Banks. Boo. Everyone hates them, right? And hates the people who work there. Bankers, the lot of them, with a “W”. Which is possibly a little unfair on the staff of the average high-street branch. NatWest in Huddersfield, say, the subject of this revealing and surprisingly entertaining three-part doc, The Bank: A Matter of Life and Debt (BBC2).
The way to win back our hearts (because before the crash of 2008 we used to love banks, remember?) is customer service. Acting manager Claire, 28, has an ace idea: she’s going to borrow a bit of magic from another well-known brand. She gathers the troops on a Wednesday morning. “Who’s heard of Walt Disney?” she wants to know. (There’s more than a hint of a primary-school teacher about Claire).
They have all heard of Walt Disney, which is not entirely surprising. Mel took her son Jack to Disney (World, Land, something) for his eighth birthday, and it was fantastic. It still puts a smile on Mel’s face now, and Jack is 22.
“Let’s talk about that,” says Claire. (See what I mean about the teacher thing?) It just so happens that there are seven of her workforce in the meeting. Hey, they can all stand up and be ... the seven dwarves. (There are no actual dwarves among the staff, fortunately; that would have made it awkward.) I guess it makes Claire Snow White. “We need to be the seven dwarves all the time. I absolutely think that if we can turn into the seven dwarves that will, in turn, lead us to success.”
What, so maybe Sleazy, and Cashful? No! That’s exactly what they’re trying to get away from. And they are maybe not as cashful as you might imagine. How much do you think that Claire – who manages this busy city-centre branch, with 30 staff, £200,000 of daily transactions, 34,000 customers (or “guests” as she calls them, I’m afraid) – earns? “How much do you think I earn?” she asks the man behind the camera.
“Fifty thousand?” he suggests.
“Are you joking?”
“Forty?” (That’s what I would have said.)
In fact it’s “a bit above 20”. Hardly Fred the Shred, is it? More Claire the Tear. She’d actually be better off if she was a primary-school teacher, with the added bonus that people would love her, instead of hating her. Not that she’s complaining about the money. “I think if I want to get paid more, I need to earn it and I need to work my way up.”
Claire’s amazing, actually. Yeah, so, a little bit annoying and patronising with her team talks and motivational claptrap. But her staff don’t seem to mind, nor the customers – the all-important service score creeps slowly towards the magic 60%. I’d put her in charge of RBS, quick, restore the faith and bring the love back to banking (remember?).
In the meantime, I’ve got a little Jack of my own, and on his next birthday, for an experience we’re all going to remember for a very, very long time, we’re going to go to ... NatWest Huddersfield branch! Hi ho, hi ho ...
Linktastically, groansomely, from not so fat cats in not so high places to this Natural World film, Mountain Lions: Big Cats in High Places (BBC2). Also known as cougars, of course, though the behaviour of the two female leads here – known poetically as F51 and F61 – hardly justifies the reputation. It seems to be a lot more about simply surviving than seeking out sexual gratification with younger males.
That – surviving – isn’t so easy in this part of the Wyoming Rocky Mountains, and cougar numbers are falling by a worrying amount round here. The biggest threat to adults comes not from the harsh conditions, the scarcity of food in the winter, deadly porcupine quills or other four-legged predators, but from two-legged ones, inevitably.
Narrator Sir David A (so it must be right) says studies show “that the only realistic way to stabilise mountain lion numbers is by dramatically reducing the amount of hunting”.
Yes, hunting, though I think I’d call it gun crime. You can buy a permit, and shoot one of these beautiful creatures for fun. And it doesn’t make any difference if it’s wearing a GPS collar and is clearly part of a scientific study – that offers no protection, fair game, bang bang! Isn’t that the saddest, stupidest thing? Bloody idiots.
