third Bank. But it would make sense to me to condense the name for the sake of convenience. For example, if this is the fifth incarnation of Third Bank, you could call it Eighth Bank. Or, if each of the First, Second and Third Banks had gone through five versions, you could call it Fifteenth Bank. Or, if it's a sub-bank which consists of a fifth of all of Third Bank's assets, you could call it Point Six Bank or Six-Tenths Bank, or, um, actually it would be Point Two Bank or One-Fifth Bank. Or perhaps if Fifth Bank was divided into thirds you could call it One And Two-Thirds Bank, or One Point Six Six Six (Ad Infinitum) Bank. Or, you could combine them all (just to be clear, you know) and call it

"Fifth Third Eighth Fifteenth Point Six Six-Tenths Point Two One-Fifth One And Two-Thirds One Point Six Six Six (Ad Infinitum) (Ad Nauseam)..." at which point the entire outside wall of the bank would be covered with numbers and no one would ever realize that what was inside was, in fact, a bank.


Or, you could just spell it with numbers.




And what would happen if it started to grow, perhaps getting more of the market share for banks in general? Fortunately, my already mathed-out brain doesn't have to answer this question, since a cartoonist from the Cincinnati Post has answered it for us. I'll leave you on this note; until next time--bank with Washington Mutual, for Pete's sake.


5 comments:

Idhrendur said...

Ah, you make me laugh.

Darth_Harbison said...

I didn't even understand half of this post, unfortunately . . .

Carolyn Burns Bass said...

You're bringing back memories, AJ. I had a client who set up the incentive trips for Fifth Third Bank and I created much of the collateral for the programs. I often wondered about the naming of that organization. Thanks for the laugh.

Mike Morabito said...

AJ, You are hilarious. Btw, I loved the pic from the inside. I'd love to see a pic of your work station as well.

-Mike Morabito

Courtney said...

this post is really fun. thanks for the inside scoop on your GRIPPING work life. I loved the stuff about 5/3, but I thought it was funny that the cartoon says that 5/3 growing would give it reason to be called 5/4 when, really 5/4 has less value than 5/3. So really, it would be like 5/3 is shrinking. So, AJ, I guess the moral of this story is: don't let cartoonists do your math homework.

by the way, I totally love your address observations. make sure you pick some winners for us to hit up on our trip. That would be awesome.