Where's your money?

So now that I'm earning a paycheck (whatever a pittance it might be) I'm looking around for somewhere to keep my money. In the past, I've just had a Wamu (Washington Mutual) account however the interest rate for their checking and savings accounts are extremely low-- 0% and 0.08% respectively. I've never had enough money in my accounts combined (usually less than $1000) for the interest rate to really matter-- however the readily available ATMs and free checks from Wamu were definitely beneficial through college.

Now that I'm in Boston however, Wamu doesn't have any branches out here so I have no ATMs (I usually obtain cash by getting cash back at grocery stores or else paying for people meals with my card and having them pay me back in cash). I also anticipate having a significantly greater amount of money that the interest rate begins matter. I've looked into a couple different banks including Citibank, HSBC and IgoBanking. Each bank offers at least 3% interest rate on their online savings accounts-- and sometimes for their checking accounts. Citi would have been ideal for me because they have many ATMs available here in Boston. If I applied with HSBC and IgoBanking though, I would have had to do most of my banking online (although I've basically been doing that presently anyhow).

The challenge I face now however is that as a new graduate with little established credit, working at a new job and the fact that I don't have any loans out, don't pay utilities nor phone bills (our house doesn't even have a land line) I'm having a lot of trouble even just opening an account. I tried applying at Citi, and jumped through all their initial hoops in proving my residence with a paper statement from Wamu (which set me back $5 because I had to request one from wamu since they don't send me paper statements usually and Citi didn't accept a printed copy of the online statement) and all the other basic stuff. However, now they want a letter from my employer, utility and phone bills (which I don't have) and multiple pay stubs from the last 60 days (except I'm paid on a monthly basis-- not biweekly so I only have 2). They also keep asking for my land line number (not cell phone) which we don't have. I've called Citi and waited many minutes to talk to heavily accented phone representatives who don't seem to understand how I can't have a land line and utilities bills. In essence I'm completely fed up with the process and exploring other options.

I may end up opening a checking account at the local Citibank in person and opening a savings account at another institution (does anyone know if it'll be an issue transferring funds from one bank to another?). I'm also now considering just opening an account at the MIT Credit Union since it'd be much simpler since I'm already an employee here-- however the interest rate is not as nice as the online accounts (around 1% rather than 3%).

So my question to you guys-- What banks do you guys have accounts in? Have you had any similar challenges opening an account (like the ones I currently face)? Do you have various accounts (perhaps at various banks) for various functions (Emergency stash, short term investments, online accounts, money market account, CDs)? What sort of interest rates do you get? What was the decision process for you to open an account at that bank?