If you have money in a Bank, whose money is it really?

Your money goes in, but now try to get it out!

When you have your money in a bank, it seems to belong to them, not you.
I had an interesting experience, which I will share to make my point.
A customer paid me with a check, which I immediately took to their bank to get cash. They asked me to come back in 4 hours. Then when I showed up they apologized and asked me to come back tomorrow. I called the customer, who apologized, he was quite embarrassed and he came to the bank directly and tried to withdrawal cash from his account to pay me.
The bank declined his request to access his own money to pay me.
He went from embarrassed to furious in a few minutes. He showed me his bank balance, which was in access of the amount he owed me by 10x at least.
The poor teller appeared caught between a rock and a hard place, as the banks customer was in front of her asking for his money and her manager was behind her telling her she couldn't release that much cash to one customer, otherwise they wouldn't have cash for other customers.
I looked at them thinking that their poor planning wasn't my problem.
I mean after all can't they just ask for more cash from one of their ten branches??
And..If anyone knows where to get cash in a pinch, it should be a bank!

I had to break the stalemate by asking for a cashiers check.
Which they agreed to do, but not before making their customer jump through some hoops and they wanted to charge him a fee.
The nerve and the greed.
Anyhow I suggested they do it for free as an apology for their customer, who now wanted to close his account and move to another bank.
Which now panicked the manager, as well as the poor teller, who seemed to grow smaller with each moment, as she wilted in the heat of this ridiculous situation.

The ironic thing is that I later found out that the bank teller had actually requested extra cash to honor the check, and was prepared to pay me when I came back the second time. But her manager heard only part of the story and intervened, not knowing this was extra cash, not just normal cash on hand.
Retrospectively I know understand his facial expressions which seemed strange at the time.
He must have realized that the bank teller was following proper procedure, and she should be allowed to pay me. But then he would have to admit he was wrong, in front of the customer. I guess he was trapped by his ego and he didn't want to admit his mistake. So he ignored the bank teller's request, and his customers request, and denied the dispersal of funds.
So in the end, both my customer and the bank teller were embarrassed because each had promised to pay me. And the teller, who had followed the bank's proper procedure, but now she had been embarrassed by her boss. Who assumed she was acting improperly.
Humans and Banks, a bad combination of egos and rules.