things I learned from working at a bank

I used to work at a bank.  I started when I was in high school and worked there for about 5 years.

Once, my coworker and I were working the drive thru until closing.  We were the only people in the entire bank. 

The way it worked was, we had a little tiny vault down in the drive thru.  Kind of like a vault for midgets.  I mean, little people. (It was pretty small.  I'm not sure if I could have fit inside of it, and I was skinny at the time.)

Anyway, when everyone else left, they put all of the money in the "big vault".  Except they left a little money for us in the little vault in case we needed it.  When closing time came, we were supposed to put all of our money in, set the timer, close the door and turn the handle.  In that order.

By the way, let me just say here that I'm pretty sure we were both in high school or right out of high school at the time.  What bank lets two 18 year olds have full access to an entire bank?  I'm just sayin'.

We put all of our money in, set the timer, turned the handle, and closed the door.  Not the right order.

Turns out, the "little vault" was also the stupid vault that locks itself open and you can't shut it so all of the money is there for the cleaning people to take vault.

Once the timer is set, it's done - no room for errors here.  The bars on the door were sticking out and would not allow the door to close. 

What did we do?

We pulled the blind down over the big window and cried.

We thought for sure we were going to get fired.

I can't remember how many people we called, but we finally got someone higher up within the bank than we were who came and rescued us.

He will remain unnamed and how he fixed it, I'll never know.  But he saved us with a screwdriver and a little common sense, neither of which we had at the time.

After that, we always made sure we locked up the vault the right way.  And we didn't get fired.  I don't even think we got in trouble.  

The moral of the story?  Common sense and a screwdriver can fix many things, but doing something right the first time takes less time and less tears.