Well if you do / did, can someone tell me what a bank vault looks like (No-- I don't plan to rob one)? Is it a teeny room in the back of the bank or an underground lair with packs of hundreds behind bars? This has always made me curious. Thanks.
Well, I don't work at a bank, but I've seen the vault door on some banks open many times. I never examined it, but from what I've seen, it's basically a series of safety deposit boxes (looks like a post office sorta), and some boxes of coins and some paper money, all behind a gigantic round door that's seems about a foot thick. I've only seen the ones at the smaller local banks, but I assume the big banks would have a lot more bills and coins.
I was in a Chase branch this week in a small town. It had obviously been a bank building for decades. The vault was open and the inside of the door was so cool! It had "Yale" in big flowing script and just had that feel like Potter's bank in "It's a Wonderful Life" or something. From what I've seen of the inside, it's like crispy1995 said: lots of lockable numbered drawers and such. No visible stacks of money or anything. I would like to have a picture of that old vault door, but I'm sure that is a sure-fire way to get a visit from the FBI! wrb
I was a banker for about 15 years last century. The only consistent thing about bank branch vaults is that virtually all of them have the big, thick, round doors. When one of our branches moved, they took the door and installed it at the new branch, in front of a space about 50% larger than the one they left.
My understanding is that most banks only keep in the vault coin and currency that they might concievably need over the next few weeks and not a large stockpile of excess wads of 100's or whatever. I think the reason is as simple as this- anything they have in cash they can't be earning interest on through lending or whatever so they try to not have more than they need on hand.
It seems people here are describing the safety deposit box area of the vault. There is another door inside the vault that leads to the cash vault. In there, there might be another locked door for the actual currency whereas coins are just stacked up on the floor of the cash vault. Every bank is different. There is one bank I get coins from where the coins are kept in an area between the safety deposit boxes and the actual currency vault (two doors separate the two). this allows them to relax the dual person requirement for tellers that only need to get coin (I guess there aren't too many people trying to stuff thousand dollar boxes of presidential dollars down their shorts). It appears lately, that many banks are trying to keep the currency on hand down to what they need each week and are kind of screwed if the cash handling service misses a delivery or if a customer make a large enough withdrawal (which the bank reserves the right to request a minimum amount of time to put the withdrawal together).
To answer your question, do a google image search of "bank vault" Strange that you haven't seen one... at least half of the banks I visit the vault is plainly visible.
So at the end of the day, does a teller count the contents of his/her drawer (to make sure everything adds up) and returns it to the vault?
My wife used to be a teller in a bank. Yes, they have to count the contents of the till and place it in the vault every day.
If I'm not mistaken, they have to count everything. They do get to cheat a little bit. If something is sealed with a teller verification stamp, it does not need to be broken open and reverified. That is one reason why some tellers may "lie" and say they don't have a roll of halves or a two dollar bill or whatever else, despite having it in the vault. If they need to break the seal/open the box/open the bundle/etc..., then when they balance the vault, they need to recount everything remaining.
