It was 5:30 PM; I'd been working all day and had some extra cash that needed depositing. My first instinct was to head to the bank and take care of a few transactions, but this proved to be wrong. Upon arriving, I went up to the door and tried to open it and quickly discovered that it was locked. My first thought was that there had been a robbery and they had to close the bank because of it, a reasonable theory that turned out to be wrong. Glancing at the business hours, I discovered that they closed at five, way before anyone who had put in a hard day's work could find time to actually go to the bank without waiting until they had a day off, thus wasting valuable time that could be spent elsewhere.
My main point in complaining is that I felt like taking care of my transactions at a relatively free time in my schedule, I had just finished working for the day and would not have time the next day because I was needed elsewhere for even more important business. This is a question of customer service, wouldn't it be better to stay open during the time most people are done with their jobs than to close early and expect them to interact with a machine that is totally insensitive to their needs and might mishandle their accounts? If the bank actually tried working harder, they would subsequently gain extra business and profit from it.
The current strategy of the bank seems to be one focused on phasing out the actual tellers by gradually giving them less work to do because nobody actually needs them for anything, a theory advanced by the fact that there are weird holidays that only seem to be celebrated by banks, such as Columbus Day.
I doubt that I will have any further business with them other than closing my extremely low interest checking account and acting indignant about the whole situation.