I certainly hope so because I recall doing work experience in a bank as a high school student and I found it to be dead boring. I had three days to do at the Commonwealth Bank on The Corso in Manly and by the end of the first day the one advantage I had gleaned from my time in the Trading Bank section was that I most definitely did not want to go into banking when I left school! I had to wear a knee length skirt and blouse – proper work clothes – and court shoes, not sandals, so I was very uncomfortable from the off. Back then people did not make enquiries about things like what the ‘best cd rates are’ or how to apply for a lost atm card…because they did not exist in 1978.

I really did not have a lot to do in the way of hands-on work so I spent most of my time watching the tellers do their work using the old file-card system, customers account details were handwritten on a card and you had to enter their deposit and withdrawal details in the passbooks by hand. No computers anywhere. How times have changed. But whenever I go into a bank today – and that is a job in itself because the banks these days prefer you to use the machine outside – I still think I made the right decision not to work in a bank. It looks so boring!