My close mate has been in hospital for the past 7 weeks for removal of his oesophagas and getting his stomach stretched and rejoined to his throat as he was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer back in July, needless to say this has been a very stressful time for his wife and young son as there was a number of serious complications that arose with the surgery and afterwards, but thankfully there is a good chance he’ll be home in time for xmas and able to eat small amounts of food for the first time in nearly two months . With no money coming in to pay the bills etc the bank have done as much as they can to help out which has been appreciated, his wife was called into the bank this morning and was given a large sack of very carefully wrapped presents addressed from santa to be given to his young son (age 8).

A really touching gift and kudos to RBS for helping out.

Does he work for them or ‘just’ a customer?

And get well soon and merry christmas to your mate!

Cheers bails, he’s just a customer but he’s a skipper on the fishing boats with the assorted bills and stress to go along with all that the job entails, the fishermans mission charity have also been amazing throughout and despite a very pessimistic and gloomy outlook not so long ago it all appears to be heading in the right direction at last as the surgical team believe they have removed all of the tumor.

I’ve been looking after their 8yr old son (i’m sort of a godparent) for the past 6odd weeks whilst his wife has been staying up at Edinburgh to help with his recovery and his son wrote out his xmas list to santa last week, all he asked for was to “have daddy home for xmas” – looks like he’s going to get his xmas wish 😀

I opened this with a mind to bitch about how they should, being taxpayer funded, but that is genuinely a warm, caring thing to do.

Good for them in the branch.

Great from RBS. Best wishes to your mate too.

Genuinely welling up here – that is lovely of the bank and I sincerely hope the little boy gets his Christmas Wish.

That is lovely. I’m with RBS too, and the staff have always been fantastic, though sadly the local branch closed a few months ago.

Do they need anything else Somafunk?

Even if its just a card or something?

Cheers all for the kind words, with our town being a small fishing community they have been rather overwhelmed (and a bit embarrassed to a certain extent) with all the help n’ support from the community so absolutely nothing needed apart from a full table n’ stomach at xmas, should be a rather good one this year.

Nice to read that. Best wishes to your mate and his family,

I worked for them for 10 years, the Bank has changed a lot since I left, but on the whole it’s as impersonal and unemotional as ever, but it’s still run by people and they’re often lovely especially on the customer facing side of things. What a nice story (not the illness bit) I would guess the staff paid for those gifts themselves.

great to read this, restores ones faith a bit.

on the whole it’s as impersonal and unemotional as ever, but it’s still run by people and they’re often lovely

I do some work in customer services for another big bank and it’s the same.

People can be very nice, basically.

😀

“have daddy home for xmas” – looks like he’s going to get his xmas wish

And that is what Christmas is about. Great stuff!

Yeah i imagine it was organised by the staff, our local town branch was closed earlier on in the year and certain members of the staff were transferred 10miles away to the branch in the next town, As P-Jay says above it’s the people employed who make the difference.

As another we add-on i’ve just been around to see them both and i found her almost in tears, i immediately thought ” Oh ****!, whats happened?” but it transpired between stifled sobs that someone had slipped a christmas card through the door which contained a rather significant amount of money with a very touching message (that i’ll keep private) and signed “from santa”.

Sniff…..got something in my bloody eye….sniff.

Merry xmas peeps 😀

Lovely story. Best wishes to all three of them.

This….

…his son wrote out his xmas list to santa last week, all he asked for was to “have daddy home for xmas”

…..brought tears to my eyes. So nice.

(And it’s not even slightly dusty in here, I just coincidentally became a big wuss at the same time as I became a dad myself 😆 )

Ahh……. but being an 8yr old and knowing that there is a good chance his dad will now be home for xmas there has appeared another “extra” xmas list, it’s small with only 6 items on it…mostly wwe wrestling stuff so i imagine it’s now quite manageable.

Kids eh?…. 😉

Hehe. Brilliant 😆

Good lad.

Blimey + blimey….. that’s quite something.

On another note my FiL was one of the first, if not the first to have that op. Although Bert is no longer with us (due to another condition)
he had a pretty normal life after the op. All good matey.

That’s good to hear Speshpaul, he’s only 50 and pretty fit as working on the boats all your life will do that to you, although the lifestyle that shadows the job ain’t exactly the healthiest – I’ve saw the scars that he’s left with after the operation and it’s quite major surgery to recover from, not aided by the punctured lung which was caused when they split his chest, that was undiagnosed for a fortnight and an abscess formed and the pain was so severe they eventually sent him for a scan and found it so at one point he had 4/5 suction drains in his chest cavity – only got one left now though so fingers crossed.

He’s home 😀 , still has a drain in his chest but thankfully it’s gonna be a good xmas.

Awesome News!

Some bankers are lovely. One NatWest person sat with my mum for more than an hour re-printing statements for the last 10 years because of a dispute with a financial advisor.