I took the kids to the bank today to open up my business bank account. With my baby bag on my shoulder, car seat on one hand, toddler on another hand, and folder with all my paperwork in my other hand...wait, that's too many hands. Well, somehow I managed to get it all in there. After a short wait, I was led to a banker desk with an elderly woman clerk. We'll call her Jane. I gathered all my stuff and children and sat at her desk. Jane didn't seem too thrilled to see the kids, but the good news is they were charming all the other people there. After the first 10 minutes of my 2 year old son sitting and coloring nicely and my 9 month old daughter happily sitting in her car seat looking around, I had a feeling this was going to go a lot smoother than I had anticipated!
Well, I don't think Jane had previous experience setting up a business account. Jane was doing a lot of reading behind that computer screen, and things took a lot longer than I had hoped. My son spotted the candy jar on her desk. Then he was tired of nicely coloring and started violently covering the paper in crayon, drawing a big purple line across the front of Jane's desk. Then he spotted the candy jar. "I want canny!" "Ok, sweetie. You can HOLD the candy in your hand and if you're a good boy while we're at the bank, you can eat it." He opens it, then tells me that he wants to eat it about a hundred times in a row. Jane is talking to me. "Ok, go ahead and eat it, but you have to be a good boy." He puts it in his mouth. Ah, peace and quiet.
Jane gathered all the needed paperwork and identification from me and started to fax something off to get approval. She comes back. "Oh, Miss, your son just dropped his candy on the floor and this floor is really dirty because of all the construction going on." I look at him - it's in his mouth. Great.
Uh oh, I hear crunching - my son figured out how to chew the candy instead of just keeping it in his mouth and letting it melt away slowly. Darn, this wasn't going to last long.
"More canny peese Mommy." Argh. Do I just give more to him to shush him up and look like a bad parent? Or do i keep up my good mommy appearance? Well, hadn't reached my breaking point yet, so I go for looking good. "No no sweetie, only one piece. You can have another piece after lunch." Then I got up and got him a book from the magazine rack. "Sit down and read this, k?" He did. For about 60 seconds. He starts to antagonize my daughter in her car seat. She start to fuss. I pick her up and hold her while Jane continues to talk to me.
"Good news. It's approved. I'll go ahead and get the account started." After asking me a bunch of questions about what type of account I want, she continues typing away behind the computer screen. She pulls out a brochure on a machine that accepts credit cards. "Do you want an account that accepts credit cards?" I tell her no, I'm just using Paypal to start. I think about it a little, "Well, I may be interested in that in the future. Can I go ahead and take that brochure to go over it later." She tells me no, I can't take the brochure but she can make a copy of it for me. She says the brochures are downstairs, and it's dirty down there. Really? So basically she didn't want to get up and go get one for me.
It's been a good 50 minutes by now, and my son has gone through all the books and toys and rolling on the floor fussing and begging for more candy. My daughter is ready for a nap and whining, and I already had to call and cancel my son's haircut appointment because this was taking longer than I expected. Finally, the account is ready! Time to go!
As I'm getting up to leave Jane says, "One more thing before you go. Do you mind if I fill out this form and send it into the company that sells the credit card accepting machine I told you about? I get credit for mentioning it." Are you kidding me??? You never even actually give me a brochure. "Sure" I say, "Thank you for your help."
