OK, I’ll blog once more today – because this was really something.
Before leaving about 2:30PM on the trip to meet our daughters, we had an important stop this morning – the bank.
We all needed to buy the necessary Yuan to pay the various fees. We had been told to bring nice, crisp dollar bills and they meant it.
Had I previously realized we would just exchange it all – I would have brought Euros which are far easier for me to get! However, I religiously followed directions and just didn’t think about it (don’t know why I was thinking we’d just present USD to the Chinese agencies!). So I’ve been stockpiling dollars the last two years...in unfortunately used bills.
Anyway, we had some problems at the bank – eleven to be exact. Eleven bills were not passed by the machine. By all rights they could have just handed the money back and been done with it.
Now, it just so happened that a prominent local businessman was there in the next window taking care of his own financial business. He was in jeans and a T-shirt and looked like an average Chinese guy off the street.
Now get this – my teller handed my stack of apparently defective currency to his teller, and his teller handed it out her window TO HIM. Only at this point, did our guide come over and tell me (who was very curious!) what was going on.
He started eyeing the bills, feeling them, while immediately setting one aside on the counter. He nodded to his teller and handed back the money – except the one. He had some sort of fluid and started dabbing it on my one bill. After a few more seconds of examination in the light, he apparently told his teller it was OK who passed it back to my teller to cash.
Unfortunately, in all the hub-bub the teller had never counted our money. I had counted it at our room but not there at the bank as I handed it over. When it was all tabulated – we were $100 short.
A Manager in a suit was out with me in about 30 seconds – no kidding. The tellers started looking in their booths to see if anything had dropped. The manager was apologizing…our guide was exchanging words with bank staff (I’m not up on my Cantonese but I don’t think she was being nice).
After a few minutes, I was trying to stop it all and just leave. I had watched it all and never saw anything suspicious and really don’t want to be one of THOSE Americans. I keep telling the manager I was sure the mistake was mine. I felt really bad for our little teller who was visibly upset, and I was worried about her as well.
I shook the manager’s hand and assured him that I had confidence in the teller.
When I got back to the hotel, I figured out what happened. Before we left for the bank, Lisa and I counted out the money for the exchange. I had some spare currency so I started exchanging less good looking ones for better looking bills (didn’t help much!). Somewhere there in the shifting around, I shorted myself. After all the trading for better bills, I never recounted. However, doing the math later in HongKong Dollars, Yuan, and US Dollars – it was all accounted for.
Fortunately we brought all that Belgium chocolate with us – quite a bit extra. So we rapidly built a gift box of chocolate-orange truffles and returned to the bank. It was around an hour later and I was relieved to see our teller calmly working away.
The teller that had been sitting beside her happened to be out of her booth - and immediately ran and got the manager. Guess we made an impression because we were remembered. ;)
As he was the only one in the bank that ever spoke English to us, I waited for him and then explained that I had accounted for everything and so it was, without a doubt, my mistake. Then I asked him to relay my apology to the teller and ask that she accept our gift. Fortunately, with smile, she did.
Of course, we did get our Yuan, and then we did get MWW – so it’s all good.
And, I don't know who this business man was - but it was crazy watching the bank staff cash bills as he approved them!
We still have a week of administrative issues to go – here’s hoping I don’t mess anything else up!
Cheers,
us
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