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Comment by corytheboyd | Hacker News Reader

Watching my parents go through the drive in bank teller using pneumatic tubes to send items back and forth is such a fun cool memory I have from my childhood. In a funny way, it still feels way more “sci-fi future tech” than pressing a touch screen and wait 4 seconds for a change to happen… or not.

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I did some contracting at a bank and an employee told me about a problem they had with their pneumatic tubes: A customer had taken the carrier with them when they drove off, so the teller put their spare into the tube and continued working. A short while later the customer realized they had absconded with the carrier and returned to the drive-thru and put it back into the tube. The next customer put their deposit in the carrier and sent it off - the teller received it and said "Sir, there's nothing in here." and held up the empty carrier to the window to show them. And sent it back. The customer took the carrier out, held it up to show his documents in it, and sent it back into the bank .. only to arrive empty again. They eventually figured out there were two carriers in the tube.

They still use those here. My local bank had candies, like tootsie rolls, that they'd send with withdrawals if parents let them know they had kids in the car. It was always such a treat to watch the cool pneumatic tube and then get a sugary treat to top it all off.

I think my local bank branch still has a drive through and (I assume) pneumatic tubes although I've never used it. But then I think I've used the ATM once in maybe the past three or four years.

> although I've never used it

I'm seriously considering going to the bank drive-through just to experience the pneumatic tubes again. I rarely ever get cash from the bank, I've only ever actually used an ATM a couple times in my entire life, but I feel a strong desire to relive this childhood experience.

Same experience. Getting flavored tootsie rolls out of a pneumatic bank tube is basically a core memory.

Ahhh yes, the flavored ones. The bank was the only place I ever ate the flavored ones, added an air of mystery to the experience.

In the midwest it's still the reality, because in the winter it gets darn cold.

Glad to hear the dream of the nineties is alive in the midwest:D

Oh its here. Metro Detroit. It gets cold. The thought of banks not having pneumatic tubes is so strange to me I'm chuckling here.

Seeing you reminisce about something that I see almost daily is a weird culture shock in that people in our same country experience life is somehow completely opposite ways.

It's like if someome told me there a secret Blockbuster still serving some quiet neighborhood in the country and for them its just... normal.

In fact there is, and it is:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbuster_(Bend,_Oregon)

> Seeing you reminisce about something that I see almost daily is a weird culture shock

How about: i legitimately thought that the pneumatic tube system i saw in Futurama where Hermes saves the day was a made up thing (or otherwise not commercially used or deployed outside of some sort of lab setting) until i came across this submission?

I feel so silly right now.

Costco used to use them in the stores to send money to the main cashier, Home Depot might have had them too.

Or you can get food!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTHZLKFblKo

Yes, back when it was actually costco. Everything changed after the merger. I dont think i saw any pneumatics afterwards.

This is lovely hah. To be honest though the bank systems are extremely primitive with short runs so I never considered them on par or in the same class with the "industrial" pneumatic systems seen in heist movies or spanning entire buildings with complicated runs.

(Probably literally) tons of paper used to be shuffled around office buildings. My first (mechanical) engineering job basically everything was typed (by a secretary) in triplicate(?) with a copy sent off to central filing. If you started a new project, one of the first things you did was head to central filing to take a look for related paperwork.

We didn't have a pneumatic system but we did have internal mail delivered multiple times a day. There was even a trope back then of people starting their careers "in the mail room."

You see that in Monsters Inc and the sequel - they started off in the mail room. Most people think of the mail room as where incoming mail is sorted by the company, but the vast majority of it was often sorting internal mail, because mail from "outside" usually went to accounts receivable or accounts payable. But inter-office communication was huge, before it was all emailed away.

It's also a trope explored in The Hudsucker Proxy and Elf for a wider variety of movies to watch. Both I believe reference that the Empire State Building in New York has (had?) a pneumatic inter-floor (inter-office) mail system. I don't recall if it still operates and I don't know if either or both filmed in the actual ESB mail room or not.

(Also if you want a videogame that plays with the trope, Grim Fandango has a fascinating pneumatic tube mail room and it factors into some of the puzzles. I believe it is also indirectly referencing the Empire State Building.)

People did get a lot of trade magazines and other random stuff too. I didn't have work email at alll in my first job. And it was internal only at my next one until quite a few years later.

Conversely, if someone sent me physical mail at work today, I'd have to make special arrangements to even get it. If it were a package I assume/hope receiving would send me an email. Otherwise, I assume they just toss it given I haven't seen anything from them in years.

Someone else posted this recently and features both XKCD and supportive, positive thoughts. Enjoy!

https://xkcd.com/1053/

>> Oh its here. Metro Detroit. It gets cold.

Lol. Detroit doesnt get cold. My local bank closed its ATMs after hours due to homeless people sleeping in the vestibule. Strangely, with real winter comming soon they are going to re-open the vestibules to provide emergency shelter to all people maybe caught out in the cold. It hits -30 and -40 regularly around here. Drive thoughs are a norm because at those temps nobody wants to turn their car off. People regularly leave cars/trucks running while they shop in stores, if the parking lot doesnt have plugs for block heaters.

It’s a huge country out there! I love how different parts of it are, it makes domestic travel a real treat!

I have a RadioShack I can walk to.

Bank offices and cash is something I only see in old movies nowadays.

I assume a lot of it is for small businesses, but I'm actually always a bit surprised at the sheer volume of bank branches in prime downtown real estate.

I think the only time I've gone in a bank/brokerage branch in years is when I've needed something notarized or I've had some non-standard brokerage transaction I've needed to handle in person.

They are common in the Catskills of upstate New York too

and in the NYS Capital Region, just a wee bit north. Brand new bank renovations or branches all have pneumo-tubes in their outer lanes, ATM(s) along the wall to the building.

Though, I _do_ remember Woolworth's, banks, state offices and Lord knows what else back in the early '80s still using these like whoa.

There are still some pharmacies that offer medicine by tube but most have gone to a single drive thru.

Random trivia. Woolworth's still exists. But all the stores are called Foot Locker now.

And in the south where it’s hot. Loads of these in Houston and New Orleans for example.

Same in Fort Worth/Dallas

What is the alternative for banks that have more than one drive-in lane?

Much of California went to just multiple ATMs I think.

I used to love to go to the bank with my parents or a friend's parents and beg to get to put the tube in.

Also remember the local science museum had a pneumatic tube system to play with and we'd sit there with that for some time.

Lollipops were always sweeter delivered by pneumatic tube :)

Omg yes another great reason to go to the bank.

When I used to work at a bank, the staff at a branch that still used tubes at the drive through would complain about how hard they are to maintain. Apparently they were down to a single contractor in the whole county who knew how to fix them, and he was always threatening to retire soon.

Those bank-teller tubes are still in use in the Denver suburbs.

We still have them in the KC metro area, Fwiw.

And all over Florida.

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