Christmas Presents Past

Amazingly, three years have passed since I retired (or was made redundant, but old enough to claim my occupational pension, if you prefer). In some ways it seems like only yesterday that I walked out of the office for the last time; in other ways, it seems like an eternity ago. I met up with some of my former colleagues a few weeks ago and from what I heard,  plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose seems to fit the bill at my erstwhile place of employment. That meeting, plus the anniversary of my leaving work, had me reminiscing on past Christmases at work.

When I worked in branch banking, for Midland Bank, the last working day before Christmas could be manic, although in some branches it was definitely more manic than in others. If the last working day was actually Christmas Eve, we closed at 12.30 rather than 3.30 (or 3 o'clock in the City of London), which meant that at 12.29 the banking hall would be a seething mass of humanity. Private customers would be cashing cheques, shopkeepers would be paying in takings and publicans would be staggering away with enough loose change to get them through the evening.  And on one occasion, we had a gentleman who wanted to open an account: who on earth needs to open a bank account on Christmas Eve? Some poor devil (me, quite often) would have to go into the banking hall to lock the front door, and stay there to let customers out after they finished their transactions. Almost immediately  there would be a procession of people pushing on the locked door or ringing the bell. Upon opening the door (on the security chain of course), I, or whoever had drawn the short straw, would be asked, "Are you closed?" Answering in the affirmative would often draw forth a plaintive request to be let in, which of course had to be declined, to much wailing and gnashing of teeth from the customer.

My experience was that suburban branches tended to be much busier than City branches on Christmas Eve. Romford Market Place branch was particularly frantic on 24th December since we had the accounts of most of the pubs, a whole host of market traders and many of the big shops. People who believed that because we closed early we must have got to spend the afternoon in the pub had to be disabused of that idea because despite closing at 12.30 we would be lucky to get out until two o'clock, and since in those days they closed at 2.30, it often wasn't worth trying to shoe horn yourself into a pub already packed to the gunwales with market traders and assorted others for the half an hour or so of opening time that remained. Except the year we popped into The Rez (Reservation Club) in North Street and weren't asked to leave until 5pm; I have vague recollections of beer and mistletoe.

My experiences of working in the City of London at Christmas were somewhat different. At Queen Victoria Street (QVS), the morning of the last day before Christmas one year when Christmas Eve fell on a weekend and we did not close early, was complete bedlam, with queues of customers who all wanted to cash cheques. It soon dawned on us that we would run out of cash before lunchtime, so one of the messengers and I were deputed to walk down to Cannon Street branch (no longer there, I think it is a pub now), with a Branch Payment for £10,000; we sauntered back as nonchalantly as it is possible to with £5,000 each in our jacket pockets. The Inspectors would have had a fit. Naturally management, mindful of how busy the morning had been, asked everyone to limit their lunch break to the bare hour, which we did, quaffing a few ales in The Dandy Roll in Bread Street (demolished years ago). Of course, when we got back from lunch we found that the only places still open in the City were the banks and the pubs and all of our customers were in the latter, or had gone home. As far as I recall I served one customer in two hours. Christmas Eve at QVS was one of the rare days when the branch manager, a traditional, old fashioned type, would leave his office and pass among his staff, with whom he would share a mince pie, a glass of sherry and some appropriate seasonal platitudes.

I'm not sure if it is still the case, but back in the days when branches had traditional managers, their favoured customers would bring in gifts in the lead up to the festivities. By and large these consisted of alcohol; vast quantities of wine and spirits would be delivered and depending on the manager, these would either be quietly taken away by him, or shared with staff.  Jack Groom, one of my managers at Barking,  fell into the latter category and in fact would often supplement gifts given by customers to ensure that every member of his staff went home on Christmas Eve with something. While working as Foreign Clerk at Barking I had frequent daily dealings with a record exporting company and twice received hampers from Fortnum & Mason as Christmas gifts, the only time I was singled out to receive a gift from a customer other than the store owner in Romford who presented me with a half bottle of Scotch after I discovered that my (large) till difference (an over) was down to a mistake on his paying in slip.

When I moved back to the City in 1986, it was to Eastcheap where I was no longer expected to work on the counter, but Christmas Eve was possibly even more manic in the Foreign Department than it would have been if I had been cashiering. One year, while everyone else appeared underemployed, I found myself desperately trying to process what seemed to be a never ending stream of outward bills, and then had to cancel the Large Town Clearing in record time, with a messenger breathing over my shoulder, anxious to take any returns to the clearing house. And at Eastcheap I took home the oddest Christmas gift I ever received. We were all called into the manager's office individually, where we were each presented with a large bag of dried fruit, courtesy of a customer who imported such things.

Having left branch banking, I found Christmas Eve quite different. Unless it was essential, many jobs wound down, although working in payments was an exception, with limited opportunity to slope off early. Sometimes however, Christmas Eve meant doing very little, and resenting what little I had to do, until it was time to go home, and I do mean home, not the pub, because getting into one on Christmas Eve has in later years not been worth the effort, particularly with all The Amateur Drinkers about (see The Amateur Drinker).

In some occupations, Christmas gifts from customers are unheard of. My wife works for a local authority and has never had one to my knowledge, but by an odd coincidence, my elder daughter, who works for a different local council, has brought home a bottle of wine, courtesy of a client, who just happen to have been a customer of Midland Bank, Barking when I worked there. As they say, it's a small world.