Salary Account Crib

Had 2 bad days in a row. As in, I had to deal with some stupid stuff, which wasn’t my responsibility in the first place, yet opened my eyes to a new reality. The problem was simple: Open Employees Salary Accounts. It was my job to liaise with our bankers while the Admin.Dept. would collect information from the staff.

It turned out to be a nightmare. I found out nearly half of my staff did not have proper documents. The Engineers, MBA’s etc. born & brought up in India did not have documents to prove either their identity or their residential address. On the other hand our peons who are immigrant labour from Nepal have both ration cards to prove their residential status & passport/driving licenses to prove their identity. If the government were to raid our premises to find out immigrant labour I am pretty sure my Nepali peons will remain while half of my staff will be branded as Nepali/Bangladeshis whatever & deported.(Although I will be mighty happy to get rid of the junk).

There were even cases where 2 government documents had 2 different residential addresses. How can people like such be kept alive? They don’t need me to open their accounts they need to hire lawyers for that. They need to hire constitutional experts to find out what their citizenship status is. My brain & knowledge falls way too short for the complexities brought about by the economic prosperity of India, the subsequent middle class prosperity & the need for owning multiple houses, thereby having their ration card’s address where they were born, passport address of the place they went to school & driving license address of some village where their family made the unfortunate decision of participating in the civilized world.

I have even met a person who, when I asked for his cellphone bill (hoping that at least it would show the address mentioned on his passport) told me that he had put his girlfriends address while registering for the cellphone!!! Why??? Why would anyone put their girlfriends residential address when registering their cellphone? I have since begun the “Best of 3” policy, where in any 2 documents that match become the attachments. Of course this is where the bank gave me a new challenge.

Our bank offers various standard amenities to salary accounts free of cost. We have e-banking, phone alerts etc.etc. Some people would want that, some wouldn’t. Those who wish for the amenities need to fill up a section in the form & sign the verification. It so happened that our bankers asked people at random to sign that damn verification. It did not matter whether you required e-banking or not, if the day you were born had mars in the ascending house, you would be the chosen one to have your forms sent back as incomplete. Then the staff would, and rightly so, refuse to sign on verification because they did not want an e-banking option. Also there were cases where people had not signed the verification for e-banking & yet got their forms passed.

All this has made me believe in destiny, dark forces, angels etc. I even have a photograph of Goddess Lakshmi posted on my desk now; I show every bank form to the Goddess & then submit it. Have opened most of the accounts, couple of complex cases remain, they are awaiting a Special Supreme Court Constitutional Bench to give decision on their citizenship status & then they need to verify their horoscopes to find out which planets were in the ascending house when they were born. Till then I keep their money.