Michael Cash <mikecash@buggerallspammers.com> dixit:

>In about 1986, when I moved to Martin TN to start school, I had in my
>hot little hand a check drawn on the United States Treasury for my
>monthly Naval Reserve activities.

>I went from bank to bank to bank trying to cash the damned thing. It
>was always the old "Do you have an account with us?" routine. Having
>just arrived in town, I didn't have an account with any local bank.
>When I finally found a bank that greeted me pleasantly and cashed my
>check with no questions asked and no service fee, I opened an account
>there.

A friend of mine (now retired and living in Niigata) tells the story
of when he was working in the US 20+ years ago, driving a group
of executives from a Japanese car manufacturer around to investigate
possible sites for a new factory. A couple of them had to change
traveller's cheques, so they stopped at the banks in various towns.
They got the same runaround, but in their case had the bonus of
xenophobic stage whispers from the bank staff. Finally they found a
town with a bank that would change the cheques. Guess which town got
the car plant?

-- 
Jim Breen        http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/
Clayton School of Information Technology,
Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia 
ジム・ブリーン@モナシュ大学