Is this a war on cash or a war on privacy? Or both?

[ultrarunner]

Credit Union was through my Great Grandfather's employment long before I was born...

I had tried unsuccessfully to join USAA through Dad's service but was denied after submitting his discharge papers from WWII... the window to join had closed.

A local credit union that was open to all required 10 debit card transactions per month to be in good standing... after 3 months I found it was not working for me... some charges were with held and didn't post when expected... Credit Union told me to break up my Gasoline Purchases... simple enough but when I tried to fill my 34 gallon tank with 3 card swipes my card would always get frozen...

Sometimes I think there has to be a problem with my Credit Union because it has been so good... about 20 years and always there for me...

Remember when the banks were always looking for New Money and offered rates off the books to attract it.

One of my business friends had just sold business property and had about 500,000 he needed to put somewhere back in the 1980's... the VP of the entire 40 branch Savings and Loan made him an offer too good to refuse...

As a kid... I remember going to the Bank of America with career employees... still remember the branch president and vp... they were always well dressed... friendly and no nonsense... there was real decision power at that level.

Now, the entire state has changed... everything is through Plexiglas windows... branch managers come and go... tellers that have been there for 2 years are old timers...

As to Wells... I once had a check to cash... it was for an apartment move in... so I ended up opening an account with that check just to make sure it was good...

Wells kept buying the banks I would move to and it happened several times...

A classic Wells story is a depositor got a small judgement against Wells and could not collect... so he goes to the Sheriff seeking seizure... the Sheriff shows up in the lobby to attach the Wells Fargo State Coach... bankers came up with their own money to pay off the judgement because no one had authority to use bank funds... LOVE IT

 

[two_bit_score]

I have only read 4 pages of comments but I have a possible reason as well. Perhaps the banks are wanting to do away with cash and employees and do everything electronically? I still like to pay for small items out of pocket with cash. Until recently, I would go the bank once a week or so and write a check for cash. Once while there the head teller asked me why I did not use an ATM card? Said "I could get cash outside from inside my car." I replied that if everyone did that there would not be a need for her position. She looked puzzled for a moment and then said she never thought about it that way. One day several years later I stopped in and that branch had closed. The sign said the ATM was still available though!

Same thing is happening at retail store with self checkout. Walmart or home depot just about forces you to do your own checkout or you wait in a long line. McDonald's wants order and pay at their new Kiosks. Again, I prefer to pay with cash for small items like fast food. They once had a person try to persuade me to use the Kiosk. I told her I already had eggs, bacon, sausage, etc. in the fridge at home and could make my own breakfast but did not want to. The same goes for ordering my food.

:laughing::laughing::laughing:

The teller was humoring you. While there are a lot of different articles explaining the relationship between tellers and ATM's this one seems to me to be spot on: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

>>>>>>>>What happened? Well, the average bank branch in an urban area required about 21 tellers. That was cut because of the ATM machine to about 13 tellers. But that meant it was cheaper to operate a branch. Well, banks wanted, in part because of deregulation but just for deregulation but just for basic marketing reasons, to increase the number of branch offices. And when it became cheaper to do so, demand for branch offices increased. And as a result, demand for bank tellers increased. And it increased enough to offset the labor-saving losses of jobs that would have otherwise occurred. So, again, it was one of these more dynamic things where the labor-saving technology actually created more jobs.<<<<<<



The reason the branch was closed when you went by later probably had more to do with changing demographics in that market or just a management decision from the Bank's owners instead of the lack of need for tellers overall.

Every bank I am close to is expanding locations so fast it makes me worry more about over satuartion and expenses. They sure aren't putting tellers out of work.


TBS

 

[MossRoad]

And automation is more reliable and consistent meaning quality is better overall.

Yes it is. Anytime a human touches something, there's the chance for an error in reproduction of process.

 

[Diggin It]

A lot of it is labor costs. Many times, labor is the biggest expense at a company. All companies seek to automate as much as possible and eliminate as much human labor as possible. It makes good business sense.

And automation is more reliable and consistent meaning quality is better overall.

To err is Human.

To really foul things up requires a computer.


----

People program computers. Programmers cost more than tellers. More computers require more programmers to code the programming, updates and security protocols and technicians to maintain the machines and network, plus additional communications costs. More remote machines mean more vehicle and transportation costs for those technicians.

They could end up paying more than having staffed branches.

Also remember that a lot of those programmers are offshore, as are the call centers for technical and customer support.

