Where Are Your Trash Baskets?

When we remodeled our kitchen, we installed an outsize counter area into the middle of the floor. The lip of the counter extends beyond the dishwasher, and under the lip was a convenient place to put the trash basket, which consists of an open container with a plastic bag in it.

We had not taken into consideration the fact that anything placed on the counter faces the possibility of being brushed off to disappear into the trash. Which is exactly what happened to a favorite piece of jewelry one day and mail that had been put there on another. We moved the trash can!

But it made me conscious of the placement of trash receptacles not only at home, but also in my office. What I found inspired me to move a couple of them so that there was less chance of something being pushed off a desk, a table, or a counter top into them accidentally.

I mentioned all of this to a banker friend of mine. She later told me that our conversation made her look around the office where she works. As a result, she immediately started relocating trash containers that were in risky locations.

She also managed to get rid of a couple of trash receptacles. The safe deposit booths all had trash cans in them, which had to be checked each time the booth was used. (Excellent practice!) They decided there was no need to have them in there, and removing them took away the need to check them. Out they went.

Auditors and Security Officers all have horror stories about trash. Bundles of work in Proof and Transit that have dropped off of counter tops into the trash, with the discovery of the missing work not noticed before the trash was disposed of by the cleaning people; food stamps piled up and thrown away with the trash inadvertently; coupons and checks in the Mortgage Department that somehow got mixed in with the envelopes and discarded; cash that has been brushed off teller's counters (the most quickly discovered of all banking "throwaways", due to end of the day settlement); and, in one bizarre case, the contents of a safe deposit box being audited had been placed in a plastic bag. The bag was mistaken for trash, put out on the curb, and hauled away!

We learned a long time ago the wisdom of saving trash bags in banking offices for up to a week before putting them out for disposal. But sometimes we forget that it may be just as important to hold the trash from Operations for several days also-especially in such areas as proof and transit, return items, bookkeeping and anywhere securities or collateral are kept. Throwing away a trash bag "before its time" could prove to be very costly!

Copyright © 1990 Bankers' Hotline. Originally appeared in Bankers' Hotline, Vol. 1, No. 10, 9/90