Holy Bureaucracy Batman! (Part 2: The Bank)

The saga continues....Yes, making a $300 deposit in a bank account is worthy of a blog post all by itself. It should be a simple and straightforward task. But not in Tanzania. For starters, I only have US$ 250 in cash and a $50 traverlers check. I go to the National Commerce Bank (NBC) branch in a nearby mall to make the deposit. I stand in a massive line for some ridiculous amount of time. No sorry we don’t take travelers checks and the ATMs have been down for 2 days so I can’t pull out any more Tanzanian shillings to convert into dollars. So I tell him just to deposit the $250 and I hope that COSTECH will accept the travelers check. One of my hundred dollar bills has a tiny tear in it (like someone stuck a tack through it at some point. The teller looks at the bill, looks at me and shakes his head. He runs all the bills through some machine that confirms that they are in fact U.S. currency and then tells me that he can’t accept the bill. I don’t even bother to argue. I take my money and leave. The next morning, I take a tiny piece of tape and tape the tiny tear back together, Cathryn lends me enough shillings to buy $50 and we go to different branch of NBC. I go to the teller line while Cathryn goes to customer service to deal with some issue she’s having with her account there. I get to the teller and I can’t hear a word she’s saying through the inch thick glass because they are blaring ABBA out of the speakers in the bank lobby. I tell her I can’t hear her because of the music and she just keeps talking in the same voice. So I proceed to tell her that I need to first buy fifty dollars and then deposit $300 into this account. She responds but I can’t hear her. I continue to tell her I can’t hear her until the teller next to her gets up and walks over turns done the music just enough so that if I strain I can hear the woman tell me that what I want to do is impossible. That’s right. Exchanging currency and making a deposit. Two very basic bank functions that are for some reason impossible. I go to customer service where I find Cathryn saying to the women there, “Do you know what NBC stands for? It stands for No Body Cares.” The response was a very literal, “No madame that’s not what it stands for. It stands for National Bank of Commerce.” I can see I’m in for it already. My attempts at attaining customer service were no better than Cathryn’s. However, I did learn that the music is blaring in celebration of customer appreciation week. Oh the irony. Moving on to the manager’s office, the first thing out of his mouth is they can’t help me because I don’t have an account there. Cathryn responds, “Well I do, at least for now but I’m going to close it because the service here is so bad.” At this, the manager says he’s got to go figure out what the exchange rate is (at the branch I was at yesterday they had it posted on the wall so I know I’m not making a completely off the wall request here). While the manager is doing that, one of the customer service women comes in and asks me why I didn’t just go to an exchange bureau somewhere and exchange the money before I came to the bank. Ummmmm…maybe because this is the bank and banks exchange currency! She leaves. The manager comes back with a print out with a horrible exchange rate. I think about arguing but really what’s the point. He tells me how much in shillings it will be for US$50 and sends me back to the teller line. I rejoin the disco party in the bank lobby and wait my turn. I’m lucky enough to get the same teller as last time. The manager brings her the exchange rate print out. I give her my shillings. While she does her thing, I fill out the deposit form which is three sheets with carbon paper slide in between and requires a ridiculous amount of my personal information. Then comes time to hand over the dollars. I slipped the torn and taped hundred in the middle of the other bills and crossed my fingers. She scanned them through her little machine. Tore off the bottom carbon copy, stamped, signed and dated it and hand it back to me. Mission accomplished. Sweet Success!