I love heartwarming headlines that reveal human nature. One such truth — no matter how badly you’ve screwed up, there’s always someone more inept.
Proof?
Minnesota’s Moon Rocks Missing No More.
Ah, the “Gopher State,” their motto? “’Star of the North’ – Because We Can’t Find Our Moon Rocks.” Their official mineral is reported to be “iron ore,” but we can’t be sure because someone mislaid the sample.
But no more shame. All is forgiven. The moon rocks turned up in a storage facility for military artifacts. I’m sure this makes perfect sense to people who spend half their time standing in shorts, knee-deep in snowdrifts.
Way to go, Minnesota! Wonderful news, and since these rocks were worth millions of dollars and disappeared for decades on somebody else’s watch, I can now feel better about the time I lost $1 million for a week.
Yes, it really happened. No, I wasn’t in Reno.
The story dates to the days I worked for a multi-national corporation and one of my employees made the money disappear with the push of a few buttons. I was an assistant branch manager at a place I’ll call L.E.B., the Large-Evil-Bank. This L.E.B. location was only a small branch in the mountains. Sally, our NCR operator, shuffled up to me late one Friday afternoon with “a problem.”
“I’m going to need some help closing out,” Sally said.
“Don’t you balance?”
“No,” Sally said, “and it’s a round number.”
This meant, in banker’s lingo, that it wasn’t likely a “transposition error.” Those numbers are always divisible by nine and easy to spot.
“How much?” I asked.
“I checked everything, a mil.”
I thought that Sally had called the corporate help-line, known for its international staff, and talked to ‘Amil.’
“What did Amil say?” I asked.
“Amil who?”
“Amil at corporate?”
“Who called her?” Sally asked.
“You did, right?”
“Why?”
“Over the difference. How much was it?”
“A MIL. I’M OUT A MILLION DOLLARS.” Sally shouted.
Some sentences just hang in the air.
I stared at Sally—she stared back. I waited for her to smile, slap me on the back, and say she was “just funnin.’” After all, Sally was a practical joker, known for leaving baskets of black Easter Eggs on desks of people she disliked and putting Vaseline on doorknobs of the men’s room. “Just to make ‘em wash their damn hands.”
Unfortunately, Sally was the same gal who, just two months before, had time-locked the vault while tens of millions of dollars in loan documents were sitting on our manager’s desk.
He spent the weekend sleeping at the branch with his .45.
I looked at Sally, hoping she was kidding. She wasn’t.
“What are we going to tell CL?” I asked.
“Oops?” Sally shrugged.
“How did it happen?”
Sally related a tale of creative bookkeeping where one minor mistake was covered with another, slightly larger error. She’d repeat this process rapidly, working with nimble figures and diligence, until a cool million has vanished—on paper.
Sally and I presented ourselves to the manager, CL. He turned white.
“Are you calling the auditors?” I asked.
“Like hell,” he said, eyes narrowing. “We’re gonna find that money.”
Six of us pored over every transaction that had rattled through the NCR machine Friday. Hundreds of them, totaling tens of millions of dollars. There were odd entries, as Sally had said, where she “plugged” numbers to force a balance. It was like trying to unmask a David Copperfield trick. The money just disappeared. Hours ticked by. Finally, we had to give up and release the bag of documents to our evening courier.
We “charged the difference to suspense,” which is to say the branch loaned itself a million dollars. CL was furious, because we were now paying daily interest, to corporate, on a MILLION DOLLARS. The cost was taken from our tiny branch’s profit.
“But the LEB hasn’t lost anything,” I said, hoping to calm CL. “Corporate gets paid.”
“MY BONUS DEPENDS ON BRANCH PROFITABILITY.” He glared at me, and I shrank back to my desk.
So we didn’t report the loss. We waited, biting our nails, for the money to turn up. Days went by, each time I saw the manager, he looked angrier, and I hoped he’d left his .45 at home. Finally, the “difference” kicked back from central accounting. Their computers found—and returned—the money.
But I had a l-o-n-g week of wondering how I’d explain to auditors or people wearing uniforms, where the dough had gone. I hadn’t a clue. This did factor into my decision that, maybe, banking wasn’t the right job for me.
So, this week’s headline gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling.
MINNESOTA’S MOON ROCKS MISSING NO MORE.
Minnesota fouled up big-time. Better yet, there are still 11 screw-up-states that lost moon rocks entrusted to them by Richard Nixon. I REALLY enjoyed reading this, one of the few times you’ll see “trust” and “Richard Nixon” in the same sentence.
In closing, if you’re ever having a bad day, like my Dad did when he left his truck in neutral and it drove itself into an oil sump, or my wife when she can’t find either her blue-tooth earpiece OR her prescription reading glasses, just remember that you’re doing better than Alabama, Louisiana, Nevada, Massachusetts, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia.
Take a bow. You survived, and you didn’t get your name in the newspapers.
Way to go, Minnesota.
Robb has enjoyed writing and performing since he was a child, and many of his earliest performances earned him a special recognition-reserved seating in the principal’s office at Highland Elementary. Since then, in addition to his weekly column on A News Cafe – “Or So it Seems™” – Robb has written news and features for The Bakersfield Californian, appeared on stage as an opening stand-up act in Reno, and his writing has been published in the Funny Times. His short stories have won honorable mention national competition. His screenplay, “One Little Indian,” Was a top-ten finalist in the Writer’s Digest competition. Robb presently lives, writes and teaches in Shasta County.
