The Joys of Opening a Bank Account

After a pretty quiet weekend, Monday morning comes back around and it's time to go and open my bank account.

I had to wait for a temporary document, hence waiting a couple of weeks before going to open my account. Fortunately, my company has an agreement with one of the major banks, making it easier to open an account as a foreigner, because apparently President Fernandez de Kirchner makes it pretty tough for us to do so otherwise.

I head out during the working day as the bank manager wants me to come in between 10am and noon. I wait in the reception area and immediately take out my Crackberry, hooked as I am. After all of 30 seconds, I hear a loud throat-clearing noise and look up to see the security guard shaking his head at me.

"No mobile phones," he says. 

Christ! What is with this country and their insistence that I don't use my mobile phone anywhere I go? I'm in a bank, for heaven's sake, what's the problem?! Later, my colleague explains to me that often bank robberies are coordinated by phone in Argentina - one person inside the bank is communicating with someone outside the bank, who mugs and robs customers as they exit the building with huge wads of cash. There was a famous case a year or so ago with a pregnant lady who was shot and killed. I make a mental note to take a book to the bank with me next time.

Opening an account takes me two and a half whole hours of my life. My bank manager is the most arrogant Argentine I have met so far. He gets the job done eventually but he might as well be down at the beach, so relaxed is he about his work. He drums his fingernails incessantly on his shiny, polished wooden desk as he leans right back in his bouncy office chair, practically horizontal. 

Mr Arrogant says I will need to open both a peso account and a dollar account, something I've never heard of before and which seems a bit absurd. I know that transferring money out of Argentina is practically impossible and that having a dollar account can help with this, but he doesn't seem to realise that I'm British and would still have to change the dollars into pounds anyway. I know there's a logic somewhere, but no amount of questioning him leads to an explanation. Either he doesn't know the reason himself or - more likely - he is simply too lazy and arrogant to bother to explain it to me. 

My queries about how I can transfer money back to the UK are met with similar reluctance and nonchalance. Mr Arrogant says he has to go photocopy something and returns about 40 minutes later with a couple of sheets of paper. I'm pretty sure he's been out for his lunch or something while I sit there twiddling my thumbs, unable to check my Crackberry lest the security police clamp down on me again.

Two and a half hours later I exit the bank, exhausted. At least I finally have a local bank account now.