Without getting into the details let me just say that yesterday my wife and I were frantic to set up Health Savings Accounts (HSA’s). Our first instinct was to go to our business bank – Wachovia.

The people in the tiny Lake Wylie branch greeted us and offered to help us. We told them what we needed. That’s when the smiles vanished.

People shuffled from office to office, looking through binders, folders and file cabinets. Calls were made. After a short while a very nice young man handed us a brochure with a toll free number, apologized and said they couldn’t help us but assured us if we called that number or went online the application process would be easy and quick. Nice try, Scooter.

The clock was ticking and we hadn’t even asked the tough question yet: We wanted to deposit $7,000 into the account and have at least some of the funds available in the morning (for the doctor visit I forgot about).

My wife and I huddled. There was no way we were going to get this completed on the phone or online and have access to our funds in the morning. Wachovia, like all large financial institutions, can take a week to clear a check. You as a person and your current deposits matter little with large institutions and even less with bureaucrats. Scale forces that policy.

They have rules and (by God!) everyone obeys them. What to do? It was 4:00. Action was required. We bolted through the door.

Clover Community Bank was two miles away and we knew the Vice President, Paige McCarter. Woohoo! We’d talked about changing banks but never acted. Our minds raced.

Would the fact that we weren’t an existing customer hurt us or help us? Would our relationship with Paige matter? She always seemed very nice but this was business. Nice had nothing to do with business, right?

Wrong. Nice still matters in Lake Wylie, South Carolina. We cut to the chase and so did she. “Don’t worry,” she said with a big smile. “The funds are available to you now.” A few taps on the keyboard was all it took.

It was after 5:00 and the front door was locked when we were handed our temporary checkbooks and told our debit cards would arrive in a week.

As Paige and Kathy, our wonderful account rep, waived goodbye through the glass door I said to my wife, “We really need to change banks…” She replied in a sober tone, “I’ll take care of it.”