A Day at the National Neopian

     The bell by the door gave a jingle, and the teller glanced up. A small blue Acara and her female owner trotted into the bank, looking around in interest. The teller put on his best smile and quickly placed the catalogue inside a desk drawer. Business before pleasure.

     "Hello, there, little missies," the teller greeted, trying to make his voice sound happy in a non-forced way; a task that had been difficult for him lately. His rates were going down because of it. "I don't believe I've ever seen you here in the National Neopian. Would you like to set up an account with us?"

     "Um, yes, sir," the owner replied, trying to give a small smile of her own. She seemed slightly frightened by the teller's huge fangs, making him slightly decrease his smile's enormity.

     "That's great!" he said peppily, opening his briefcase on the floor and pulling an official-looking form out. "Now, you'll just need to fill out some basic fields on this paper. Tell us your name, your chosen PIN, some contact info... just stuff like that." The owner slowly nodded, walking forward and taking a quill pen out of the ink bottle on the desk. The teller watched eagerly as she slowly wrote everything down on the form, jotting down her signature with a flourish.

     "Hmm..." the teller contemplated, looking over the form. "Starting out with Junior Saver, nice choice... good penmanship, that shows good character..." He put the form down and smiled at her, widening it to its previous size. "Congratulations! You now have an account at the National Neopian Bank! I'll just set you up a safe, and you can deposit and withdraw as you wish. You'll also earn daily interest based on the Neopoints you have in your account."

     "Interest?" The owner's face scrunched up in confusion as as she asked the question. "What's that?"

     "You get 5.5% of what you have in your account each year," the teller informed her. "It's not money out of your account. It's money we give you and add to your bank account. You can pick part of it up every day."

     "Ohhh," she stated, drawing the word out. "I get it now."

     "Of course you do!" the teller shouted. "You look like a sharp one. I like you."

     "Um... thanks, I guess," the owner stated, a bit confused.

     "Well, you can deposit now or later," the teller propositioned, switching to his business face. "Which will it be?"

     "I'll... come back later," she decided, after a second of thinking.

     "Okay, then, great!" the teller announced, standing up from his office chair behind the desk. "Your safe will be set up and raring to go by the time you come back. Until then!"

     "Yeah... until then," she repeated, taking the hold of the onlooking Acara's paw and walking out the door, ringing the bell again. The teller's grin turned devilish. Another satisfied customer. If she upgraded and he got more newbies like her, his rates might be restored to their original amount.

     He went into the back room, selecting an unused safe and stamping a tag on it. He swiftly wrote the owner's name, Shelly, onto the tag. After that, he made a combination for the safe and wrote it and Shelly's name down on a paper. That would go inside his briefcase, like most everyone else's.

     The door opened again just as he got back to the desk. It was regular customer Dan, a filthy rich aristocrat of Neopia. His Royal Kacheek, Flufferson, walked alongside him as he went up to the desk.

     "Hey, Danny," the teller greeted, smiling in a friendly sort of way. "Come for daily interest?"

     "Yeah. Can I have it?" he asked, giving an attempted smile back. Flufferson just acted haughty.

     Dan came so often that he and the teller had formed something of a friendship. The teller wasn't grumpy and unfriendly like most ownerless Skeiths, and Dan wasn't bratty and whiny like most young aristocrats. The teller put the large amount of interest in Dan's safe, and Dan left. That was the daily routine, at least when Dan didn't need to withdraw or deposit. Dan was one of the few Neopian pet owners with an Ultimate Riches! account, and was a master poet. Both of these traits made him easily recognizable around Neopia.

     The teller was yanked out of his thoughts when the door opened yet again, and a mildly familiar face walked in. It was an owner with a Bronze Saver account who had been in about five times. He had a round face and almond-shaped eyes, and his Yurble did as well. The Mynci riding on his back was incredibly hyper and excited, his eyes zooming about. He hadn't been with them last time.

     "Hey, can I upgrade to Silver Saver?" he asked hastily, walking forward in the same manner. "I can pay whatever the price is."

     "Um... sure," the teller replied, remembering to plaster a grin on his face after a second or two of hesitation. "We certainly can do that for you. You'll have to deposit 5,000 NP."

     "Fine," was the only reply the teller received. After being given a small, hefty bag of neopoints, the teller pulled a stack of papers out of his briefcase and leafed through it, quickly glancing at the names at the top before coming upon this one; Harvey. He now checked the "Silver Saver" box with his quill, put the paper stack back in his briefcase, and smiled brightly.

     "That's all taken care of, my friend," the teller informed Harvey, standing up out of his office chair yet again. "Have a good day."

     "Yeah, whatever, thanks," Harvey answered, quickly walking out of the room and out into Neopia Central.

