Guichet voisin - Adventures in banking

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Hi, I'm Dana Whittle, American by birth, naturalized Canadian, Québécois at heart, and this is

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Pas d'accent, born when I began documenting my experiences as a musician, designer, writer,

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and bilingual immigrant here in Quebec.

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Produced by Vizou Media, is Pas d'accent is available on Apple, Google, Spotify, and your favorite

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podcast app.

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By the way, I love your accent.

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(theme music)

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In 1996, I moved from Vermont to Quebec, bringing my freelance design business along with me.

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My Quebecois husband and I opened an account at the village branch of the local bank,

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technically a cooperative, the one you'll find in nearly every Quebec village.

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Each branch, or succursale, functions as a kind of small, independent business

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with its own hours, policies, and quirks.

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At the time, the company's slogan translated to

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This is not a bank, in English,

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a statement that I came to agree with wholeheartedly.

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So we made an appointment.

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Despite the fact that our tiny town only has a population of about 1,200,

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it was a week before they could fit us in.

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On the day of, we arrived and were ushered into a small office.

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We sat down face-to-face with the bank representative.

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She was very friendly, and after closing the door behind us

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and arranging some papers on her desk,

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she proceeded to light up a cigarette and puff away,

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filling the room with an uninterrupted cloud of smoke

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as she carefully explained the bank's services.

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Eyes watering, trying not to cough for fear of appearing rude,

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we signed an endless pile of papers, grabbed our new checkbook,

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and exited quickly, desperate for a gulp of fresh air.

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The province of Quebec banned workplace and restaurant smoking in May of 2006,

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more than ten years after my former place of residence, Vermont,

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put one of the first statewide bans in the U.S. into effect.

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Yay, Vermont.

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Upon our arrival, I found it tough readapting to a smoking environment

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where people still regularly wanted to light up in my house.

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This put me in the awkward position of trying to maintain a humble newcomer status

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as I gently asked guests to please step outside to smoke.

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It took a few more years before they could also be convinced

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to deposit their cigarette butts into the old olive oil can provided for that purpose,

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rather than tossing them on the ground as a unique welcome mat.

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Shortly after the account was opened, I visited the bank to exchange some U.S. dollars for the more useful and colorful Canadian variety.

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I went during my daily lunch break, and so did half the town.

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For what seemed an eternity, I joined the long line of people who appeared stoically resigned to the wait.

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I had a lot of time to look around, and counted seven employees and four teller windows.

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Three of the windows sported what looked like small and grave name plaques that said guichet voisin.

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I was pondering this unusual name and the fact that there were three of them in the same bank branch,

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but I didn't find this entirely surprising in a place where it's common to find five pages of the local phone book

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devoted to the same first and last names.

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You pretty much need to know the phone number already in order to look it up here in Quebec.

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It finally dawned on me that the words on those plaques weren't names at all, but in fact said,

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next window. Except for the teller at the one open window, the other employees carefully avoided

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direct eye contact with the people waiting in line, now down to a dozen, a tactic that has

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been mastered and perfected by overworked waitresses worldwide. When I finally made it to the window,

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the fun really began. My French was far from perfect as I struggled to explain that I wanted

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to convert 100 U.S. dollars to Canadian currency.

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The bank teller looked confused.

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Whether by my accent or by the transaction, I wasn't sure.

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She left me at the window to consult another teller.

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I could hear them going back and forth

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about whether they were buying or selling

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and what formula to apply.

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Finally, they figured out what had to be done,

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to the relief of the nine people now behind me

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who awoke from their boredom

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to listen with obvious interest to the entire exchange.

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It was shortly after this visit that I would hear one employee whisper to another,

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C'est l'Anglaise.

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It's the English lady, upon my entering the bank.

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Like lots of people back in the day,

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we sometimes purchased American Express traveler's checks before heading off on a big trip.

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This was before everyone had a credit card,

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and even if you did have one,

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your credit card didn't always function properly in other countries.

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These handy checks could be used just like cash,

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and were accepted nearly everywhere.

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I had $100 worth left over from a trip to Scotland

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and had decided to cash it in.

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When my turn finally came, the teller was already looking nervous.

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I explained that I wanted to cash my traveler's checks.

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She looked at them.

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Then she looked at me.

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She left me at the window to speak with the bank manager.

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When she came back, she explained to me that I would have to deposit them

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and that they would be cleared in 30 days.

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Huh?

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I tried in my still-not-so-great French to explain that they were like cash.

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C'est du content, c'est accepté par tout.

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Désolé, madame, on peut pas faire ça.

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No, nope, not happening.

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I would have to wait until my next trip to Vermont.

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Merci.

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PayPal had begun to come into popularity as an online payment method.

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Canada barely even had a mail order industry,

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and people here weren't as credit card crazy as Americans.

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which resulted in there being a bit late to the game when it came to e-commerce.

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A lot of my website clients were still skeptical about online sales as a strategy.

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Accepting online payment terrified some of them,

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even though to this day most payment fraud still occurs at physical locations,

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like when you hand someone your card in a restaurant

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or use it in an unknown machine that has been tampered with.

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I was already selling CDs online

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and really wanted to get paid at the moment of purchase

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rather than dealing with checks,

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which took a long time to arrive by the mail,

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and were often in U.S. dollars,

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meaning they wouldn't clear my Canadian bank's U.S. dollar savings account for a month.

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Even Canadian checks would take a week or more.

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A family friend who at the time was president of one of Canada's largest banks

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assured me that no check in North America actually took longer than three days to clear.

