THE bank teller who served me was chewing gum, and the greyish blob of flavoured rubber was visible against one of her molars whenever she spoke.

It wasn't exactly the end of civilisation as we know it but it did amount to a telltale moment -- especially as this happened, not in an outpost, but in the bank's flagship Dublin city centre branch.

Counter staff are the public face of a bank; the first and sometimes only point of interaction with customers. Their role, therefore, is umbilical.

Once, they were trained to regard it as a duty to be infallibly spruce and polite. But standards, in some cases, seem to be slipping -- yet another casualty of the financial collapse.

A job in a bank used to be one for which people scrambled. Nobody regarded it as the world's most exciting profession but the compensations were manifold, including its reassuring status as a career that was -- to use an expression we now know to be an oxymoron -- as safe as houses.

Nowadays, working at the coalface of banking has to be among the least enviable jobs in our society -- with staff left as dismayed as the general public by the tidal wave of events since September 2008. It comes as no surprise if their frustration occasionally shows in their faces. After all, they must continue to button on their uniforms, toiling for institutions by which they feel betrayed. Answerable to generals whose inept decisions have left their troops feeling equally stigmatised.

And yet those same senior executives remain extremely well paid by any standards. Some, as Eamon Gilmore pointed out in the Dail yesterday, still earn in excess of the €500,000 cap in the Government's guidelines for top bankers' pay. So much for the era of frugality ushered in by that new broom we keep hearing about. The capers involving AIB expose it as a sham.

Taxpayers have turned the other cheek to the banks with remarkable forbearance. The thanks we get are a Judas kiss from AIB: a bank which tried to disdain the salary cap, having already disregarded Brian Lenihan's instructions for its new chief executive to be an external appointment. But however jaundiced we feel, bank staff must feel even more betrayed -- their loyalty unappreciated by the upper echelons. No doubt many bankers fantasise about walking away from their jobs, except prospects for alternative employment are grim. What can they do but take it on the chin from queues of resentful customers?

Esprit de corps has crumbled to esprit de corpse among bank staff, not alone within AIB but across the sector. This is a thoroughly demoralised workforce, and their disheartened attitude is mirrored by their environment. Branches frequently appear downright scruffy compared to a few years ago.

Staff can't even look forward to a Christmas knees-up this year because banks including AIB and Bank of Ireland have scrapped their annual parties, citing the economic climate. While it makes sense financially, customers needn't expect to see too many sunny smiles behind the counters.

Meanwhile, what we can see is a disconnect between banks' marketing departments and their senior management teams. Marketing chiefs realise action must be taken to counteract the damage wreaked on banking's public image: TV adverts are airing which present banks as integral to the community -- AIB has a small boy racing through the fields to pose for a group photo with his GAA team, while Permanent TSB depicts children bringing library books to the housebound elderly. Theoretically, such strategies emphasising fellowship and inclusiveness should help reconfigure public disenchantment. But the benefits of that advertising spend, hot on the heels of a €3.5bn cash injection from the public purse, are undermined by the bungling of AIB's senior executives.

A Jekyll and Hyde scenario is currently being played out -- with banks claiming, via advertising, an invaluable status within society. In reality, they are arguably our peskiest problem. One version of banking emerges during news bulletins, while a contradictory one is presented in the ad breaks. It might be funny if it wasn't so serious.

Yet the financial institutions are correct in depicting themselves as integral to how Ireland works. That's why our troubles mount when a major bank persistently gets it wrong, as AIB has been doing. People depend on banks to keep their businesses running. If banks cease to operate, so do their companies -- and the economy disintegrates.

Bickering about an extra €133,000 in a banker's pay packet, now resolved, may seem like a storm in a teacup in a country which has just borrowed €54bn from the European Central Bank. But we repeatedly shrugged off incontinent salaries here and wanton severance payments there, even in the face of staggering inefficiency. Sooner or later, it had to end. Damage has been done, however. Colm Doherty's belated willingness to get out of bed for roughly €1,370 a day may show he is aware that life is no picnic for his staff and customers. But the attitude of his employees towards their jobs has changed since the banking collapse, just as workers' attitudes elsewhere have undergone a significant shift. We will see that again in action during Tuesday's day of protests.

AIB's behaviour has given ammunition to strikers, and handicapped the Government's efforts to get its Budget through. The bank's gamble has cost more than a lost €133,000 for its new chief executive -- not just gum but chair legs should be chewed this week.

- Martina Devlin

Irish Independent