I had a reason to switch to an internet only bank quite a few years ago, but I'm seriously considering going back to one with local branches.

 

[MossRoad]

To err is Human.

To really foul things up requires a computer.


----

People program computers. Programmers cost more than tellers. More computers require more programmers to code the programming, updates and security protocols and technicians to maintain the machines and network, plus additional communications costs. More remote machines mean more vehicle and transportation costs for those technicians.

They could end up paying more than having staffed branches.

Also remember that a lot of those programmers are offshore, as are the call centers for technical and customer support.

I had a reason to switch to an internet only bank quite a few years ago, but I'm seriously considering going back to one with local branches.

Absolutely incorrect... having worked in I.T., I spent nearly 30 years automating hundreds of tasks that used to require humans. All those jobs, including my own, are now gone and never coming back. We got pretty $%^! good at it!

 

[Oldoak]

I spent nearly 30 years automating hundreds of tasks that used to require humans. All those jobs, including my own, are now gone and never coming back. We got pretty $%^! good at it!

Absolutely!

And with each recession corporations have leaned "to do more with less" and they continue to adopt more ways of doing so.
I believe that is going to severely hurt the employment picture in the future with the population of our country growing so fast. Never mind not enough "good jobs to go around", there won't be enough of any jobs to go around.

 

[MossRoad]

At one point, I had about 50 "robot" boxes and 50 servers. The "robot" boxes were PCs that I programmed to do a specific task. It was a task that a person was doing daily, by hand. I used a combination of programs that captured keystrokes and mouse clicks, and recorded them. Then we'd run the recording and it would repeat the task. Then you had to tweak if for variables that didn't happen frequently. Once I went through two or three complete business cycles, the program would be 100% accurate. Then you just had to troubleshoot when the odd thing would come up, like 3 day weekends, daylight savings time, someone goes on vacation and doesn't furnish the data that we're looking for, etc....

The "robot" box PC's cost about $450 one time. So, for less than $25,000 in hardware we eliminated 50 tasks that humans used to do. At the time, all of the jobs that were lost were done though attrition, like people quitting or retiring. However, towards the end, we had several rounds of layoffs. As a business owner, you just can't justify paying people for 8 hours work when they're only working 2 or 3 hours. It just doesn't work.

The "robot" box PCs maintained themselves. They'd report pass/fail to log files. High priority e-mails were sent on failures. Normal e-mails were sent on pass. And everything was logged as well and the log files would gets checked by a human for pass/fail. So we had one person that would only spend about 2 hours a day checking the work of what used to be 50 people working 8 hours per day.

We also went from 10 people in I.T. down to 3 people in I.T., even though we had more computers than when we had people. That was due to virtualization. Those 50 servers I mentioned were virtualized, so that went from 50 physical boxes down to about 4 physical boxes. Add high availability automatic failover in muliple locations around the country, and, well, there was zero downtime if a server or hard drive failed. Zero downtime. Then we virtualized many of those robot boxes as well.

So, we eliminated people, we eliminated hardware, and that was that. Today, that company that had 500 people working in the building when I sarted in 1987 now has about 60 people. There were 125 people there a year ago, but all production was outsourced, and 65 of us got let go. I saw my I.T. job phasing out 4 years ago and jumped ship to a maintenance position that I worked for the last 3 years, but that was eliminated in the outsourcing.

I can't blame them, because their production machinery was only running for 4-5 hours out of every 24 hour day.

You can't run a business like that, and that's that...

 

[MossRoad]

As to what are people going to do for employment in the future?

:confused3:

Yes, there will be good paying jobs in tech support. But eventually the machines will be able to diagnose and repair themselves. It's only gonna get worse, as far as available good paying jobs for the population goes. Health care and not for profits are gonna be the big employers in 10 years.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

My company cant find enough mechanical and RF engineers. Also programmers....

 

[MossRoad]

Tell them to contact the jobs placement folks at Purdue University. They have plenty of engineers coming out every year. I know many that have jobs lined up after college and they still have two years left to go. They get in with companies for summer internships, and get offered jobs. They'll work at those companies on breaks and in summer, then start there shortly after graduation.

However, it's just a fact that not many people are cut out to be engineers.

Programmers for what? Just interested in the subject, not a job for myself. I.T. bored the $%^& out of me towards the end and I was glad to get back into a hands-on job turning wrenches and getting my hands caught in moving machinery! :laughing: