AFCU

We don't have anything super interesting going on other than the fact that I went to training this week for my new job as a teller for America First Credit Union. As such, I don't have any pictures for this post. :( Sorry!

The first two days were a new employee orientation training. I liked the people working at the training-- everyone was so nice! If you don't know the difference between a bank and credit union, let me fill you in with some of my notes from the training. A credit union is a group of people who save together and lend to each other at a fair and reasonable rate of interest. Credit Unions are owned and controlled by the people who use them. They are also democratically controlled by their members. So, in a credit union the member (rather than customer) is more important than the board of directors, president, etc. The profits made from a credit union are returned to the members through means of much lower interest rates (and in the building of new branches and payroll of employees). Banks are run by shareholders, to whom the profits are returned. Customers have no rights under the organizational structure. The board of directors represents the interests of shareholders and investors rather than members. Essentially, banks are profit driven whereas credit unions are member-service driven. As a patron of AFCU, I can definitely see this member importance from instances when I've gone to the bank. Even in this training it was evident that, even though we were employees, we were also members to be treated with courtesy, friendship and respect. The days were so long but the information present was so good (even the section on what to do if you're robbed! Yikes!).

The second two days were spent on teller training. Oh man, there was so much to learn! I did pretty well on the test they gave me but I'm scared of messing up when it actually comes time to help members. I'm sure I will get used to it within the first couple of weeks. Our trainer in these meetings was really cool as well and made it easy to learn. These two days were also very long! I start in Spanish Fork on Monday and I am nervous and excited all the same.