THE PAYING TELLER General Duties and Qualifications The paying teller is ranked as "first" teller of a bank. This rank is due to the high responsibilities devolving upon his office. His prime duties are to keep the bank's cash and pay it out over the counter, but there are many ancillary duties, such as: I. Making shipments of currency to the bank's correspond ents and to the United States Treasury and the federal reserve bank.
2. Certifying checks and other items.
3. Caring for signature files.
4. Recording and watching stop-payment orders.
5. Settling clearing house balances.
6. Attending to the pay-roll of the bank itself and of other institutions for which the bank performs this service.
The number of these ancillary duties performed by the paying teller's department depends upon the degree to which the bank is departmentalized; the tendency is toward a more exclusive devo tion to keeping the cash and paying it out over the counter and toward an allocation of the other functions to specialized deriva tive departments. For instance, in the smaller banks the paying teller attends to the certification of checks and other items, while in the larger banks this work is delegated to a separate certifica tion department; likewise in the larger banks the work of gather ing, filing, and proving signatures is taken over by the signature department, and the counting and proving of moneys are per formed by the money department.
In another sense than that of responsibility the paying teller is a very important personage in the bank. He and the receiving teller come into most intimate contact with the public and with the bank's customers, though the window men in other depart ments, for example, the discount department, the loan depart ment, the customers' securities department, the note teller's department, etc., also meet some of the customers and public. The receiving teller meets for the most part only the customers of the bank; the paying teller meets both customers and public. The former must especially strive to retain the clientele of the bank by considerate and courteous treatment, the latter to spread the good-will of the bank among outsiders and attract new cus tomers. Much of the gospel of the bank is disseminated through these tellers.
The statement of his duties indicates the qualifications of a good paying teller. He must know most intimately and thor oughly all the United States moneys and their characteristic differences; he must know in the same thorough manner the na ture and essentials and legal phases of the commercial instruments which he may be asked to cash; he must be expert in counting and handling money; and he must be a man of tact, with good memory for the names and faces of the people with whom he transacts business and for the peculiar preferences of each. He must pos sess good address and dignity and should be patient, affable, and easy to meet.
Internal Organization of Paying Teller's Department The internal organization of the paying teller's department depends upon the degree of its separation from the receiving teller's department, with which it is fused in small banks and in larger banks organized on the unit system, the one teller both receiving and paying funds. Its organization also depends upon the num ber of functions it performs and the number performed by de partments that are offshoots of it. Another factor entering into its internal organization is the number of people who visit the bank for payments over the paying teller's counter. Some large banks have relatively few counter customers and the big bulk of their deposits and payments is transacted by mail and through the clearing house. Of this sort is the bank, which this text seeks primarily to portray, situated in the down-town section of a central reserve city; and even in the case of this very large bank two paying tellers may be found sufficient to handle the counter trade. In such a bank a chief paying teller would supervise the two paying tellers (window men) and keep them supplied with cash from the vaults; each paying teller would have his cage and assistant paying teller, and between these paying tellers' cages would be a cage for a clerk or bookkeeper who would handle the clerical work for the two. The handling of signatures and certi fications and the counting of money would be taken care of by specialized departments. The paying teller's department would be therefore so specialized as to require but few men.