I've Never Been Myself

My name is Adam. “Madam I’m Adam,” say that spelled backwards. But most of my life I have been Fred’s son or Frank’s grandson. My wife works for a nonprofit, so I am always volunteered to help with her job. When this happens, I am Carley’s husband. After having children, I am referred to as the twin’s dad or <insert child’s name here> dad. My wife used to call me ‘honey’ or ‘babe’ when we started seeing each other but I have graduated to the more prestigious ‘Don’t you know where anything goes?’ I am sure all husbands have a special name. I have rarely been myself. Don’t get me wrong, I am very proud of my family, I just thought it was odd to think about one day. 

               In the banking world we all have titles and responsibilities for different areas of service or levels of management. My grandpa Frank used to say that no matter what you do in the bank, you are somebody’s banker. Every customer has their ‘go to’ person they talk to first about everything. I remember my first years of banking, a long-time customer came in and waited 20 minutes to talk to the location president. After they left, I found out all they wanted was to order checks. The location president had probably always been their point of contact with the bank since they became customers. That is who they trusted and that is who they wanted to see. People develop relationships with whom they transact business with regularly. In banking that trust is important when dealing with money and an even bigger liability, personal information. 

               Fraud is the most common topic we talk about every day now at work. Lots of people are not themselves out there. It has cost all banks time and money chasing scams, fraudulent calls, checks, debit card transactions, and they will probably make up a new scheme before I finish writing this. This is where community banks have an advantage. We get to know the customer and the customer knows us. Even if you bank online, I encourage you to stop in the bank once and a while and get to know one of our friendly bankers. If you live many miles away from one of our locations, we can schedule a Zoom meeting if you want to put a face with a name. When you get a questionable call, email, text, or something in the mail you can always contact ‘your banker’ and have someone you trust to find the right answer for you. Again, trust is huge when we want to find answers about our money or personal information. I have seen a lot of difficult situations that could have been resolved by a phone call to your trusted bank employee. I had a customer of mine call me from vacation in Mexico on a weekend and we solved a problem. 

               We just had Ryan Sothan from the Nebraska Attorney General’s office speak to our customers in the Bruning Opera House about fraud. It was a very informative talk that high school kids to 90-year-olds all came away with something they found interesting. One of the takeaways I got from his presentation: If something looks suspicious or you get an offer that is too good to be true. Tell at least one person about it. Hopefully you have a close friend or family member that can do the smell test. Seriously consider talking to a trusted banker in one of our locations, we have heard so many stories and yours may sound familiar. We don’t judge, bankers get scammed too. 

               At home I get lots of questions. My twin three-year-olds ask about everything in tandem. Like two little toddler journalists. Why is it dark in the morning when we go to school? Why is it cold today, it was hot yesterday? Why does little brother (15-month-old) not talk yet? They are curious about names as well. Why is your name daddy when sometimes mom calls you Adam? I am glad they don’t repeat the other things she calls me. Then I must explain that my name is Adam, but my favorite name to be called is Dad. 

-Adam Bruning, Loan Officer-