I have stayed with it for almost twenty years, tolerating neglect and abuse. Naturally I am talking about the bank. I have had an account with NatWest (a.k.a. Nationalized Westminster Bank) and over the years, workers at the local branch have tested my (not so great) patience to its uttermost limit. Different queues for different things: a long queue at the information desk, no queue at the cashiers where three employees apparently are having jolly good hilarity, when customers are fuming. What is this thing in my statement? Eh ... Cannot tell you, you need to call this number. What’s the point of physical branches? Eh ... Bank taketh and taketh more. The tellers seem to be drawn from the same pool of surly teenagers but rejected by the likes of Dixons (oops, is it Currysdigital now?) The larger branches in city centres tend to have better trained staff, so I do my bank stuff when I’m in central London, rather than (trying to) sort things out at the local branch, where the branch manager, in his tired and shabby attire, smokes incessantly outside the building. If the “services” they provide are any indications of how banks manage, then it is no surprise that NatWest was bought by another bank, RBS (a.k.a. Royally Bankrupt Sod), which has now been nationalized.
