TWELVE YEARS
ON THE OTHER SIDE
OF THE COUNTER.

I spent twelve years inside retail banking. I opened accounts. I sold credit cards. I processed the overdraft fees. I sat through the trainings where the targets were explained — how many products per customer, what conversion rates were expected, which scripts to use when a customer asked the wrong question.

I am not going to tell you the bankers were villains. Most of them are not. The structure was the villain. The products were designed at the top, the incentives were designed at the top, and the disclosures were written to be technically compliant and practically unreadable. By the time a fee was charged at the counter, six layers of design had already made it inevitable.

I left because I got tired of explaining the same trap to the same kind of customer — a working person, usually, who had done nothing wrong except assume the system was on their side.

The Checkout Line is the explanation I wish I could have given them at the counter, without the script, without the upsell, without the time limit. It is free because the information should be free. There are no affiliate links because affiliate links create the same conflict of interest the industry already has. The only thing I want from you is for you to keep reading, and to forward an issue to someone who is about to sign something.