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banks make a solid chunk of their revenue off of customer fees and this includes overdraft charges.

i was a teller for about a year for a big name bank and i can tell you that to low income customers overdraft charges weren’t a matter of not having the money but of either their finances being a tightrope balancing act and, being human, they slipped up a little, or being so busy that they were not physically able to make it to the bank in time to deposit their check before the charge came through.

nothing broke my heart more than when they would ask me “cant you please reverse it? i have the money here now!” or say “please i cant afford this charge i wont be able to pay my bills i promise ill be able to pay it tomorrow” the fact that even then having shown up a day after with cash in hand there was still nothing i could do made me feel physically ill from being involved in such a gross expression of greed.

i can read peoples eyes and these werent people trying to jack the system they were parents trying to give kids money for lunch, trying to pay for gas, just scraping by as it was.

my bank, right before i left, raised their overdraft charge from 35 to 40 dollars. that meant if you withdrew a cent over your balance and it wasnt paid back by the end of the day you owed them 40 bucks flat out. thats the difference between food and starving for 2 weeks for some people and a difference between a having a roof and living on the street for others.

everytime i mentioned how bad it made me feel that i couldnt do anything to help to my coworkers i was met with “yeah but they should have just been more careful” “its their own fault for not keeping track of their balance”