Having a word of the day is perfectly normal, right? I only ask because I discovered from a staff room conversation on Friday that it's not perfectly normal to visit coffee shops to write down the conversations people around you are having. Who knew? I thought that's what everyone did. Maybe that's why everyone else's handbag doesn't contain at least two notebooks and a large handful of pens and pencils? Anyway, word of the day has been a thing in my life since the Readers Digest stopped being in our downstairs loo. I realised that I missed the 'it pays to enrich your wordpower' section but with a dictionary and a notebook I could recreate my own. I tried to encourage my son, who wasn't particularly keen on books but loved a geeky challenge, to join me in the 'word of the day' competition but once he found hippomonstrosesquippedaliophobia (ironically, fear of long words) all other words became superfluous.
Today's word seems very appropriate. Malfeasance is the wrongdoing of a public official and with today's news about banks, tax and what Stephen Green and Ed Balls knew or didn't know I'm very excited about the synchronicity of my word of the day seeming relevant.
The press seem to have a confusion about what banks are about. I worked in a bank, on a graduate training scheme but I was hopeless, asking all manner of 'stupid' questions.
The first branch I worked in was in an area with wealthy clients. The customers were very important and extremely rude. They expected you to know who they were. I didn't: especially the footballers and I had the cheek not to laugh when they said things like, "I don't suppose you recognise me with my clothes on." I asked why the famous footballer wasn't charged for his huge overdraft.
Stupid question.
It was part of my training to observe all the branch jobs while I was there and when I was learning about financial planning I asked, "Isn't it immoral to tell these rich people how to avoid paying tax?"
Stupid question.
I was later moved to another branch where the clients were all struggling. It was an odd branch, with a malfeasant manager, who at my interview said, "Would you put all your clothes on that chair in the corner?" Sales were very important and I was instantly in trouble for refusing to sell Personal Loan Insurance (PPI) to all the people who wouldn't be able to claim on it if they needed to. "Why should they buy something they'll never be able to use?" I asked.
Stupid question.
Apart from the chance to talk to some of the customers every day, particularly the jesting undertaker, working in a bank was not for me and soon I worked out that , "Why am I doing this job?" was not a stupid question.
I've written stupid too many times in this blog post, so I think I'll find a better word as tomorrow's word of the day. I quite like hebitudinous.
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