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When the bell rings, Ruedi Meister changes from the village shop to the bank. At the end of the year, this will be the end of it in trade fairs.
Ruedi Meister doesn’t look like a banker in a red polo shirt. But he has been running a bank for 25 years – right next to his village shop in Messen in Solothurn. When the bank’s doorbell rings in the shop, Meister scurries through a door from Denner to the office of Spar- und Leihkasse Bucheggberg SLB. At the end of the year, however, the Bucheggberg banker will retire and what is probably the most personal bank counter in the region will be closed.
Legend:
When he is on “bank duty” and the bell rings, Ruedi Meister changes from the wine rack in Denner to the bank.
SRF
The office in Messen will be closed due to changed customer needs, writes the savings and loan association Bucheggberg in its message. It is with a heavy heart that the only branch next to the headquarters in Lüterswil is closed.
Ruedi Meister believes that fewer and fewer customers come to the counter to withdraw cash, for example. Today he changes from the store to the bank 30 to 40 times a day. When he started 25 years ago, he was called to the bank counter around 100 times.
Legend:
The passage from the shop to the bank is between Güetzi and French fries chips.
SRF
In person and without a tie
His customers appreciate the casual contact with the banker in the Denner shirt. He even comes to the counter in his work clothes, says a customer who exchanges an old banknote at Ruedi Meister. Here it is more personal than with a banker in a tie.
An elderly lady also regrets the closure of the office. She withdraws 6,000 francs from her account. The money has to last until spring. Only when the snow is gone can she cycle over the hill to the bank’s headquarters. There is still an ATM in trade fairs, but withdrawing money with the card is not for her, says the senior citizen.
Legend:
The shop on the right, the bank on the left: some customers bought something in the village shop and came to the bank through personal contact with Ruedi Meister.
SRF
Ruedi Meister usually knows his customers from the rural Solothurn-Bernese border region personally. And she appreciates a short, informal chat with the boss of the bank and the village shop. The SLB branch in Messen has existed since 1944. Up until the renovation in 1992, the bank and shop were even more closely linked than they are today, reports Meister with a laugh: “Before that, there was a Wild West counter with an open safe. My father-in-law told me that people had bought pasta in the store and he had counted thousand notes next door. “
Legend:
The bank closes, the ATM remains. However, not all customers can come to terms with this replacement.
SRF
In spring, Ruedi Meister will retire as the shop owner and hand over his village shop to new hands. He will miss personal contact with customers, says the 63-year-old. The bank’s doorbell will ring a few more times until New Year’s Eve. And the banker in the polo shirt will switch from the store to the bank through the door between chips and Güetzi.