How to Sail Through Line at the Bank

If you’re looking to expedite your time at the bank, frame your future requests in such a way that the tellers think you’re a psychopath. Their barely-concealed fear that you’ll go nuts will compel them to prioritize you above coffee breaks and other customers.

Now, before you go rushing off to the nearest vault with your ski mask and a Nerf gun, note that this technique calls for panache. Fortunately I have already pioneered the method.

When I attended college my bank only had three ATM locations throughout town. You could use ATM’s from other banks if you wanted to, however they charged a fee and sometimes slipped in Monopoly money. A lot of places didn’t charge anything, but you had to throw a brick through their window and run away really fast.

On one occasion I visited my bank only to find that the ATM machine was broken. I had to resort to using a foreign machine, which charged me $3.00.

The following day I showed up at my bank to request that they refund the $3.00. This is the first step which indicated that I might be crazy. Why would anyone waste precious, precious gasoline to obtain a $3.00 refund? For the forty minutes that trip took, I could have just as easily earned $10 dancing for money on a street corner. Better yet, I could have forgotten about it entirely and watched another episode of Newsradio.

When I asked for my $3.00 refund they looked at me quizzically. When I insisted on it, the branch manager had to come over to personally sign the check for $3.00. Afterwards he asked me if I wanted anything else.

This was the crucial moment. If I had said, “No, we’re done here,” I would have merely been the annoying guy who made everyone waste their time on a $3.00 refund. But I didn’t stop there.

As you know, $2 bills are rare in the United States. Generally the Bureau of Printing & Engraving only hands over fresh $2 bills to grandparents so that they can use them as gifts. The rest are kept in a giant vault controlled by the Fed, which constantly taunts Ron Paul by leaving the door open and then slamming it shut whenever he walks by.

Most people only stumble upon one $2 bill per decade. But not me. I had my bank call up the regional office and put in a monthly request for “several buckets” of $2 bills. (Note: a “bucket” is a standard unit of measurement in banking lingo. The next biggest unit is a “briefcase of unmarked bills,” followed by “a whole trashcan full of money.” Using any of these terms will help increase your bank’s sentiments that you’re deranged.)

Of course this only made me more charmingly eccentric and interesting than I already was. When I took girls out on dates, they were enthralled when I paid for my half of the tab in such unique denominations. Or when I always tipped a single $2 bill, no matter how expensive the tab was. Or when I paid my friends back by folding up dozens of $2 bills into tiny paper airplanes.

But the main thing was that, whenever I visited my bank, the tellers immediately beckoned me to the front of the line. Because all of them thought I was insane.

A little bit of crazy greases the wheel. It works for Greece and it can work for you.