I was in a HSBC bank branch last week and frankly, it was an experience like none I've ever had before.

Rather than simply have a row of tellers sitting behind glass which you approach from the ranks of an orderly queue, the bank entrance is an open lobby with rows of cash machines and a staff of one helpful woman. If your needs are more complex than those dealt with by an ATM then she gives you a numbered ticket and you are sent off to what can only be described as a holding pen with the reassurance that your wait should only be "five to seven minutes".

Well, everyone knows that sort of guesswork is pure smoke but it sounds like they know what they are talking about. Anyway, back in the holding pen you wait until you are summoned by a bank employee, who in my case descended from above in a glass elevator. Very Willie Wonka.

He was perfectly helpful and we concluded our business but the whole thing was slightly bizarre. What's wrong with banks the way they were?

It just goes to show how grim things were last year when it's revealed that more than a million people applied for the Vanquis credit card, with butt-cheek clenching interest rate of 60%.

The card, from sub-prime lender Provident Financial, had 2,700 applicants a day. This is a pretty impressive sort of business, but what is even more staggering is the fact that more than 80% of applicants were actually rejected.

In general, Provident decided these individuals were already stretched too far financially. What did they expect? Who, apart from the poor sods with miserable credit ratings, highly-leveraged incomes and assorted money worries would even think of applying a credit card on which they would be paying an interest rate of 60%?

I'm never sure about the German sense of humour, but I hope their latest suggestion is made with tongue firmly planted in cheek.

They've suggest to Greece that one of the best ways to raise cash would be sell off some of their islands. One big newspaper headline read 'We Give You Cash, You Give Us Corfu!'.

When you say it out loud, it actually doesn't seem that bad a deal.

Not over yet for Digest
The UK arm of Reader's Digest could well be rescued by one of the nearly 100 potential buyers who have registered an interest in the embattled magazine.

Apparently, around 30% of the approaches are for the whole business, according to administrators of the 72-year-old British title. With a staff of 117 across the UK and circulation of nearly half a million, it would be a result if one of the suitors decides to go the whole way.

I love the ongoing spat between Ryanair and Easyjet and I bet the advertising departments at newspapers across the land are just as enthusiastic.

Because the intense rivalry between the UK's two leading budget airlines means they are so self-absorbed in everything they do that they actually don't feel any criticism from Joe Public outraged at being charged to board a plan, take luggage or even dare to want to eat on one of their flights.

They are both as bad as each other, taking the golden age of jet travel to lows.

Ryanair seems to love taking out expensive newspaper adverts attacking the opposition but the in-fighting is so 'in' that half the time I have no idea what the point of the advertisement actually is. Something about Stelios, or late planes? But I did have sympathy with Easyjet's slagging off Ryanair for advertising that they flew direct to European cities when in fact they flew to towns nearby.

That really is it. Ambition is actually dead.

What other conclusion could you logically reach when it turns out that people would rather work for Nando's than Goldman Sachs.

That's Nando's, the Portuguese-themed chain that specialises in piri-piri chicken and endless refills of soft drinks. And Goldman Sachs? Well that's the US-based but global bank that has just defied the rest of the world and paid out billions in bonuses to its employees.

I know a fat salary isn't the only thing to make a job worthwhile, I would like to think that the opportunity of some sort of career path would be attractive. What exactly is that trajectory at a restaurant chain that manufactures a taste of Portugal on the retail estates fringing our towns and cities?

It's a modern dilemma. If a cash machine spits out more cash than you asked for in an obvious mechanical fault, what do you do?

Notify the owners immediately and stand guard over the errant ATM so no other punters fall victim to its whim? Or rush to the pub, tell all your mates and max up every card you own to it's daily limit?

No need to tell you what happened at a shopping centre in Bridgend, Wales over the weekend. Handily, there's a pub nearby the Fourbuoys Shop and Post Office in the Triangle Shopping Centre, which emptied pretty sharpish with up to 50 punters forming an orderly queue to use the cash machine there that suddenly began paying out double whatever was requested.

Apparently one gent maxed up his £500 cash limit on three accounts and took home £3,000 instead of £1,500 before the police arrived on the scene 45 minutes after the fault first came to light and everyone scarpered. Still, you can do a lot of transactions in 45 minutes.

So what does this tell us about ourselves?

If you had shares in Centrica, owners of British Gas, then last week was a mixed week. One minute you discover that the company has made a brilliant profit, in collusion with Mother Nature and the Big Freeze.

The next minute you learn that you're going have to cut the prices you charge consumers in the future because making such large profits at their expense isn't really the done thing.

Man from the Pru comes through
Endowment policies have stunk in recent years and many finance companies who provided them went through real pain over problems with mis-selling and plummeting values of with-profit funds.

So the news from Prudential that it is paying out £2 billion to its customers after a strong performance of its funds in 2009 is a bit of a surprise for its 4 million customers.

Not that they're complaining of course - particularly if you are one of those who has paid £50 into an endowment policy over the last 25 years, because it would now be worth more than £35,000 if it matures this year.

Whenever I post about house prices rising and how this is a sign that some strength is returning to the market, I receive comments from people moaning that this simply makes it even harder for first-time homebuyers to join the property circus.

So for all those folk, here is some good news: House prices fell for the first time in 10 months during February according to figures out today.

But before you start doing cartwheels round the front room, the Nationwide is saying that this may be attributed to the freezing cold weather we've been having and the end of the stamp duty holiday for people buying properties worth up to £175,000. That level dropped back to £125,000 at the beginning of this year.

So let me get this right. Jobless figures are up around the 2.5 million mark, the economy stinks, no-one has any money and still the number of people chucking their jobs in is rising.

How does that work. Does work really suck that much? Apparently so. according to figures today form the Chartered Management Institute which shows that the number of workforce resignations is up from 4.5% to 4.7%.

Not only is that surprising, but the survey of 200 companies also found that they are failing to persuade staff to stay as requests for internal transfers, as an alternative to resigning, have also fallen.

Ocado, the people who deliver your shopping from Waitrose – the Duchess of Cornwall's favourite supermarket – are pressing ahead with a stock exchange listing, despite other big businesses recently deciding now is not the time to be looking for an injection of investment cash.

New Look, the high street fashion chain, and Merlin Entertainments, who own Madame Tussaud's and Legoland, recently dropped their plans for a listing citing the volatility of the market.

It's not just a small investment Ocado is looking for, the online grocer is wanting £1billion and that could be a big ask when you bear in mind that the company hasn't turned a real profit in any of the eight years it's been in business.