What I don’t understand is when the government does it.
This is by design! Republicans love reducing hours of government offices and introducing new partworkd and requirements to make it harder for The Poors to meet whatever new arbitrary requirements they've added to access a given program or be able to vote
The local branch is for when average joes are doing a big transaction. So you take some time off of work to meet with the banker to complete the paperwork for your mortgage or other loan, or to setup your money market account, etc.