Zimbabwe Absurdity

It’s been a while since I deposited cheques into my bank account; they have rather fallen into disuse since the demise of the Zimbabwe dollar. Nowadays we deal almost entirely in cash and bank transfers.

“You cannot deposit both those cheques on one day” the teller said.

I took a deep breath, “Why not?”

“Because they would add up to more than $500 dollars” she replied. “And the are both from the same drawer”.

We’d last been to this territory in the Zim dollar days when they were trying to limit the amount people could pay into accounts and thus by devious means change it into real money. This could not be the case here. It WAS real money!

“Oh. Well can’t you just put them through on different days?” I asked.

“Yes, but you will have to make out another deposit slip and anyway, you have missed today’s deadline so the first one can only be entered tomorrow”.

I inwardly surrended to the absurdity of it all; I just did not have the energy to argue which would have been futile anyway. I filled in the extra form, signed off the changes on the original, handed over the two cheques and went to the swimming pool to burn off the irritation.