In this age of technology, salary and wages are deposited directly into our bank accounts, for most or a lot of folks anyway.
That being so, would today’s generation ever know the true joy of cashing a paycheck?
Oh, sure, they don’t have to rush to the bank on Fridays, or whenever payday is, then standing in line waiting. But there was a fun side to that, too.
There was an utter thrill to endorse your check, hand it over to the banker and, in return, get a handful of cash. Wow! Exciting – because in at least just that one moment, before it was time for groceries and bills, you had, and you felt, and you saw that money.
Many years ago, my friend’s little daughter was my goddaughter, and I opened for her a college savings account with a brokerage firm. If I simply wrote a check to deposit, she wouldn’t have that real experience of understanding money and setting aside some for the future. Instead, I went to my bank, took out the money in small bills, and we also gathered up some of her money as well – a full $27, pretty impressive for a third grader back in the late 1990’s.
Though that was still in the days when people used cash regularly, it was the start of the cashless society, and the brokerage firm was one of the early ones with that rule. They did not accept cash. I explained quietly to the wealth manager, or whatever they like to call themselves – I just call her the lady at the counter – that I wanted to pay in cash to help the child understand money. The lady at the counter was dubious and didn’t see how it could be done. I proposed a deal that she accepted skeptically – but in the end it worked: I wrote a check for the amount and slipped the lady the check when the little girl wasn’t looking. Then the three of us went through the official transaction of opening the account, and then, making the deposits with stacks $1 bills. We’d hand over the money, which she accepted and wrote the receipt for, and then as we were leaving, the lady discreetly gave me back the cash, because she had my check.
I am writing this column on payday. Naturally, I feel a little jolt of pleasure and calm knowing that money is being deposited into my account and once again I resume the dance of pay and receive, pay and receive, pay and receive.
But what hit me today was the thought that though I feel a little pleasure and calm at payday, I don’t feel the thrill I once had.
The last time I received an actual paycheck, rather than direct deposit, was 2015.
Before the switch to digital in 2015, on Wednesdays around 11 a.m., a little buzz would go around the newsroom where I worked. It was payday!
Sometime around or before noon, Tammy Foster, and later, Jennifer Prillaman, would come up to the newsroom and pass out our checks.
Anyone who was particularly hard up for money and couldn’t wait until noon would go down to Tammy’s office, or Jennifer’s office, to see if the checks were ready yet and if so, get our check out of the stack and rush off to the bank.
But definitely by noon, we’d all have our checks in hand, and we’d all rush off to the bank to deposit most of them and get out some cash – and then we’d all meet at some restaurant in town and have lunch together.
As journalists, we made as little money as one could make at a job which required a 4-year college degree, but we probably loved our jobs more than anyone on the planet. We had a true joy for our work, our community, our articles and our newsroom and, once a week, for those payday lunches.
By Friday perhaps, and definitely by Monday, we wouldn’t be able to afford to go out to lunch anymore, so it had to be Wednesday, and so we joined each other around the table cheerfully, buoyed by the short-lasting but predictably repeatable thrill of the paycheck.
