MBNA has a huge headquarters building in Hunt Valley.

Well, they had it until they got taken over by Bank of America. So now, Bank of America has a nice headquarters building in Hunt Valley. Recently, the signage was changed to reflect this new ownership. So, if you’re driving up or down 83, or up York Road, or across Shawan, it’s impossible to notice the large gray building with big “BANK OF AMERICA” logos everywhere you look.

There are lots of things to hate about this new change of ownership. For one, the security staff was replaced, and the new guys are nowhere as efficient as the old, in-house security. They’re hired from one of those security staffing firms, y’know, the ones that attract wanna-be cops. A lot of the new employees are easy to hate — they totally stand out from the MBNA hold overs. The MBNA hold overs look sad and dour, like they’re living in a nation occupied by a foreign power, and while they might be okay with that, they’re not so happy with being told that everything they’re doing is being done completely wrong, and could you please learn this two-hundred-and-fifty page Bank of America procedural manual by Monday, please?

The news ones, by contrast, are smug and chipper, bad combinations to be when you’re stiffing a pizza guy who has been waiting in the lobby for ten minutes and wants to punch a wall, but your smug, chipper face will do in a pinch. *POW!*

But that’s not why I’m blogging about Bank of America’s takeover of MBNA. Every time I’ve been in that building since the change of the logo, I’ve witnessed a remarkeable phenomenon.

Customers will walk into the lobby. Like, actually thinking the building is a bank, customers. They try to get past the security doors, they actually slide deposit slips and wads of cash through the security window. Today, one woman, storming out of the building after learning, “No, sorry, we’re not a bank” began yelling at me. Or to me. “What a horrid place for a headquarters building! How was I supposed to know this isn’t a bank? What do you have to say for yourself?”

Lady, I got a stack of friggen pizzas in my hands and I’m wearing shorts and a t-shirt and a baseball cap, all splattered with pizza sauce. Do I really — really — look like I am a Bank of America employee?

According to the security guard, this happens a dozen or so times a day. People park in the big ass lot — and far out, because all the closer spaces are taken. Then they walk to the building, thinking it’s just one reaaaaally big branch location. Then they get upset, and they scream at people, and all the security staff wants for a Christmas in July, besides raises or extra vacation days, all they’d really really really like … is a big sign at each entrance, reading something like, “This Office Building Does Not Have a Bank Branch.”

Or, my suggestion, “stupid people go home.”