Fearing the oncoming frost, I decided to stop by my bank today to buy electricity for my apartment. I waited in line for two hours and what looked like another two hours before I'd get to the bank teller before one of the staff told me that I could simply use my ATM card to charge money onto my electric card. So I walked over to the ATM and quietly waited in line for another half hour. Right as the man in front of me finished, some woman ran up, cut me in line and started punching her account information into the ATM. 

She spent about thirty minutes, withdrawing what looked like enough money to buy the controlling stock of Google. 

Long story short, I never want to go to a bank in Beijing again, my apartment be damned.