Are we powerless?

This is going to be a 'bitchy' blog. May sound trite to some but it's the little things that pile up and overflow on occasion.

Needed a cheque for tomorrow to put a deposit on something I'm buying. I ran out of them a couple of weeks ago and needed to order more. So off to the bank today to re-order some. I was expecting to get a few 'counter' cheques to tide me over till my new ones arrive. Well, guess what. My bank has decided to no longer offer this service....counter cheques that is. I asked why. It's funny how people react to questions sometimes. It threw the teller into a look of confusion. She had no idea why the bank no longer offers this service. She gave a couple of guess answers which were insufficient for me.

I went to the receptionist and she too gave a very vague reply. Most people would have left it there. But being my father's son, and I was very well trained, I left a message for the branch manager and asked her to call me. I'm still waiting to hear from her.

In the meantime I called their nearest competitor and inquired about their cheque policy. They give out enough cheques to last you till your new ones arrive. I figure as long as banks are still using the chequing system, they should keep it intact until they stop cheques all together (which is probably pretty soon).

I know....who uses cheques today anyway? I do on occasion. And I find cheques to be convenient every once in a while. Like right now!!

This is just an example of how we are trained in our culture to just accept things without question. And before you know it we have lost some of the privileges and sometimes rights (actually we have few rights when it comes to banks) that we have become accustomed to.

Yeah, but what about progress and letting go of the past ? I love progress and moving ahead, but not blindly accepting whatever has been decided for me without any input. It happens every day and before you know it our society will be following into step and doing what we are told for fear of upsetting the statis quo.

My piddly little example of how we are losing control of our lives and allowing large corporations to take over, is just one situation that occurs daily while we are all consumed with living our lives.

So what do we do if we feel that 'things ' are going in a bad direction? Well, I asked questions and let the 'powers that be' know of my concern. To me, how else can we take back some control of things that directly affect us?

What would you do? Or, do you care at all?