Sunday is a always a crushingly busy day, especially when the old people return to town. They're back to the part of Florida where I live and they love them some Wal-Mart. So they just add to the general air of fun at the service desk, demanding motorized wheelchairs, returning trinkets or cashing in "forgotten" coupons.
As soon as I got in, they took the other girl and threw her on a register, so I got all the fun to myself for like five hours. In the middle of all this, some man comes up and wants to do three money orders for a thousand dollars each. I heard this and inside I just groaned.
Three thousand dollars is what triggers our Patriot Act threshold, which was put in place after 9/11. We have to do special paperwork on all money transactions of $3,000 and over to make sure you're not sending money to terrorists. It takes at least ten minutes, which I don't have while I've already got eight people standing in line looking bullets at me.
I call for help and get started.
And we have to take down personal information. Like their social security number and occupation and everything. It gets typed into the MoneyGram computer which runs the Drivers License against the state DL database, and I have to type it into the register as well. And I have to fill out TWO sets of papers for our files. It takes me ten minutes, while the person working next to me does at least ten customers.
And to make it worse, the man paid for three one-thousand-dollar money orders in ones, fives, tens and twenties. I got a cramp in my hand counting all that cash. He just kept pulling more and more bills out of the fanny pack and my eyes just got wider and wider and wider. He had a nearly two hundred singles and almost $200 in fives. I was just agog. I thought the woman behind him was going to fall off her buggy she was so shocked to see so much money on the counter.
At least he didn't list his occupation as porn star!
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2 comments:
I'm kinda surprised, as we had a relatively slow Sunday what with the World Series in full swing, if you'll pardon the pun. They let a few of us go home before 10:30, even. It just wasn't that crowded. But then, I don't work service desk, so perhaps I'd have a slightly different perspective on things otherwise.
What is it with old folks? Don't they trust a bank? Sounds like this guy just kept loose bills stuffed in matresses and cookie jars.
Honestly, why would anyone want to carry around such a wad of cash? It truly boggles the mind. Unless you're a clubber or drug dealer who needs to pull out a rack of bills to "impress" people, Go to an effing bank for krissakes and get large bills.
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