The day I left Bank One in 1996 Phoenix, Arizona


If you were living in Phoenix in the nineties, you remember Bank One. They were the bank that Valley Bank became, and if you lived in Phoenix going back to 1800s (yes 1800s), you remember Valley Bank. Nowadays, just to keep the record straight, it's Chase Bank.

I started working for Valley Bank in 1989, and I left in 1996. And it was the best of times, and then it was the worst of times, to work for the company. By the way, I didn't work at a branch, I worked in the tower downtown, as part of the graphics department. I had a cubicle on the 31st floor.

I was very happy to get the job as a graphic designer for Valley Bank, and happier still when Bank One bought it out and everyone got raises, and the company was saved. From 1992, when the process of converting Valley Bank over to Bank One began, life was good for Valley Bank/Bank One employees. In fact, if you recall, back in 1993 the commercials that had been running for many years, with the coaches from ASU and the U of A, Bill and Lute, stayed the same with only the name of the bank changing. In fact, nothing really changed - everyone was able to keep their jobs. But it didn't last.

Within a few years the conversion started, which moved jobs like mine back to the corporate headquarters of Bank One, in Columbus, Ohio. Many people were moved there, which was a mixed blessing - they got to keep their jobs, but they had to move to Columbus, Ohio. I wouldn't have gone, not that I was ever asked! So I resigned.

I loved working there, and it was a sad decision for me to make. I wasn't angry, I just knew that it was time for me to move on. I was too young to just sit around and wait for the axe to fall (which is what most people were doing), I wrote up a nice polite letter and hand-delivered it to my manager. It was "...with great regret..." and I meant it. Yes, it meant that I wouldn't be eligible for unemployment insurance (you don't get that if you quit a job), but watching the layoffs slowly happen was destroying my soul. I needed to get out of there - I wanted to quit while I was having fun.

I had a wonderful lunch with my co-workers, who "roasted" me. I still have some of the cards they gave me. It was in August, and by September I had my new job, which was teaching graphic design at a private college. I was never a "professor" I was kind of a shop teacher, teaching people a skill. I still very much believe in that. I started at Glendale Community College in 2001, and taught there until 2009. For those of you who are familiar with GCC, I was in "the Pit" in HT1 most of the time.

And yes, I still have the same account that I opened at Valley Bank in 1989. I still find myself saying "Bank One" when I should say "Chase", but I'm trying to remember better. I was happy to have had the opportunity to work for them, and I understand that things change.
If you liked this article, and would like to see more, please consider becoming a patron of History Adventuring on Patreon. If you're already a patron, thank you! You make this happen!

 Click here to become a Patron!
History adventuring posts are shared there daily. The basic tier is a dollar a month, and the PhD tier, which includes "then and now" photos, billboards, aerials, videos, and super high-definition photos, is five dollars a month, and is discounted for seniors, veterans, and students.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me
Read more