I don't know about you guys, but when I was in elementary school (probably around 3rd or 4th grade), my teacher decided to do this thing where she gave everyone in the class a fake checkbook, told us we had $100 in our account, and told us that we had to spend it but we couldn't spend more than what we had. I think we had a little list of things we could "buy," and the idea was to teach us how to write checks and balance checkbooks, at least as far as our little minds could comprehend. That means, for the past 18 years, I have at least had a vague idea of how to write a check. It almost seemed instinctual - until today.
I had to give my landlord rent today, so I whipped out my brand-new Barclay's checkbook, confident and ready to handle my business. Only problem was, the checks looked totally different from what I'm used to. None of my housemates were home, so I sat for a minute and tried to figure out what to do. Finally, after staring at the lines on the check, I decided to swallow my pride, call the bank, and get them to walk me through the whole thing. After some initial confusion, the rep who answered the phone finally understood what I needed.
"Just write the payee on the first line, the amount on the next line, and cross the check", he told me.
Right, I can do that! Payee: Robert Ingram. First line. A-ok. 2nd line: write the amount out in words. Easy as pie. I already figured out that you write the amount in numerals in the box with the pound sign. And just cross the check - wait a minute. Cross the check? What the hell does that mean?
Of course, I asked him what it meant - he told me that if you don't cross the check, anyone can cash it, but if you do cross the check, only the person whose name is in the payee line can cash/deposit it. Alright, fine, I definitely need to cross that bad boy. But how? It took him a while to understand that I didn't know how to cross the check, but finally he was able to tell me that you simply put two lines vertically somewhere on the check and write "Account Payee" in between the lines. And hey, that had already been done on my check when they printed it! Woohoo!!!
I signed my check, then just asked him where the memo line was so I could say what the check is for (a record of rent, you know). Except, it appears that British checks don't have a memo line. Sigh. At least my check is pre-crossed.
After all the lines had been sufficiently filled out, I thanked him profusely and hung up. I wonder if that will be one of the calls they recorded to use for training purposes? I'd love to get a copy of that one! 