How to get served more quickly in a bank
1. Wait patiently - to be more specific, all you need to do is to wait *more* patiently than the people in front of you. Eventually, as seeing an actual person in a bank takes ages, the person ahead in the queue will get bored, start tutting and huffing, and will leave. You are now one place further up! Rinse and repeat. You could also regale the people waiting behind you with tales of how long you've already waited. This won't move you along in the queue, but might just provide some entertainment.

2. To get your cheque processed quickly, use one of those automated machines, but put too much paper in along with your cheque and paying-in slip. The machine will have the digital equivalent of a choking fit and will spit it all back out at you, but, a member of staff will *also* creep out of wherever they were hiding to sort it all out manually. Your cheque is now stamped and processed whilst everyone else with a cheque is waiting to see a teller. Clever.
( Peapod Has returned to the fold on, Tue 21 Jul 2009, 18:18, 1 reply)

I do the latter
at airports when I can't be fucked to wait for passport control to get off their coffee break. London Stansted, to be precise. They have these funky new electric passport readers with a camera; so I go off to it, put my passport through, stare and it goes *beeeep* and doesn't let me through. Now I know it won't, my passport photo is years old and I have long hair now. I feign ignorance and they usher me off to the 'rejected' desk, where a guy checks you in detail. All in all it saves me about 10 minutes, and when in need of a piss that's a long 10 minutes.
(Frozen_Banana Shaved against the grain; thoroughly unrewarding., Wed 22 Jul 2009, 1:55, closed)