Circling the Drain

The Mother of All Boredom

Published Oct 5, 2020 Updated Oct 5, 2020 Culture

6 min

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Circling the Drain

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The Mother of All Boredom

Allen Smith

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I have no idea why the bank hired me. Apart from a warm body and pulse, I didn’t have a thing to offer Ferneyhough Savings. They didn’t have much to offer me, either. Unless, of course, you count never-ending boredom and the $9.65 an hour entry level tellers make. To be honest, I didn’t even want the job. I was just trying to survive until ski season.

Bank tellers are a dying breed that have succumbed to a lethal combination of online banking, electronic deposits and Square Cash. Unlike my counterparts of the 1950s who actually worked for a living, I spent the majority of my day staring into space. Occasionally, a waitress would come in with a wad of cash and $234 in loose change she collected from tips. Once in a while, a kid would want to cash in his piggy bank, but that was about