No more banking on Saturdays

Thursday, January 26, 2006

This morning's headlines was to declare a "Five-day week for banks". The way I see it, bankers will be overjoyed and doing the Chicken Little dance to celebrate the news. But there are many people who're not happy with the decision because they no longer wake up early on a weekend, beat the jam, hunt for a parking and queue for a half hour to get their banking done.

On the radio this morning, callers were upset about how it's an inconvenience to them that bankers don't work on Saturdays. But there're all sorts of facilities that you can easily do without having to have a man/woman behind the counter:

1. You can transfer funds or do interbank transactions to pay your loans and credit card bills from your internet/desktop/mobile banking.

2. If you don't want to pay the interbank charges, fair enough. Just post a cheque.

3. If you need to bank in cash or cheques, there're those self-service terminals nowadays.

4. You can request the bank to post your cheque books to your home or office address and not go to the bank to collect.

On the other hand, your inconveniences would be:

1. Can't update your bank savings book but you get regular bank statements anyway.

2. If you need to withdraw more than the daily limit allowed on the ATM.

The National Union of Bank Employees made a statement to say that the non-working Saturdays is good for the bank employees to rest and go for holidays. The angry customers, however, think otherwise.

My personal take on this: Put yourself in the position of a banker and see how you feel having to work on Saturdays and having difficulty planning your holidays with your family because you need to serve everybody else. And, it comes with no extra pay or overtime.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

good for ya. it's always non efficient working on Sat. Enjoy ur weekend : )

Eternity said...

thanks! :D tmrw will be my final working saturday. yahoo!!!

Bkworm said...

I agree with you!The decision came two years too late for me. If I am still working, I too will be doing the chicken little dance to celebrate the news!

Nick said...

hurray, looks like Eternity's the happiest blogger on the blog/block ...

(now my cheques won't clear on Sats ;-<)

Eternity said...

bkworm, do the dance anyway, to celebrate for your former co-workers and current ones too! :)

nick, i am!!! :D it'll just take 1 extra day to wait for your cheques to clear... :P

Anonymous said...

no one says things like that for the media industry. hmm.. maybe TV stations should take a day a week off too. =P

Anonymous said...

So there's no weekends payroll there huh. Its different here of course. Most companies/organizations here would write you a paycheque for the hours you contributed, especially most on blue-collar workers. But yeah, even I wouldn't want to work on the weekends w/o pay. Because its not just that, I want to spend sometime with other people too.

Unless the bank has an online service, then there shouldn't be a problem, should there?

Eternity said...

midnite lily, true huh..i never thot of the media. oops. shall we pray for that One Fine Day? :)

jiro, no the bankers don't get paid for weekends because it is considered official business hours for those saturdays they have to clock in. that's how it is in this line...and there is internet banking!