     "That was a grumpy gus," the teller muttered, walking back into the safe room to deposit the Neopoints. After that was done, he returned to his desk and sat down, humming softly as he looked through the furniture catalogue yet again. He had now decided upon getting a new, fancy lamp, as well as a good looking green and white couch that also could indicate his support of Brightvale's Altador Cup team. After about three minutes of this, the teller sighed in boredom as he put the catalogue back in a desk drawer.

     The National Neopian's business had been dropping lately. There were many customers the teller had not seen in months, a few having been absent for years. For some reason, his bosses had found it plausible to blame him. Him! What did he do wrong? Get the wrong swiveling office chair? Stamp tags in a strange way? Not write perfectly? The teller couldn't understand what his bosses were thinking.

     The door opened yet again, and an irritable, slouchy customer trudged in. With him he brought a hungry Grarrl and an air of unpleasantness. The teller shuddered. Hilton. The teller despised Hilton, because he was twitchy, angry, and always made some comment on how bad the office looked. This time was no different.

     "Where'd you find that picture?" Hilton asked, sneering at an abstract painting hung on the wall to the left. "The Soup Kitchen? It must have come with a bowl."

     "What would you like to do today, Hilton?" the teller questioned, sighing as he ignored Hilton's comment. He had learned to let the things he said not irritate him.

     Hilton frowned slightly in the fact that he had not sparked a reaction in the teller, but quickly shook it off. "I want to make a deposit, and collect interest," he informed the teller.

     "Okay, then," the teller responded, doing his best to put on a cheery smile despite how much he hated to do so. "Give me the money, and I'll put the interest in your account."

     "Well, I want to watch," Hilton said.

     ".....What?" was all the teller thought to say to the request.

     "I want to watch you put the deposit in my account," Hilton repeated, enunciating every syllable as if the teller couldn't comprehend regular speech. "Y'know, go in the back room with you. I need to make sure you aren't cheating me."

     "If I were cheating you, my bosses would have already found out and I'd be out of a job," the teller retorted. "Anyway, you can't come back there with me. It's not allowed."

     "If I can't watch, I'm taking my Neopoints and my business away from here," Hilton protested, scowling at the teller.

     "Don't do that because you can't watch me make a deposit," the teller reasoned, attempting to sort out this mess before it got out of hand.

     "I can and I will!" shouted Hilton. "You can stop me from doing it, though. If I can watch."

     The teller sighed in frustration. He hated doing this, but letting a customer watch him put some Neopoints in a safe was certainly better than losing a customer entirely.

     "All right. Just come with me," the teller instructed, giving in. Hilton smiled in victory. "All right, Hunter, let's go."

     "Right on," Hunter added, his deep, raspy Grarrl voice making the teller slightly shiver. He led the duo in to the back room, clutching the bag of 10,000 NP all the while. Hilton and Hunter looked around in slight interest as they went inside the room, noticing the large amount of safes.

     They quickly reached Hilton's safe, and the teller swiftly entered the combination as a knot formed in his stomach. Hopefully, this wasn't a big enough offense to drop his rates, or worse, fire him. Hilton's eyes widened at the piles of Neopoints in his safe. Despite having a Platinum Extra account and having deposited plenty of NP, he had no idea that this kind of extravagant amount of it was here, in his safe.

     "All right, I just put the NP in the safe, and..." the teller paused, trying to think about what else there was to it. "...that's it."

     "Yeah, but you know, I feel like there's another addition to this, uhhh... formula," said Hilton greedily, rubbing his hands together as he stared straight at the piles of golden coins. Hunter seemed to follow his eyes towards all the cold cash in their safe.

     "And what would that be?" the Skeith asked in a slightly bored fashion as he dumped all the coins in the safe and was prepared to close it, when suddenly...

     Hands, human and scaly, were snatching up money left and right, not caring about a couple extras that lay bare on the floor as they dropped through the cracks within their clutching fingers. The Skeith cried out as he realized what was happening. What were they doing?! Taking their own money?!

     And that they did. They rushed out of the narrow Safe Room as fast as possible as they began to dump their money into large bags. Very faintly, the Skeith could hear the faint tinkle of that stupid doorbell, signifying the customers' exit. The Skeith teller just kept standing there, rather in awe at what had just happened. Why would someone take their own cash...?

     Rather dejectedly, the teller went back to his position after a good ten minutes of just standing there, mind hazy, confused thoughts forlorn and disconnected. He just didn't understand why somebody could do such a thing. Maybe that was why his bosses were blaming him. Maybe he didn't understand others. Didn't understand why they were dropping their accounts. Robbing from their own safes.

     In general, the teller did not understand things all that well. But unquestionably, there were two things he did understand rather well. Doing basic teller jobs and browsing furniture catalogues.

     And so he continued on with the latter, and returned to chewing his pointy fingernail. And such was the life of the National Neopian's Skeith bank teller.

The End