I was resting safely under the stars last night in my sleeping bag when the beam of a flashlight broke through the trees and brush. After a tense moment I realized that the figure standing over me was my wife. She’d spent the better part of the night looking for me. After a short dialog that I won’t go into, she explained to me that the eerie feeling I was experiencing was the dreaded effect of Daylight Savings Time. The reason why the world appeared to me differently yesterday on my drive into work was because it was lighter out. I wasn’t sure it really explained everything, but since she appeared to be my wife and not an imposter – I gave in and let her drag me home.
You have to understand that the state of Indiana never acknowledged daylight savings time in the past. This was our first fall to set our clocks back. The local news spent a great deal of coverage explaining the potential health effects of such a change (No really – they did). You see Indiana is kind of a peculiar state. Where else can you dig a hole in a treeless field an arm’s throw from a major highway, fill it with water one day and then find two to three dozen RVs and campers parked around it the next day. I guess it boils down to the fact that there’s not that much to do in the state, so we tend to over-hype anything different from the norm. In this case it was daylight savings time. I swear that as far as news coverage and debate within the state, it was second only to the events of 9/11.
Anyway, on the drive back to our house last night (note that I kept one eye on the woman behind the wheel just to make sure) I happened to notice a new bank building. It caught my attention because I saw that it had eight drive-thru bays. This got me thinking. Have you ever seen a bank have more than 2 or 3 drive-thru bays open at any one time? Why build a new bank with 8 bays when you never intend to have more than half open at any given time. And if for some unexplainable reason you ever do come across a bank with all their bays open – it’s still the same old 2 tellers behind the glass working the bays. So really, how much time do you save by adding bays when you don’t add tellers to service those bays. I’m guessing that you’re not going to save much time.
Scary – you bet! But then remember this bank was being built yesterday and I’m still not positive that the woman driving me home last night was my wife. J/W
