Banks have a new image. Now you have ’a friend ’ your friendly banker. If the banks are so friendly, how come they chain down the pens?

Alan King (1927–2004) was a prominent American stand-up comedian known for observational routines about everyday irritations—bureaucracy, consumer culture, and especially money and institutions. This line fits his long-running comic persona of the skeptical customer confronting corporate “friendliness” and marketing spin. In the late 20th century, banks increasingly promoted themselves as approachable service businesses (“your friendly banker”) even as their branches retained small security measures—like pens tethered to counters—to deter petty theft. King uses that familiar detail from bank lobbies to puncture the advertised image and highlight the gap between public relations and lived experience.

The joke turns on a contradiction: banks claim intimacy and trust (“a friend”), yet behave as if customers can’t be trusted with something as trivial as a pen. King’s point is less about pens than about power and suspicion in commercial relationships. The “friendly banker” slogan suggests mutual goodwill, but the chained pen is a tiny emblem of institutional control—security, surveillance, and assumptions about human behavior. By focusing on a mundane object, King exposes how corporate language can mask a fundamentally transactional relationship. The humor comes from deflating sentimental branding with a concrete, slightly absurd reality that many listeners recognize instantly.