zambia

I was looking for something on my hard drive today, and found this. To be honest, I didn’t remember writing it, so I searched for it online. I didn’t find it, so I’ve come to the conclusion that I did indeed write it, just two years into my sixteen-year relationship with Stanbic Bank Zambia that I terminated (with extreme prejudice) at the end of last month. I was probably saving it for the blog/website that I plan to set up where I will document my sixteen years of torment.

Anyway, enjoy. It even made me chuckle fourteen years after I wrote it.

The Joy of Bank (or Getting Banked from Behind)

By, I.M. Banked, 31 August 2010

The joys of banking (and, by corollary, being banked) are greatly underrated by the general public. I personally experience the joys of being banked by Stanbic on a regular basis. It’s a match made in heaven, because clearly Stanbic enjoys banking me. We often spend hours engaging in phone bank when the banking I usually get via the Internet has gone soft. But sometimes we get together in person, and it doesn’t take an overactive imagination to figure out what position I, as the submissive customer, am required to assume by my banking master.

While I do enjoying the banking I get from Stanbic, I often find myself wondering if I could get banked by another institution. Well, I know I could (bankers have a certain reputation), but will the bank be better? Will the banker whisper sweet nothings in my balance before banking me? One of the things I enjoy most in my relationship with Stanbic is the unpredictability of the withdrawal — will it be an early withdrawal, or will it be late? If things become too predictable, I worry that I’ll become bored with having my monthly banking on the same date and in the same quantity each month. Sometimes I just love the excitement of finding that I’ve been banked earlier in the month than usual, leaving me with not enough to give my other bankers.

Something else I particularly enjoy is being passed from banker to banker, while they laugh and promise me that the next banker will give me the banking that I’m really looking for. I must admit; sometimes I get my hopes up, thinking that the next banker will have a bigger tool with which he (or she) might quench my thirst for customer satisfaction. But while I do so enjoy this particular fetish, I am often disappointed, finding that the next banker’s resolve isn’t as stiff as it had appeared at first. Sometimes though the resolve is certainly quite rigid and inflexible — priapic even — but in those cases the banker turns to his own onanistic needs and I am left wanting yet again.

Back in January I confided in one of my bankers that some of his friends — other bankers — were violating me as I slept, making non-consensual (sometimes simultaneous) transactions. In the nine months since, many promises have been made by my banker that these unwanted acts of bank would be dealt with, but the unsolicited banking I’m receiving continues unabated. Sometimes I despair, telling myself that this is the kind of banking over that we must expect in Africa; yet I hold desperately to the words of my banker: “[W]e take pride in being part of a large banking group rooted in Africa but reaching out to all corners of the world.” [To all you Australians, I urge you not to think of the word “rooted” in the same way most of you already are!] I yearn for the day when a more considerate banker in another corner of our round world might teach my banker how to bank me more tenderly, more considerately, and with due regard to my bottom line. These considerate bankers realise that communication is paramount, and my needs are important too.

If you too like to be banked, I’m happy to tell you that my relationship with Stanbic is not monogamous. While I engage in bank with only a few bankers, Stanbic are quite happy to bank anyone willing to walk through their doors with a reference letter and the appropriate stack of documentation. Come on down and join the party. We can all be banked together!

I think I may have had an obvious point in the “nine months” to which I referred, but I clearly didn’t carry on with it and I don’t remember what it may have been now. And despite the 2010 date on it, I can enthusiastically report that Stanbic are completely and totally banking their customers to this day in 2024! This is why I have dumped their sorry arses; I wasn’t happy with being banked any more.