Night shift in banks in Ireland in late 1990s and early 2000s.

political analyst

I've heard of people working night shifts - into the early hours of the morning - in banks in cities in Ireland in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

I know that cleaners go into 9-to-5 workplaces after the staff have gone home but the cleaning is done long before midnight.

Why would people have been working up to and past midnight in Irish city banks in the period that I'm referring to? Was it because computer systems were advanced enough to provide 24-hour banking even that long ago?

ottolwinner

Probably international trading and the emergence of the internet. It’s always breakfast time somewhere.

G_R

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058326841/night-shift-in-banks-in-ireland-in-late-1990s-and-early-2000s

Manually processing transactions that have since been automated perhaps?

psicic

The bit I'm aware of wasn't because of advanced banking services but manual transactions (though I'm not saying the advanced stuff didn't exist - just I've no info on that side of things).

Relative did it for BoI and maybe AIB - involved manually executing transfers and processing cheques at night. As G_R said, stuff that has since been automated and many people at the time thought was already automated and handled by computers. No degree in banking required - it operated with low paid staff like a call centre, just processing instead of taking calls.

Grayson

Because in banking, lower level employees are expected to do that? I've heard stories that people would stayback even when there wasn't much to do since it was how they showed their dedication.

Baba Yaga

remember that,was driving a taxi on nights at the time and the radio company i was with had the account for one of the banks,think the way it worked was the small branches would send their paper transactions to the bigger branches,they in turn would manually put that on to these big tape yokes,thats what they were called anyway,and then from around 9pm the calls would come in from those branches to pick up the tapes to take to the main computer centre,the one i dropped to was cabinteely,was a good job if you could time it right and get the call,might be a dozen or 20 odd pickups,just those tape things,all the bigger branches had staff in them until at least midnight at the time(late 80s until 2000 when i got out of taxiing) and the computer centre was 24/7

Calahonda52

Ah the night shift series from the '80s

Chuck works as a morgue attendant in New York City. His life takes an ugly turn when one of his colleagues decides to turn the morgue into a brothel in order to make more money

GR and Baba are correct

z80CPU

I used this facility in the EBS. Not all branches. The ebs in rathfarnham shopping centre had it, their branches in Waterford and dungarvan did not.

Around 1997 to 2000.

Then the night banking facility was withdrawn by mutual agreement by all financial institutions here or something.

hoodie6029

Processing cheques and other manual transactions done in branches mostly. AIB used to do it at Adelaide Road. It was a nice premium over the crappy Bank Official wages and a paid for taxi home. Two weeks of nights, two weeks of days IIRC.

The technology wasn’t there to automate it when the Banks moved to digital in the 80’s.

Outsourced during the recession and cheque volumes haven fallen through the floor.

There are stories of night shift staff going on the piss on the weeks of their day shifts and turning up at Adelaide Road at the end of shift to hop in a free taxi with one of the staff. Taxi driver didn’t care, he was getting paid anyway.

political analyst

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493414#Comment_121493414

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121494314#Comment_121494314

I've heard of people in city branches of the main banks in this country working in these branches at 2 in the morning at the turn of the millennium but, surely, manual transactions would still be done and dusted before midnight, wouldn't they?

Jim2007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058326841/night-shift-in-banks-in-ireland-in-late-1990s-and-early-2000s

Every bank I have ever worked at in the last three decades in Europe still have night shifts and probably will for the foreseeable future. The financial world is 7x24 and there is always something going on that impacts Irish and European banks. Not to mention systems fall over, data feeds are corrupt or delayed and so on. And somebody has to do whatever is necessary to make sure that when you wake up tomorrow morning that the bank is operational tomorrow morning.

A simple example, suppose New York discovers serious pricing errors and have to restate their prices and is it late for the third party data services to rerun their systems in time to deliver it to Europe so we can run our nightly processes. That means that every single financial institution in Europe will be running with wrong data tomorrow if nothing is done. So someone like myself at each institution will get called out of bed in the middle of the night to make the decisions on who the bank will operate tomorrow (run with the wrong data, reload the previous days data, or something else) and then a an army of IT staff and Business staff will start to work through the critical systems to make sure every system will come up and work and the business people will be aware of the issue and have procedures in place to deal with it until the following night.

