Thank you, Barclays! :(

Well, this seems to be the week for being grumpy, so let's maintain the trend and turn our attention to Barclay's bank, which is where Keith and I deposit our (lack of) money (as opposed to keeping it in a sock under the bed, you understand.) Now this is not a rant about our brand new, expensive local branch where they have too few people on the till, which means that they have at least two other employees pacing up and down the queue asking everyone if they would like to use the automatic machine to pay in their hard earned groats and offering to help them do it. Nor is it about my perplexity over having these people walk up and down rather than get behind the tills to shorten the queue. I have supreme confidence that Barclay's know exactly what they are doing and have worked out that this is the best use of their employees' time. No, this is about something else entirely.
One of our accounts is a joint account which is used for quite a few incomings and outgoings and which we do our level best to ensure  has an adequate amount of money in it for dates when outgoings are due. So not surprisingly, Keith was less than happy when he noticed last night that money had been paid in to cover outgoings but said outgoings had been refused, which would no doubt give Barclay's a perfect excuse to impose bank charges.
He picked up the phone and within minutes of jumping through the usual hoops, was outlining the problem to the bloke in the other end. After a lengthy conversation, during which Bloke finally conceded that this was a Barclay's Blunder, he pointed out that,  although Bloke agreed not to impose bank charges, it still remained his problem to soothe the ruffled feelings of the people who had not been paid. He did assure Bloke that it was not a personal attack and the conversation ended with Bloke inviting Keith to his birthday party.
No, I made the last bit up, it ended with Bloke trying to persuade Keith to take out home contents insurance with Barclays.
Well, they have to stick to their script, you see, come what may.