Bank Teller: Find your badass self

Dear The Tank,

Last Friday, I hit the big 4-0. It really freaked me out, ’cause that’s starting to sound really old. Well, after work, my coworkers surprised me by taking me out to the TGIF’s next to the Best Buy for happy hour. I remember the first seven rounds of whisky sours, but I don’t remember how long I was there or how I got to the tattoo parlor later that evening. Or even how I got home! I think I must have blacked out. Anyway, I woke up on my sofa with a really bad hangover the next morning and “INDENTURED SERVANT” tattooed in huge black letters around my neck—like where a choker necklace would be. It was in Times New Roman, 72-point or something ginormous like that, because that’s the font they make us use at the bank where I work as a teller.

So, long story short: I tried to cover it up when I went into work the next Monday because we have a really strict dress code at the bank. But when Steve, our branch manager, saw it he immediately called me into his office and told me that my tattoo was disturbing the customers, didn’t represent the “team spirit” of our bank, blah blah blah. And then he made me sign something that said I could keep my job if I agreed to get it removed, stat. At my own cost. With lasers.

Wow, I do kind of regret having gotten that phrase tattooed in that spot, but is this even legal what my boss is doing? Should I just go and start with the laser removal sessions? After a whole week of being at home (Steve suspended me from work without pay until I get my first laser session) and sitting around and thinking about this, I’ve actually started to kinda like the way this tatt makes me look and feel all badass—like I felt when I was 17, before I graduated from high school and started working at the bank that summer.

Sincerely,
—Badass Bank Teller

Dear Badass,

Absolutely do not even think of scheduling your first session with a derm to start etching that tattoo away! Promise to schedule your first appointment with a lawyer and a local representative from the ACLU instead! Yours could be a benchmark discrimination case that might finally shake up the banking industry forever. A tattoo is free speech, and that is protected by the First Amendment. Let them take care of the legal details of this case. You take care of growing into the person that you want to become. And she is not a meek, boring bank teller dressed in Ann Taylor separates and waiting for a guy named Steve to promote her. No. She is a badass virago who has just come into her sexual and career prime at the age of 40, and who is no longer afraid to speak her mind to the world.

The main reason I think you need to keep the tattoo and not get it erased is because I am of the firm conviction that you’ve gotten that particular tattoo, in that particular location and that particular font and ink color at this particular time, for a reason.

The tattoo is the outward manifestation of a silent cry for help from what some psychologists call your “authentic self.” It’s the “real” you, without the facade and pretense of your “social / artificial self,” which is the side we present to society to remain employed, stay in school, find marital partners, and keep ourselves out of jail.

But I believe your authentic self is tired of living that kind of boring, straight-and-narrow existence. Your real self took over that Friday evening to rescue you from what sounds like some very dire straits.

Do you have the husband you want? No. Do you have the children you want? No. Do you have the 5,000 square-foot home you want? No. Do you have the branch manager position that should rightfully be yours (and not Steve’s) after 23 years at that bank? No. You don’t even have a cat.

But you want a cat, and a husband, and an office with a door, and a big house, and children. So last Friday, your authentic self told your artificial self to go get lost. Your authentic self is ready to rock the boat, alter course, and change every aspect of your dreary spinster existence.

To help this transformational process along, I think what you need to do next is to go and get a second tattoo. Perhaps even a third one. This time on the side of your neck. And this time, a bit more industry specific. I’d recommend “Banksta ho.” Also in Times New Roman and in black, because that’s the font your conservative financial institution has forced you to conduct all of your professional life and thinking in for the past 20-plus years.

But maybe get it in bold this time so it’s the first thing everyone notices when you walk into work the next Monday. With both tattoos and your ACLU attorney at your side, I think you’re going to be seeing a very different side to Steve than you’ve seen in the past.

Steve may go on arguing that a dress code is a dress code and try to kick you out, but you and I know that more of the customers in that bank have tattoos than don’t. What century is Steve living in? So ignore his yapping and set up lines for tatt and non-tatt customers. Pretty soon your tatt line will grow much larger than the opposite. Steve will have to eat his words. Put up a sign outside offering free tattoos for anyone who starts a new checking account. After what the U.S. banking industry did to us in 2008, we are ALL SLAVES and INDENTURED SERVANTS nowadays. Steve may not realize it yet, but you will be the one making his bonus check a big one this year at Christmas! You’ll be pulling in the customers, and you know what? The executives back at headquarters will see that. Forget branch manager. Think bigger. Steve will be left to suck your fumes.

And you will be emboldened by that little tattoo to start taking more risks in your life that will make your authentic self happy, and finally start getting what you want out of life. We’re talking corner office at headquarters in NYC. We’re talking a dog, not a cat. We’re talking a husband who looks like Don Draper but who does the dishes before you come home because you make more money than he does, and we’re talking two kids—identical twins—who make the Olsen twins look like genetic-lottery rejects.

—The Tank

The Tank is inspired by Gracious Living Without Servants, the new novel by Wall Street Journal writer Brenda Cronin. Juliet, the heroine of that novel, makes all kinds of bad choices that end up making life way more interesting. Read the first chapter.