Keep the Change by Harley J. Spiller

Author:Harley J. Spiller [Harley J. Spiller]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Published: 2015-05-26T16:00:00+00:00

…but I’m not bound and I never will Be to a wrinkled crinkled wadded dollar bill.

“Wrinkled Crinkled Wadded Dollar Bill,” 1968 song written by Vince Matthews and sung by Johnny Cash

My best friend, Joe, has been a banker for more than three decades. He started as a teller in 1980 and now manages a bank with more than $400 million in assets. He’s as honest as a summer day is long and good at the work. He can, for example, by feel alone, unfailingly distinguish the denominations of US currency.4

One autumn night in the mid-1980s I called Joe to shoot the breeze. “What’s cooking?” I asked.

“Not much,” he said. “The wife and daughter are good; I’m making my mortgage; and—oh, yeah—I threw out $870.53 earlier tonight.”

“Huh? Come again?” I inquired, incredulous, of the guy I’d trusted to divvy every tab we’d ever rung up.

“I just threw away almost a grand,” Joe replied impassively.

“C’mon, man, stop pulling my leg.”

“No, seriously, I threw out nine hundred large tonight. Not only that, my boss told me to.”

“You gotta be kidding.”

“Nope. I took a small cardboard box, threw in a few hundred coins and bills, taped it up well, said goodnight to the staff, waited until everyone was gone, turned on the alarm...”

“What hey?” I interrupted, realizing he might be serious. “Forget the rest, just tell me which Dumpster,” I added breathlessly. “I’ll fly out tonight. Dinner’s on me.”

“You know I can’t do that, Harley. So anyways, I locked the doors of the bank, went out to the parking lot, shoved my little box deep down in a Dumpster, and drove home.”

“You’re not kidding?”

“No. It was part of my job. I do it every year.”

“You’re really not kidding. What gives?”

“Well, you know how some money gets so mangled that only the banks will accept it? You know what banks do with those beat up coins and bills? We call ’em ‘mutes,’ and they’re a pain in the neck. For each piece of money that comes in mutilated, we have to fill out federal paperwork; label and bundle it according to strict regulations; and return it, insured, to the Bureau of Engraving [bills] and the mint [coins]. Then we wait for the government to take its sweet time determining how much they’ll replace—sometimes up to a year. The time it would take for my staff to prepare the mutes and complete the forms and monitor the progress would be extensive and end up costing the bank more in salary and overhead than the mutes are worth. So, no, I can’t tell you where, but as part of my job, once a year, I throw away about a thousand US dollars.”

Hard as it may be to fathom, under certain circumstances, banks save money by throwing it away. If only things were so easy for us ordinary Joes.

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