Weekly Blog: Automated banking
By Omordia Efe – In the past, Banking activities were conducted in a rudimentary manner but thanks to technology, things have improved. Customers no longer have to take numbers or wait endlessly on queues to be called in to collect money. The computers make everything much faster and less complicated and besides, a walk by any customer to any Automated Teller Machine (ATM) does the trick. In less than five minutes, financial transactions are done. Over the years, however, bankers in Nigeria are still being poorly treated. Though, their employers have automated the machines, they unfortunately have additionally succeeded in turning the average banker to an automated machine who performs his/her functions in a life-less manner. This is because banking hours end long after the last customer has gone home. The unfortunate banker who is clinging on to the job mainly because of the attractive pay package and unnecessary demands from family and friends is made to work like a slave. By the time he/she goes home he/she is functioning on ‘automated pilot’ and responds to any enquiry with a nod as if in understanding while staring into space in an undefined and unnatural trance. Most weekends are spent attending one compulsory course or the other that has little or no bearing to the job description or function of the unfortunate banker. For many of the afore-mentioned, it takes years before they realize that they are no longer human beings that somewhere along the line they have been transformed to robots programmed to exist on the whims and caprices of their employers.
