The good news: not a great deal has changed. The bad news: everybody I met seems so stressed that they go out of their way to find vexatious issues to attack.
We get so focused on the mouse that we lose sight of the elephant. As a business owner, an economic being, your task is to make as much profit as you can with the least effort. And if anything gets in your way, your task is to shrug it off and move on. Your task is not to try and convince this errant being/corporation of the error of their ways, and to bludgeon them into submitting to your will. Simply move on.
Of course it's a little vexing when you don't get your own way, but it's also the universe's way of suggesting another path, if only you will step back from whacking this poor problem/person.
So if FNB/ Nedbank/ Standard Bank/ ABSA want to charge you blood for the privilege of exchanging your offshore/Internet earned dollars/ pounds/ Kuwaiti dinar/ Thai baht/ Japanese sushi, then you face a few choices:
- Stop trying and give up;
- waste a lot of time and effort forcing the issue, and do yourself and your family a conniption in the process;
- open an account at another bank/branch of FNB/ Nedbank/ Standard Bank/ ABSA;
- or open an account with LloydsTSB/ Barclays/ HSBC anywhere in the world (or any other bank that you fancy anywhere in the world).
A farmer with a humongous stump in the middle of his primary field does not refuse to plant corn because the stump won't come out, nor does he spend 5 valuable days attacking the stump with his spade. He plows around it and gets on with his day. That could explain why he is so much more relaxed than the rest of us!
It's all a game. At least that's what we tell our children when they puff up with self-righteous indignation. When did we forget that en route to adulthood?
