Aug 24, 2020, 14:44 PM

Every business has been faced with different challenges during the pandemic.  Our biggest problem has been staffing levels as we’ve tried to balance the safety of members and employees with our obligations to meet your banking needs.  To minimize the exposure of COVID-19 at Metro, we instituted a strict “stay home if you’re sick” policy, and this has led to daily staff shortages, especially among frontline employees.

Over the past several weeks, staffing shortages necessitated the closing of two of seven lobbies, and a mini-cluster of COVID-19 cases at Maple caused us to close the entire office for a few days.  Now, with remote-learning school districts impacting parent-employees of school age children, and flu season on the way, we’re faced with the likelihood of more service disruptions.

Financial institutions have attempted to deal with this in different ways.  Some never reopened their lobbies following the April – May shutdowns.  Others advertised lobbies being open, but with warnings of long delays due to staff shortages.  We recognize visiting a financial institution is something many people do when it is convenient for them, and they don’t check office availability on websites before they go.  To make service hours as predictable as possible, we’re reducing the number of days most of our lobbies are open to enable us to “over-schedule” staff on Mondays, Fridays and Saturdays.  In summary:

• Drive-thrus open normal hours:  Because over 70% of transactions now are in the Drive-thru, we will keep normal Drive-thru hours, Monday through Saturday, at all offices.
• Reduced lobby hours:  All lobbies except our F Street lobby will have normal hours on Mondays, Fridays, and Saturdays, and be “by appointment only” on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
• F Street only normal hours:  Our F Street offices will have normal Drive-thru and Lobby hours Monday through Saturday.
• Appointments available normal hours:  Members can make appointments for loans and new accounts Monday through Saturday at all offices.

We understand you have a choice in where you bank, and we apologize for the inconvenience of temporarily reduced lobby hours.  We believe by making these changes, we’ll be able to provide a more consistent schedule with predictable availability to meet your needs.  Thank you for banking at Metro, and thank you for your patience as we work through these times.