You could have maybe four or five incidents being run by critical incident managers every night. The number of staff on site in Europe doing night shifts has fallen as IT and business work is offshored, but the nightshifts still go on.

And BTW, there is not such thing as 24-hour banking, we just do a good job of creating that impression for the clients. But there are always parts of the system offline, some places where we are taking educated guesses and so on. It's just a decision on how much risk we'll take and who big a loss we are willing to swallow if we get it wrong.

NewbridgeIR

There was lots of overtime in branches during 2002 when the euro came in. People were bringing in punts and coin all day. You'd generally be out by 8.00pm though. Clearing departments had shift work.

hoodie6029

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121495804#Comment_121495804

Still going on at the Central Bank, but not the overtime though. Pre-decimal stuff still turning up if you can believe that!

https://www.irishtimes.com/your-money/2023/02/13/hundreds-of-millions-of-punts-is-still-being-eaten-by-rats-and-snails/

Nodster

My bro-in-law worked as a trader in the San Francisco Stock Exchange in the 80/90's and he told me he worked mad early shifts like 4am starts

Padre_Pio

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121504810#Comment_121504810

Working when the NYSE opens at 9.30est

Ger Roe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493193#Comment_121493193

In the 80's and 90's, I worked for an Irish telecoms company that designed and manufactured secure teleconferencing equipment. This was long before general VOIP internet communications and it involved physically connecting and switching multiple telephone lines together and holding large conferences, or splitting them into smaller 'rooms' for breakout discussions. They were used by many of the major world banks, including at the London HQ of Goldman Sachs where staff called in to it from all over their worldwide operation for meetings and updates, at all hours of the day and night.

One day I was sent to London to check out the gear, because conference callers from around the world were having difficulty using the system on a particular stock market conference that was held at 3am. The London office was closed at that time, but elsewhere in the world, staff were scheduled to ring in automatically and discuss strategy for the closing and opening of various stock exchanges. I was told that the pin code access feature would not work for some, and despite inputting the correct four digits, some callers in Asia were being locked out of the conference.

I got to the location in the late afternoon and checked out the equipment, but could find no issue with it. The female manager that was responsible for the area, insisted that the equipment was faulty and I simply had to fix it. When I told her that the only option to investigate further was for me to be present at the console while the conference was taking place at 3am, she was horrified and said that there was no way that she was coming back at that late hour. Against security protocol, she arranged for me to be let into the building at 2.30am on the strict instruction that I went straight to the comms room and left as soon as I was finished.

At 2.30 AM the reception desk security guard let me in and I went to the equipment. I quickly identified the issue as operator error. Some callers were located in underdeveloped countries, still using rotary dial phones, so they were dialing in their pin code, instead of punching the programmed keypad tones that the system could understand.

Having identified the issue, I went to leave at about 3.30 and needed to use the loo. Retracing my steps out, I came across a disabled toilet and went in. There were very few lights operational in the corridors at that hour of the night, the toilet room was in darkness and I couldn't see a light switch. There was however a string hanging from the ceiling and thinking it was a pull light switch, I gave it a go. It was in fact an assistance alarm and a red flashing light and beeping alert started up in the corridor. Security guards appeared from everywhere and I had some explaining to do about who I was and what I was doing sneaking around Goldman Sachs in the small hours of the morning.

I believe that the area manager who had arranged for me to be allowed in unaccompanied, had far more explaining to do, when she was woken from her slumber by a very annoyed security manager, to verify my story.

Dramatik

Had a friend who worked nights in a bank, as far as I can remember a lot of what he did was to do with data storage and management.

I believe data was stored on some kind of tape storage system which had to be manually changed/swapped at certain times, including all throughout the night and early morning.

murpho999

I'm ex bank employee. Worked from 92-98 in AIB Donnybrook house.

It was the data centre and at night they were processing old big reel tapes that came in from branches and other banks and clients with transactions. It was a big operation.

There was also people working in the cheque clearing department too which was quite big.

Staff that worked the shifts received a 25% shift allowance, so it was worth their while.

Of course i'd say all that work has been replaced not by technology and the demise of cheques.