Bank Balancing

Just a note on my nightly balancing at the bank...

First of all, so far I have a 100% balancing record- meaning, obviously, that I haven't been off a single day that I've worked. This is incredibly relieving when you are, as a teller, handling anywhere from $10,000-$30,000 a day in cash alone, with another several thousand in paper trails. Because every single transaction is accompanied by at least two slips of paper, a teller has to be careful to choose the correct one, fill it out correctly, file it correctly, etc. A single lost slip could mean you're off by hundreds at the end of the night.

Another thing- cash is virtually the same as the paper. In other words, just because you're sure it's a slip for $200 that you forgot to fill out and not two missing $100 bills, it's all the same. On that same note, because so much of our responsibility is the paper trail and not necessarily the cash, being off by $2 is the same as being off by $2,000. Writing down the wrong amount is the same as giving out the wrong cash, and any mistake is equally appalling- not balancing is not balancing.

I have to say, though, that balancing everything at the end of the night is one of the most anxiety-inducing moments ever! You have to add up all your slips of paper tracking how much money came in and how much went out, count your actual cash, work all these numbers into a simple addition/subtraction formula and produce - hopefully! - what's called a "zero tape"- proof that you balanced. You're nervous the whole time that you're adding, trying to guess if you'll balance, totally concentrated on adding, ignoring all else around you until you see your final number, hoping it's not off by even a penny.

After all that, seeing "0.00" on that tape is probably one of the greatest feelings in the entire world.

I told this to another teller, who was balancing next to me, and she, a veteran of the bank, laughed and said, "yea, that feeling never wears off."