It had never been a problem for me for anything until the other day, when a teller at the bank seemed confused by me signing my name using the short form instead of the longer version (which I don't think I've ever actually signed in my entire life!) She made me cross it out and sign using the longer form. It seems weird to me that she made me alter my own signature.
Even in the past when doing more official things, like government forms and licenses, me printing out my full given name but then signing the shorter version has never been a problem.
You should have asked her why she was forcing you to sign your name in a way you had never used as your legal signature. A lot of people just use their first initial and last name. It's still legal.
Some tellers go on a power trip sometimes, or for some reason they just decide to be jerks. I've been at the same bank for over 35 years, and suddenly one day a teller got all officious and told me to fill out a new signature card. I asked her why, and she said, "We do this every year."
Liar. I didn't call her one, but considered it. So I signed the new card (the signature looked identical to every other time I ever signed anything there), and told her to get on with what I went in for.
Oddly enough, my signature has changed a little during the last 20 years - sometimes the fibromyalgia makes my fingers lock up partway through writing a word and it might not come out quite right. Nobody's said anything, though. Maybe that one day, 25 years ago, I wasn't dressed nicely enough or something, or she was like the teller who got paranoid when I went in to do some banking for my grandmother (I had power of attorney). The conversation consisted of him flatly saying "No" every time I pointed out that I had power of attorney and she'd asked me to do this bit of business. So finally I said, "I'd like to speak to your supervisor, please."
"No."
"I'd like to speak to your supervisor NOW." (in the meantime, a lineup at least 6 people deep was behind me, and I had no intention of leaving)
So his supervisor showed up, took me back to her desk, and said it would have been easier if I'd had an account at that bank... and I said, "Well, I do have an account here - for over 10 years."
"Why didn't you tell him that, and show him your card?"
So I told her that he'd never asked, just kept saying "No."
She got the papers so I could finish my grandmother's business, and hopefully the teller got a remedial course in how to deal with customers who wanted more than the standard deposit/withdrawal sort of transaction.
