My lovely little building society got bought out last year, by big and nasty (with commercials that make me embarrassed to be a customer) Nationwide. I got a payout, which was nice, and also comforted myself with the fact that there would now be more branches at which to do my occasional building society transactions.

I’ve been carrying around by building society passbook since January in an attempt to get the interest made up. I’m not at home at weekends, so this has been tricky. However, today I knew I was having to go to another office for some rather intensive meetings and that there was a branch on the way, so I gave myself an extra 15 minutes and toddled along.

Nationwide have whizzy new passbook readers which are supposed to negate the requirement for traditional tellers. They refuse to read my passbook. These machines presumably mean they cut down on teller position as in the branch I went in to they had two machines, one office (which appeared to house the only computer in the building), yet four members of staff: one in the office with the computer and one customer; three to stand around with clipboards and redirect people to sit on a windowsill.

I waited 10 minutes then had to leave. There were two people in front of me and for all I know they are still waiting in line to get at that one computer. I think they’ve also changed the interest rate on my account (but obviously can’t confirm since I can’t get it calculated) so will probably close it once it’s been cleared out making divorce payments. 

In other news, I actually used by ipod for a non-entertainment purpose: the calendar function is muy helpful.