The Cage-Its Isolation

As soon as he has access, the next day, to his compartment in the safe, the teller brings out his tin box containing the cash he needs to use; takes it into the teller's cage and locks the door. With regard to these cages, the approved practice is to have them give complete cover from all sides and from above. The roof, and the sides above the wood-work are built of stout wire. In the front railing a small wicket is placed, through which the teller transacts business with the public. Another wicket at the side for passing vouchers, etc., to the deposit ledger keeper, and the door for ingress and egress constitute the means of communication with outside. The door to the cage is provided with a spring lock which can be opened from the inside by turning a knob, but requiring a key to be opened from the outside. The rules are strict on the point of complete isolation. The teller must not part with the key to his cage door, nor must he allow any one, even of his fellow-officers, into his cage while the cash is there.

Formerly the tellers' cages had walls but no roof. Ingenious thieves took advantage of this to provide themselves with long canes or sticks with a contrivance at the end for taking hold of such things as bundles of cash, and, watching their opportunity, were able on several occasions to reach over the front railings and get away with parcels of money snatched up in this manner from the counter. The roof over the top was the answer given by the banks to these attacks.

After the roof was added it proved valuable also as a defence against a different kind of attack. The officers of a certain bank at a small country branch, other than the teller were overpowered one day several years ago, during the noon-hour, by a couple of desperate villains, one officer being killed by them. The teller, however, was in one of the new style of cages. He kept his door closed and refused to open it or hand over his cash though threatened with revolvers. The hold-up men feared to fire their guns, but they made desperate efforts to break into the cage-one of them getting up on top and tearing and pounding as hard as he could. Thanks to the stoutness of the wire and the lock, and to the opposition of the teller, they were unable to effect an entrance, and their lookout announcing that several customers were approaching, they took themselves off without getting the plunder.

Why Isolation Is Necessary

The reason the other clerks are not allowed in the cage is that the teller alone is responsible for the cash in his charge. If he is short at the end of the day and has religiously obeyed the rules he can be quite sure in his mind that his fellows have not stolen from him nor let him in for loss through errors made by them in transacting business on his behalf. If the door is sometimes locked and sometimes open, the teller constantly running out of his cage, other officers going there in his absence, paying cheques or receiving deposits for him, the difficulty of tracing a shortage is multiplied because there are so many the more of possible ways in which it might have occurred.

The best tellers are extremely strict on this point. While their cash is out of the safe they hardly ever let it, or their cage, out of their sight. They aim to be able to say at the close of every day, "It was not possible for any one, in the bank or out of it, to have taken a single dollar from my cash without my knowledge, between the time it was brought from the safe in the morning and the time it was put back there in the evening."