Well have been at my job for 2 days now and its fab!

Learning all there is to know about the bank (no I won't be handing out safe combinations / blueprints etc!!!!!), but the atmosphere is soooo laid back it really takes some getting used to!

None of the branches here have security glass so thats a barrier down (pardon the pun!) for a start, every customer who walks in is known to the other girls- "Hey X how are ya - kinda cold out there eh!" is the standard greeting for the next customer.

Every time the coffee pot gets put on theres a yell from the front counter (Hey Amanda fresh coffee here, come get it!!) customers bring in cakes too

But one thing that tickled me, I was reading through the whole "Hold up" procedure and it says - and I quote "If in a hold up situation refer to the manual"

WTF I have a 300 magnum pointed at my head, a big bloke yelling at me for the money (which I wouldn't have access to anyway cos i'm not on the front desk but thats by the by) and I have to say "One moment please sir, I have a manual to refer to, if you would like to take a seat and i'll be with you as soon as I can"!!!!! Unlikely!

On second thoughts that response would probably be because i'm English, if it happened to the other girls I bet it would go like this -

"Give me all the money now or I pull the trigger"

"Oh hey Chuck how are ya, thats a real smart weapon ya got there eh? Grab a coffee and i'll bring it out to your car. Hows mom by the way?"

Hee hee anyways thats just another observation of life here and I have to leave in 10 mins so see you later

Cracked up at this!

They probably wouldn't understand your Queen's english anyway!

Glad you are enjoying your job - does sound pretty relaxed.

Congrats... its amazing how people respond to you isnt it!

I'm a little bowled over by it all, we were introduced to the Branch Manager when we last went in - in 20 years in the UK I never saw my bank manager! and they all know you by name!!

PS They even got us a Credit Card and hubby hasnt even got a job yet!

You missed the point. You throw the manual at the would be thief thereby knocking him unconcious. You then grab another cup of coffee and call the cops at your leisure.

I know the tellers keep very little cash in their drawers (oooh, er missus) but this took me a while to get used to as well.

By way of contrast. On Saturday morning the alarm went off at five, I crawled from bed to the computer to see how my processing was advancing. I sat there typing until it got light when I went and fed the horses, then I went back to the computer. When it started to get dark I again fed the horses and went back to the computer. At 2:00 am I went to bed. On Sunday I repeated the process. On Monday the client complained about the pace of the work "let's give this the effort it deserves" so I worked all night and finished the job in the early hours of Tuesday morning. I then drove downtown (90 minutes) and worked on a job that had got behind over the weekend, I finished there around nine pm and drove home again. I went to bed as I had to be up early to get to work. I worked in this manner on Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year's Eve and yet I'm the slacker at our firm, no one in our organization except me has ever taken a vacation. No one gets sick, no one goes anywhere the cell phone won't work. The office closes only on holidays that are coincident between Canada and the US. Still, people bang on the door wanting this kind of work. This is a land of immigrants, there's always going to be someone willing to work longer, harder, cheaper and if they're not cheap enough there's outsourcing.

I hope you enjoy your mellow job but I don't think it's anymore typical then mine is. Many Canadian firms have to compete with firms abroad and so their workers have to be competitive with the fingerless third world children.

Living where there's no reliable cell reception is one of life's perks I'm enjoying in Canada

It does annoy the organisation I contract my services to though.

You need to get another job! I've had 30 years of making a decent living here - complete with vacations and sick time - and believe my experience is much more typical than yours. Maybe it's because you work at home, or are on contract or something. I guess it's a trade off to be able to get out of bed and work in your jammies?

Is it worth the money?

How else do you think he funds his ex('s?), kids and Guardianista Acres?

Grow-op in the barn?

I think you probably know what I meant

I personally don't have, or especially need, any significant amount of money. I accept that I personally will never be able to achieve the standard of living my parents, the generation that "never had it so good", have enjoyed over the past thirty years or so.

However just to remain competitive in our work environment does require a degree of commitment. Every day people arrive from countries where $15 an hour is a lot of money, if I want to make thirty I have to be twice as productive, if I'm charging hundreds the customers have a right to expect that I will work at least as hard as they do. Understand that I barely do that, I'm not alone working through the night and on holidays, I'm always on the phone and have a work related chat window going -the major problem I have with cell phones is that the recharger can't usually keep up with the power consumed by talking.

I think the work environment here is brutal and I miss the relatively relaxed atmosphere in UK. I do go there from time to time and work long shifts on specific jobs but there's an expectation that, at the end, people go to the pub or on holiday or home whereas here they go straight on to the next job. Working there people chat, or boast, about cars and houses and sporting endeavours, here no one mentions having a life outside work - I've had some colleagues for twenty years without knowing if they have any children or other interests outside the office. I was gobsmacked to discover last week that someone I've worked with here for a decade will, next weekend, officially land as an immigrant.

One thinks of the culture of machismo in Canada as relating to trucks and cowboy hats and hating the French but I think it's as much about working through school plays and spouse's funerals and pretending, no, coming to actually believe, that work is the only thing.

You need to move to BC.

The biggest culture shock I had moving out here is that no one will work more than 40 hours a week. OK, maybe the first generation immigrants who don't know any better, but native born Canadians? No way.

I grew up in British business where, once you are above a certain level of seniority, you are expected to put in 50-60 hours a week. All the really important meetings are at 7.00 in the morning or 6.30 at night.

This is not to say that people don't take their work seriously, they do, but only for 40 hours. The attitude is that if the work can't be done in 40 hours you had better hire some more people. There is far too much fun stuff to do to waste your life as a wage slave.

Hardly. The expectation in my office is that you don't leave until the immediate case you are working on is watertight for the night and the weekend. I regularly have to work 50 hours plus, no overtime paid, occasional time off in lieu if I demand it. Vacations can also be cancelled at the last minute "due to operational requirements". Did I mention this is a Unionized government job too?