The Banker

There is this game show going on the radio the other day and they were interviewing the participants. One of them was a former air hostess and then now she says she is a ' banker'. Interesting transformation .. From a air hostess (hopefully an intelligent one) serving tea and coffee and asking people to sit up straight .. to a owner of a bank .. hmm .. If I am right, a banker is someone who owns a bank, correct or not??? Wee Cho Yaw is a banker because he owns the United Overseas Bank and he has tonnes of real cash to lend out to the general public. But a former air stewardess? I doubt she can harness so much credit power even if she fly back and forth non-stop to the moon.

The problem I think, lies with the fact that people tend to use the term 'banker' rather loosely. You WORK in the bank, and you call yourself a banker just because you collect money and lend out money? The bad news is, very sadly, the money isn't yours. You are just agents, at best, for people like Mr Wee. Mr Wee does not have the time to do all the borrowing and lending himself, so he hires all these former air stewardesses to assist him, understand?

So the approriate description would be, if you are p-r-o-c-e-s-s-i-n-g the applications for loans and deposits, you are known as the 'banking officer'. And if you are distributing investment and deposit information pamplets outside the bank and interrupting my stroll inside the shopping centre, you are known as the bank's executive flyer distributor ok? If you want to be called a banker and don't have the means to do it, go buy yourself a Monopoly game set and deal with those paper money and dice.