Gilded Age Banking Etiquette

It would seem that most of the members of the large business concerns of our proud city understand to a degree the term “bank etiquette,” as though they had basked in its element a long time and had been taught from childhood to understand its legitimate meaning.

ETIQUETTE AT THE BANKS

Boston People Make the Life of the Teller an Easy One

It would seem that most of the members of the large business concerns of our proud city understand to a degree the term “bank etiquette,” as though they had basked in its element a long time and had been taught from childhood to understand its legitimate meaning. They arrange their deposits with a method the most satisfactory imaginable to the bank clerk, a delight to behold. This regularity, while it distinctly shows the training of a thorough business man, is attended with little or no effort on their part, but it means to the bank clerks the saving of an infinite amount of hard, trying labor. 

This method consists of placing all the bills, clean or ragged, of the larger denominations together on the top of whatever size package they chose to make, keeping the $1 and $2 bills strictly to the bottom. Thus the clerk can, with little difficulty, make rapid headway through his arduous work, for he knows what he is facing. These deposits are meat to the eyes of the tellers on ordinary days, but more especially so on heavy days, when they have all they can do to finish up by 6 o'clock. It is interesting to note the marvelous rapidity with which an expert goes through the bills, counting, sorting, straightening and proving, all at the same time. 

You observe that oftentimes he abruptly throws out a certain bill across the desk, apart from the rest, with a “There!” most strongly emphasized, and immediately spurs up to resume his usual pace, not the least disconcerted. The uninitiated is struck mute by the sudden exclamation, starts nervously and stares blankly at the man whom he supposes to have been bitten by an invisible scorpion or reptile. Closer scrutiny proves this particular bill to be a counterfeit, though it has taken the outsider fully fifteen minutes to distinguish between it and the genuine bill, much to the disgust of the expert, who, at a single glance, detected it, going as he was at the rate of a mile a minute, and discarded it as quickly as though it burned him. - Boston Transcript, 1896

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