Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Bank Fee Purgatory

Why I Wrote This Piece of Flash Fiction
I hate bank fees.
A few years ago I walked into my bank to speak to a teller and she told me there was a fee to do so. A couple of weeks later I closed my bank account with that bank. The following story was inspired by my interaction with that teller.

Bank Fee Purgatory
(178 words)
I walked in to our local bank and a teller asked me, "Why are you here?"
"I forgot my debit card and needed to withdraw some money."
"Oh," she said. "That'll be $1.50."
"You mean for taking the money out?"
"No for talking to me. The withdrawal fee is $17.50."
"Well, that's more than I have in the account anyway, so I guess the joke's on you."
She didn't laugh, but only stared at me with her dead banker's eyes.
Another guy came in and the teller said to him, "Why are you here?"
I yelled out, before he could answer, "It's a trap, man, don't answer her."
She looked at me and said, "That'll cost you another $5.50 in service fees."
Finally, the other guy spoke anyway. He said, "I'm just here to water the plants."
"That's a $2.50 service fee," she said.
I ran to the doors, flung one open, and stepped out onto the sidewalk, trying to escape.
I heard the teller yell behind me. "That's a $3.00 fee, for excessive speed of exit."

Keep on learning, keep on writing.
~Newton Saber
100 Beginnings for Fiction Writers analysis of 100 novels and how we (as writers) learn from them.
The Writer's Invisible Mentor My writing project about writing and learning to write
Saber Slice: More on Creativity and Writing

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