21.02.12
    I went to the bank for my once-a-year-at-most appointment to contribute to my RRSPs. These are never that fun. On the one hand, I feel guilty for not obsessively watching international money markets and tracking my rate of returns down to the hour. On the other hand is my suspicion (abetted by NPR) that whether or not I earn anything is determined by nondescript rooms full of people maintaining a level of business attire for the benefit of their computers on which they turn things of tangible value into more and more abstract concepts with more and more arbitrary evaluations of monetary worth, until we reach things like the US Federal Reserve Bank deciding to invent a few trillion dollars which materializes out of nowhere. If the global economy was a car, it would have a hundred different drivers with a hundred different steering wheels who can agree on nothing other than that the car should always be going faster. Why yes, I would like to climb on board this vehicle, thank you.
    The unfortunate soul destined to deal with such a client was a young guy in a medium purple dress shirt which implied "I work in a institution full of other guys in dress shirts, must we all look identical?"
    No sooner had I shaken his hand than a slightly older (than him) woman in a coral turtleneck under a black cardigan came up and introduced herself as well.
    "Is this the joint meeting?" she asked Purple Shirt, which surprised me, as I was doing pretty run-of-the mill banking duties at a time when everyone else does this too. We all trooped into Purple Shirt's office and went over the very basics of why I was there and what we were dealing with. Purple Shirt was the one asking questions and bringing up information on the computer and I wasn't clear on Coral Turtleneck's role in this situation.
    Suddenly she proposed a venue change to her office, so we packed up and walked over to a larger office in a more strategic location, with a few more personal touches; a somewhat amorphous could-be-abstract-Ganesh figure, some green bamboo, a desk organizer shaped like a high-heeled shoe, and two framed diplomas. Now she was asking questions and clicking through forms, while Purple Shirt sat quietly next to me. I tried to address my questions to both of them, but I was still unclear on what exactly was going on and more concerned about understanding what was happening with my investments. This conversation had the added level of surrealism in that my financial innards were splayed out pretty plainly in front of the group without the usual niceties of social interaction, though the awkward small talk clause was still in effect.
    "So what do you do?"
    "Mmhmm, and exactly how much do you make doing that?"
    Eventually we got through the bulk of decisions that needed to be made. I'd like to tell you I didn't just agree with everything they suggested-because clearly their ideas were the right thing to do if you knew the first thing about finance and why wouldn't I want to give them as much money as possible and why did I even bother doing anything low-risk the past when I obviously should have been throwing any money I had into the market when it was down because of course it would rebound this soon because it always does, given enough time, and it will go on growing and growing forever because what could ever possibly go wrong?-but I can't. Forms needed to be printed and signed, Purple Shirt was demoted to the job of running back and forth to the network printer. We hit a form which wouldn't print, so Purple Shirt went to try to print it from his office, and he never came back. Instead, to my somewhat discomfort, I signed a blank form, which Coral Turtleneck said she'd complete with what we agreed on, then mail me a copy.
    She wrapped it up, and we passed through another twilight zone of small talk, "Yorkshire terriers; cute dogs," and I was out of there for another year. Purple shirt was nowhere to be seen, so I guess Coral Turtleneck won. We shook hands again.
    "Thanks for your help," I said. And I suppose some part of me meant it.

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