The other day, I decided to conduct a little social experiment. I had some errands to do, and Miles - who puts in a full day at the office with me every day - wanted to tag along on my trip.

So I took him into the bank with me. The sign on the door stipulated, "No Firearms, No Solicitors, No Skateboarding, No Loitering (the most ironic restriction, given the venue)". It did not say, "No Dogs". My experiment was to see:

1. If anyone say anything about him being in the bank?
2. Who would say something - staff or other customers?
3. Whether he'd have to leave, given that there wasn't a sign specifically saying, "not to bring your dog in the bank".

The latter point is a very American approach to life, that sometimes results in people suing knife-manufacturers, because they hurt themselves, due to the knife not having a, "Do not stab yourself repeatedly with this knife" warning on the handle.

As it goes, no-one said anything about Miles being in the bank. This may be, because they were all in a coma, or because another customer - sporting the clichéd shaven-headed-althletic-vest-wearing latino look - had cycled into the bank, on his BMX bike, and was sat astride it, at a teller window. Talk about being up-staged. Jeez. If they'll politely ignore that, no wonder they didn't complain about my boy.

Then, like some bad Seinfeld observational comedy, the whole, "The line at the bank... what's up with that?" thing kicked in. Yes, it's lunchtime, so they close a couple of teller desks.

That in itself wouldn't be so bad, if the remaining desks/windows/whatever, were staffed by people capable of GAFMO instead of staff, who were either the youngest ever altzheimer sufferers, or just plain stupid.

Of the three windows open, two of them had the same customers at them the whole time I was queuing. This makes me think that the banks should implement the same system that supermarkets use at their checkout. Instead of a few "14 Items Or Less" windows, they'd have, "Nothing Too Complicated" windows. Other more complicated transactions will be handled by the bank's token grown-up on duty.

In the end, it took twenty-five minutes of queuing, for Miles and I to reach a teller. Frankly, Miles was looking a lot less pissed off about the wait than I was, and of the two of us, he was the one less likely to growl at the bank staff.