I don’t like my personal information stated loudly when I’m standing in line. It comes from working as a desk clerk and a night auditor. Actually, it comes from one night in specific, when I accidentally said a guest’s room number out loud. She looked at me as if I’d just given every weird guy in line a key to her room and said, “Thanks for the discretion.”

Then I looked around at the other guests in line with her and suddenly they all looked creepy.

Since then I try to be on the cautious tip when I’m dealing with hotels and banks. When I’m depositing or withdrawing money, I don’t like everybody in line to see my pin number and then hear my account balance. I hate when tellers loudly count back the bills. Someone could just follow me outside, knock me over the head and then use my ATM card to withdraw my exact balance.

But I’m dealing with Bank of America, the bank so bad that I once saw a carving on a BofA ATM that read: “Fuck BofA.” If it’s so bad that while people are waiting for their cash to spit out of a machine they need to carve graffiti? Your bank has some problems.

I handed the check over to the teller and said, “Half in checking, half in savings.” I swiped my card and punched in the code. The teller stood there, holding the check.

“How much in checking?” he asked.

“Half of that,” I said. “I didn’t make the deposit slips because I don’t have my savings account number on me, but you have access to both accounts right there, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” he said, staring at the check. “How much do you want in savings then?”

“Half.”

“Half of this?”

“Yes.”

“Then how much would you want in checking?”

It started to seem like a trick question. Maybe the check was an odd amount and I hadn’t noticed. I looked at the check again. Nope. Even numbers. Here is where I actually said, “You would take that amount and divide it by two.”

He tried to pretend he was doing something computer-y, but it was clear he had pulled up the computer’s calculator function. Now people were looking because what kind of check required a calculator to divide the amount in two?

I looked at the check in his hand and whispered the amount. “That’s what you put in checking and how much you put in savings,” I said.

He smiled at me and gave a relieved sigh. “That’s what I got, too!” he boasted.

“Yay!”

I don’t ask much from my tellers, but being able to divide by two? Shouldn’t that be a question on the interview?