Gen Y (Bother Banking?)
The Teller doesn’t know if you’ve heard, but Generation Y is different. They’re special, and they need to be treated differently in the workplace. They understand this whole Internets thing far better than we old dogs. They can text message at 90 words per minute … on a traditional phone keypad (which is sooooo 2005).
Just to be sure who the heck Gen Y is, The Teller looked it up on Wikipedia. Gen Y refers to anyone born between 1983 and 2001, according to a variety of sources.
And apparently, Gen Y needs a new way to bank. At least, that’s what the creative types down at Plastyc Inc. think, and that’s why they’ve created iBankUP. (Apparently they don’t need traditional spellings, syntax, or punctuation … but we digress.)
iBankUP is a pre-paid Visa card, with an online checking and direct deposit component. We know, we know, it sounds a lot like a debit card, but just wait. You can check your balances in real time with a mobile phone or Facebook account, use it to withdraw money from an ATM (for a fee), and doesn’t require a credit check to sign up. Yes, it still sounds like a debit card, but hold on, stay with us.
You can add money at more than 60,000 retailers nationwide, specifically places like Wal-Mart, Rite Aid, Target and the like. Ahh, now we get it: It’s like reverse cash back, right?
Not exactly. In order to load cash onto your account, you have to buy something called a Green Dot MoneyPak (again with the alternative spelling). You can load as up to $1,000 onto a MoneyPak, for a $4.95 fee, and then go online and transfer the funds over.
There are no "overdraft" fees. But if you exceed your minimum balance, you have a "shortage fee" of $3. If you load fewer than $300 per month, there is a fee. Any phone inquiry for service questions carries a fee. If you want to loan money using credit or debit card, there is a fee. Any balance inquiry from an ATM brings a fee.
Basically the only transaction that’s free is adding money to the card via direct deposit, or buying something.
See? It’s a totally new way of banking for Gen Y, without all the crazy and onerous fees banks charge! These are just new crazy and onerous fees! Let’s hope Gen Y is savvy enough to read all the fine print.
The Bard Of The Pike Board
Spectators who took in the final Massachusetts Turnpike Authority board meeting were treated to a spot of culture – an epic poem about the Turnpike’s checkered history, written and recited by the authority’s most vocal antagonist, Mary Z. Connaughton.
Connaughton’s poem railed against Pike tolls, because that’s what she does. It also made the other board members sweat. They’d just heaped praise on the reviled, scandal-plagued agency; were they then about to be savaged, in 12-stanza verse?
Not quite. The poem threw an elbow at former Gov. Jane Swift, rhymed "Prez Bob Travaglini" with "teeny," and noted that "James Kerisiotes found himself in huge trouble/Big Dig costs sure soon would double."
Outgoing Transportation Secretary James Aloisi was sweating. He interrupted the morning’s poet – whom he’d called, in the pages of the Boston Globe, a "distraction" and a "gadfly" – and said, with a pained smile creaking across his face, "I’m just trying to figure out how you’ll rhyme Aloisi."
His longtime foe let him off easy: "One way or another, he got the job done, / but to pass a huge bill he had little fun. / In a political pickle more than one time, / With Murray, Senate prez, he was in quite a bind, / But, will history anoint him reform mastermind?"
The Teller suggested to a colleague that Connaughton missed a golden chance to rhyme Aloisi with "weas’ly." Our friend shot back: "Or, greasy."
