Needed cash

pointed the same way

It was a Sunday night. My wife needed cash for her hairdresser appointment early Monday morning. Either her bank doesn’t have an ATM, or she never bothered to get a card; I suspect the latter.

Conversely, I use the ATM of my bank, two blocks away, all of the time. As I’ve mentioned, during the pandemic, my bank figured out that its machines could be programmed to dispense not only $20s, which it did forever but also $10s and $5s. They must have decided that the investment in tweaking their money dispensers was better than having customers coming into the bank to break a $20.

My wife said, “I need two $5s, three $10s…” Wait a minute.. she’s giving it to me from the bottom up, not the top down? This confused me! To be fair to me, she said she would give me a check for $150 to deposit, and she’s already asked me for $40 back so far. No, she decided she only needed $100 in cash, so three $20s. Got it. Still, the ATM asks from the top denomination down, and my mind wants to do the same.

One useful thing

When I first moved to the Albany/Schenectady, NY, area, the first job I got was as a teller at the Albany Savings Bank in downtown Albany. I didn’t love it, and I quit in a month to take a job as a bookkeeper for the Schenectady Arts Council’s program. Not only was I making more money – $8200 instead of $6000 per year, but the latter job was far more interesting.

Still, there was one thing I learned at the bank. All the bills in the drawer should be in value order, from left to right. And the bills should all be face up and pointed the same way.

As the person who most often counted the drawer and made the bank deposits at FantaCo, the Albany comic book store I worked at from 1980 to 1988, I tried to enforce that one thing. It was easier to impose this on people who started at the store after me than those who started before, let’s just say.

Carrying cash

When I buy things at most chain stores or restaurants, I usually use my DISCOVER card for the cashback bonus. For small mom-and-pop operations, though, I prefer giving them cash because it helps with their profit margins. But the amount matters, too, because I rarely have more than $100 in cash on me.

I remember what I owe

Albany Savings Bank

Best f TrafficWhen Albany Savings Bank became a public company named Albank in the early 1990s, I was working in a temp job processing these huge checks of companies wanting to buy the stock.

Separately, as a customer of ASB since 1978, I was allowed to purchase said stock, actually in a favored position versus the raw investor. They couldn’t necessarily buy all of the $1.3 million – the ceiling – they wanted.

(If I were totally unethical, I would have reached out to some of those companies with the large wallets and say, “Hey, I have a better status as an existing ASB customer…” I’m sure the Securities and Exchange Commission would want to know how a temp worker could come up with that kind of money.)

As it was, my then-wife and I didn’t even have the $250 minimum purchase price. So I went in with two of my co-workers and bought the stock. And I would get periodic dividends until Albank got bought by Charter One, which then got purchased by Citizens Bank.

One of my fellow investors was named Mona, and I even had her address for a time. But my attempts to reach her failed. And now I don’t even remember her last name except it began with a U. I figure I must owe her, and the other person, whose name I don’t remember at all, a few hundred dollars each.

Books and music

Many years ago, obviously, I borrowed an LP called Best of Traffic from someone at a party on Washington Avenue in Albany. You know the band with Steve Winwood and Dave Mason. I’ve lost track of who I borrowed it from, although I’m pretty sure it was a female. But I still have the album, and I’d give it back if I could remember and find the person.

There are a couple of books on my shelves I borrowed. One must have been at least seven years ago. The other was from 2018 or so. I have started both but have finished neither. One is comics-related and the other one concerns the law. I will get them back to you folks next time I see you, which, given the pandemic, won’t likely be until NEXT year.

These are the things I remember at 2 a.m.

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