Today I thought I’d pop into the bank nice and early, because I figured it wouldn’t be busy. There was only one lady waiting to be served, so I got in line behind her, figuring I’d be in and out within minutes. An elderly man entered the bank and queued behind me. Actually, he was queueing very close behind me. I could hear him breathing in my ear so I snuck a look at the ground and saw he was standing so close, his shoes were almost touching mine. Now, I like my personal bubble of space so I stealthily moved an inch forward.

He, of course, moved forward with me.

By this point, I was so focused on the man piggy-backing me that I had not realised that we had actually been queueing now for 10 minutes. It seems that the bank also figured it would be quiet at this time in the morning, so decided to only put on two employees. As if this wasn’t bad enough, the new layout of the bank means that those employees not only do transactions, but also do everything else you’d visit a bank for. Things that often take a long time to do, which means that people like me, who would literally take minutes at the desk, are forced to wait in queues for a long time too, while people hog the desk asking long and difficult questions about credit ratings, home loans and mortgages.

The doors slid open and a young woman walked in. She started a new queue to the left of us and obviously appeared to be in prime position to be called next because, well, the woman in front of me nearly had a heart attack. She spun around and glared at the woman, eyes furious and growled, “There’s a queue here, you know!”

The woman simply pointed to the sign she was queueing behind. “This is business banking, you’re in the personal banking. It’s a different queue.”

That made total sense actually, but I figure the woman in front of me had been queueing for a lot longer than I had, and thought that she should be next, regardless of whether she’s here for business or personal reasons, since she nearly went ape. She was standing there shaking her head, tapping her foot, her mouth opening and shutting like she wanted to scream obscenities. It was rather mesmirising, like watching a bomb, not sure if it’ll go off or not, and if it does go off, you don’t know what sort of BOOM it’ll make. We were now fifteen minutes into the queue and I must admit, even I was starting to get a little impatient. My legs were sore, since I’d been at work since 4am and I was a bit annoyed that my plan to duck in and out of a bank (YEAH RIGHT, LIKE THAT’S AT ALL POSSIBLE!!) had very quickly (very slowly??) gone up in smoke.

The man behind me was still breathing in my ear and had now added the frustrating sound of packaging paper crinkling to his symphony, which was then followed by wet, lip-smacking noises. I figured he had started sucking a lolly. It reminded me of that episode of Family Guy where Mayor Adam West is enjoying a taffy, whatever the heck a taffy is. All I can figure is it’s some sort of lolly and it takes a long time to chew it down.  Normally, eating noises wouldn’t bother people, but the noise of saliva squelching around in someone’s mouth just makes me want to strangle them.

I started concentrating on the second-hand on the clock on the wall.

I was just trying to figure out if what I needed to do could be done through an ATM or the internet or the phone (nope, I needed to speak in person with a teller), when finally another employee came in, sat at a vacant desk and called the woman in front of me over. HOORAY. Less than three minutes later, she was done and it was my turn. I did what I came to do and left quickly, tossing a sympathetic smile to the last person standing in the queue, which was now more than ten people long.

It seems that 9 o’clock in the morning is the new lunchtime rush.