You find a discarded item of old clothing on a bus. Do you a) leave it well alone for fear of catching something from it; b) hand it to the driver to place in the company’s lost property, allowing the owner to reclaim it via all the usual channels; c) pick it up yourself and then trawl social media hunting for the owner before finally tracking them down and, more than a little creepily, hand-delivering it to them at their house?
To recap, then. Dad goes to sea. Son knits dad a scarf to take with him. Fast-forward 25 years and Dad (now laughably greyed up) returns scarf to his son, who cherishes it so much he leaves it on a bus. As luck would have it, a do-gooder Nationwide employee spots said scarf and, through the magic of the world wide web, manages to hunt down the dozy sod, and – get this! – turns up at his property to return it to him.
In an age of automated banking, are we really expected to believe that any employee, of any bank anywhere, would not only leave the comfort of their counter stool but track down an individual just so they can personally hand deliver a tatty old bit of knitwear they had happened to find on public transport? Besides, just consider the consequences of that employee’s reckless actions. That’s one staff member out of that branch, which means additional pressure on the others working there. Extra pressure, inevitably, means more mistakes being made. And more mistakes means more misery for the masses. We might as well move to Greece. You don’t need scarves there.
