Did you hear about the experiment carried out by Nedbank? That got your attention. Doesn’t sound right, does it? Banks shouldn’t be experimenting on people. That’s the government’s job.

Here’s what happened. The bank took over a restaurant in Sandton and replaced the regular pubescent waitstaff with actors who were at retirement age. The patrons, being young South Africans, grew increasingly frustrated with the slow pace of service, the mixing up of orders and the random soiling of broeks when someone took too long to decide on a starter.

Customers only realised they were part of an experiment when they received their bill, revealing that the person serving them was not really a waiter, but an actor.

The experiment wasn’t, as you might think, to teach the younger generation to be more tolerant of older people. It was to show them how they could end up if they didn’t start planning for retirement pretty damn quickly.

Nedbank called it the “ultimate reality check” and a “major wake-up call”. Yes, old people were trotted out as an example of those who had failed to save or make enough money during their productive years. This could be you one day, the experiment hissed, if you are too stupid or lazy to make the right decisions today.

So Nedbank’s idea of a doomsday scenario is ending up in your twilight years working in a cosy restaurant, meeting all sorts of people while enjoying free meals with enough tips for a half-jack of rum at the end of your shift. In my world, that’s virtually a best-case scenario.

I hope the patrons were given a discount. I wouldn’t want to spend a small fortune on a night out, only for it to end with me being reminded that if I’m not sensible with my money, I’ll end up alone in a roach-infested garret with rats gnawing on my toes on the nights that I’m not forced to work as a waiter.

If an old person had served me at the Spur when I was, say, 19, would it have made me think about investing wisely to ensure I’d be able to retire comfortably? Hell, no. It would have made me think how easy it would be to eat up and do a runner.

One of Nedbank’s senior goblins explained that the patrons at the restaurant found it difficult to hide their frustration. “The moment of realisation came when the bill arrived, leaving a lasting impression on the diners,” she said.

Yeah, the realisation that Nedbank is using elderly people as an example of how to screw up your life by having to work instead of swanning about on a luxury yacht in the south of France.

Why would any bank give a damn about those who have to keep working after retirement age? They don’t even care that we must stand in a branch for three hours because they only have two chairs and one teller. Expecting banks to be philanthropic is like expecting a pack of hyenas to share their kill with a family of mongooses.

Banks don’t even like old people. They are afraid that we, I mean they, will die before paying off any outstanding loans.

Banks make money from our money. If we took all our money out of the banks and stuck it inside our couches – a laudable example set by our president – there wouldn’t be banks at all. There’d only be empty offices with cheap pens on chains and a homeless person curled up outside on the doorstep.

Nedbank’s cold-hearted exercise has made me more paranoid than usual. I can no longer be sure of anything. Are those genuine car guards or drunk, retrenched reporters hired by The Citizen to let youngsters know there are viable alternatives to a career in journalism?

And the ladies on the tills at my local Spar? They suddenly seem very young. And, dare I say it, whiter than ever. Are they EFF plants sending a signal to the underclass about what could happen if the DA wins next year’s election? Are all the SOEs run by incompetent sociopaths hired by the government in some kind of twisted experiment to test how much strain the country can take before it breaks? Okay, that one actually makes sense.

As if that’s not confusing enough, Nedbank inexplicably warns us not to focus on the present, even though the men from Mordor must surely know that the future is a burning toilet roll soaked in aviation fuel.

Don’t listen to them. When these hateful usurers are out of the office, they can usually be found in Dante’s Seventh Circle, quaffing cocktails and redlining the lustful and gluttonous in accordance with their race.

We are warned by these slavering curs of capitalism that people are living longer than ever before. You’d think that was good news, right? Something to celebrate. Apparently not. Apparently, this is a bad thing because we, the swarming multitudes, can’t be trusted to do the sensible thing and not be a burden on the state even though the state has long been a burden on us.

Plan for the future? Don’t make me laugh.