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Sitting on a check was just a strategy for banks to earn interest off of those deposits.

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I followed PayPal's instructions for adding my bank account.

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It explained that once I'd provided all the necessary details,

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account number, transit number, etc.,

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PayPal would make two tiny deposits into that account,

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and I could check the account activity to see when they cleared.

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Then I would log back into PayPal to confirm the amounts of those two little deposits,

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a pretty clever proof of identity technique.

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If the amounts matched, it would mean that they had successfully connected with my bank account.

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I spent a week checking bank transactions, but nothing showed up.

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So I once again braved the line at the bank and asked the next available teller

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to confirm to me that the information I'd provided to PayPal was correct.

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PayPal?

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Her expression told me that she couldn't understand why I would want to connect my bank account

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to something as questionable as the internet.

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After much discussion and no solution, I returned home and began Googling

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can't connect bank to PayPal in earnest.

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This was 20-some years ago, and there wasn't as much content online.

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Today I can search for how to build a tabletop handloom from old vinyl records and be rewarded in milliseconds,

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with endless links to sites explaining the process, including how-to videos and photos of the finished project,

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as well as the four-foot-long Beatles-themed wool scarf I could then weave on it.

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After an hour of searching the infant internet, I finally came across a discussion forum

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where somebody mentioned that certain bank accounts actually include an extra digit

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that could often be found on the check all alone to the left of the printed account number.

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Sure enough, there it was.

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So I reinitiated the PayPal connection process,

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and 24 hours later, the deposits finally appeared.

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When I called the bank to share this information with them

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in case others asked, they remained skeptical.

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One day, I deposited a check via the ATM.

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I had learned to avoid the teller window,

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and they were surely relieved by this.

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When I verified my balance, it seemed lower than I remembered.

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Luckily, we still kept a running balance in our checkbook back then,

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not yet completely trusting digital accounting practices.

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I returned home and a few hours later checked my balance again by logging into my account online,

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a recent improvement to the bank's services.

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Now my balance appeared higher than my running tally said it should be.

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I went to bed and in the morning I checked again.

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It had changed back to what it was before I deposited the check.

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Hmm.

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I forgot about it, and a few days later, my monthly statement arrived in the mail.

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The daily transactions showed a check deposit of $1,020.90.

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The next line showed something like $120 being removed as an adjustment.

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The next line then showed $1,090 credited as another adjustment,

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followed by another for $20.90.

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A few more ins and outs featuring amounts that bore random numeric resemblance to the original deposit followed.

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Because it was too hard to untangle, I half-heartedly headed over to the bank to try and get some clarity.

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When I showed the teller my bank statement with its incomprehensible ins and outs,

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she turned a bit red and began to explain that she had mistakenly entered the incorrect amount from the check I had deposited via the ATM.

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This was back when the bank still manually verified all ATM deposits.

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She had then tried to correct her error and instead made another error,

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a slip of the old finger on the keyboard, and so on,

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with several additional finger slips apparently occurring.

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After careful review, I was able to confirm that the statement had been sent out

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prior to the final correction, and the actual amount of the check had indeed been deposited,

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and the actual bank balance at the bank now matched my checkbook.

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As a designer, my job involves working with artists and cultural organizations in Quebec and across Canada.

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One day, I received payment from a client in Whitehorse, Yukon,

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so I zipped over to the bank to make a deposit.

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As usual, there was no line for the ATM.

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It wasn't popular with the older folks who made up the bulk of the midday queue.

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This was still before the days of smartphones and tablets,

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and most of our town didn't even have wired Internet connections.

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Until very recently, slow Internet satellite was the option du jour for me.

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A couple of days later, while I was eating dinner, the phone rang.

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It was someone from the bank informing me in what sounded like a somewhat indignant tone

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that I couldn't deposit U.S. currency in a Canadian account.

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The caller went on to say that they had been obliged to return the check via the mail

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and that I would be charged a fee for the offense and for the services required due to my error.

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When I asked what check they were talking about, since I couldn't recall any recent American projects,

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it turned out to be the one I'd received from my client in Whitehorse.

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I tried, without any luck, to explain that the check was most definitely Canadian,

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but they would have none of it.

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We hung up, and the next morning I drove over, ran McNally Road Atlas in hand,

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to prove to them that Yukon was indeed in Canada.

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My client found the whole thing pretty funny and sent me a new check, which they accepted.

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But on subsequent visits to the bank, I always had the impression that they thought I'd pulled one over on them,

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and they were never quite going to forgive me for it.

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As a new immigrant, I had tried my best to follow the time-honored advice of when in Rome,

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but after these and a few more adventures in hometown banking, I finally gave up.

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I ended up writing a country song about my experiences,

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because what other kind of song can you write about something like this,

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and recorded it with my band.

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Then I opened an account in another bank.

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While times may be a-changin', to this day,

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when I pull out my foreign-looking debit card at checkout time,

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It is not unusual for the cashier to ask me what kind of card it is,

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sometimes taking it in her hand and turning it over to inspect it suspiciously.

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(song Guichet Voisin, written and performed by Dana Whittle)

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Pas d'accent is a production of Vizou Media, copyright Dana Whittle, all rights reserved.

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Recorded at Studio Vizou in Sainte-Béatrix, Quebec.

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Theme music by Avilda Moore, all rights reserved.

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Subscribe to Vizou Media podcasts on Apple, Google, Spotify, or in your favorite podcast app.

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Visit vizou.media for show notes and info about our other podcasts.

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And as you can hear, je n'ai pas d'accent.

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(theme music)