when I were a lad
I took a temping job. One day they sent me to a bank's cash-counting centre. I was met by a banking chappy and led down into a basement, through many doors which were all ostentatiously locked behind us as we went. He also took great pains to point out all the CCTV cameras that were pointed at all the doors.

We arrived at a room filled with a few long benches, each with about four counting machines on them. I was given a rather large pile of US $100 bills and told to put them through the counter and pack them together into lots of $10,000, which I would then wrap with a little coloured bit of gummed paper around the middle. Once I had a cool million, I had to bundle it up with another machine that would shrink wrap it, and then lob it into a big blue plastic bin on wheels.

It turns out a million in US dollars isn't as big or heavy as you might think.

There were a few of us there, all counting money and bundling it up before chucking it into this bin. When it was full it was wheeled away and replaced by an empty one.

Did I mention that it was about twice the size of a shopping trolley?

Must have held an awful lot of money.

I did Deutschmarks in the afternoon.

No apologies for length, width or girth. This is all true. I suspect I have handled more cash than any of you. So ner.

Just a shame it wasn't mine.
( frunt It's been a while..., Sat 24 Jun 2006, 14:29, Reply)