Unbankerly Behavior by Daniel Koehler

Author:Daniel Koehler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: true story, bank robbery, humor and comedy
Publisher: Daniel Koehler

***

Down the hall, Bill Snellgrave fidgeted in his office. He was having second thoughts about his job security.

The old man surely won’t fire me, he told himself. Hell, I’ve been here thirty-five years.

Union Guaranty Bank’s senior correspondent officer since before the War, Snellgrave was well-beloved by the country bankers of Arkansas. He would, however, be the first to admit he was not knowledgeable about the nuts-and-bolts of the banking business. Instead, he relied on his jocular, unthreatening personality and lavish entertaining habits to win over bank clients.

These entertainment habits included being on a first name basis with ladies of easy virtue all over the state, having access to fifty-yard line Razorback football tickets for sold-out games, and faithfully delivering fifths of whiskey to all client bank officers in the course of his trips to the hamlets of Arkansas.

He often justified his behavior with the quip: “If you have an inferior product, entertain lavishly.” However, in some cases, “lavishly” also meant “lasciviously.” His philosophy of bank marketing was: “Give country banks what they want then, when they need it bad, make ‘em pay through the nose.”

Snellgrave was a correspondent banking legend in Arkansas.

However, despite his celebrity, Bill Snellgrave had lately come to suspect even his job might be on thin ice. He knew he had been making too many mistakes on his road trips and wondered if he had become an embarrassment to the bank.

After all, he had fallen asleep in the Treasurer’s office of Swift & Company in Chicago while making a national account sales call. Then there was the time he had passed out dead drunk inside the revolving door of the Lone Star Bank of Texas, where building security had to call the Dallas fire department to extricate him.

Bill remembered the Lone Star Bank case all right. When they revived him, to save face, he had claimed a heart attack and begged them to rush him to Parkland Hospital for tests. He had arrived in Dallas two days earlier but had not deigned to check into his room at the Adolphus Hotel. He was in “Big ‘D’” to give a status report on the large overline for Dewitt Sebastian’s floor-planning loan.

Lucky for him, Lone Star didn’t withdraw their portion of the credit line. Dewitt would have hit the ceiling.

Like everyone else in town, Bill Snellgrave feared displeasing Dewitt Sebastian.

Another reason for concern about his job was Henry Potts’s reorganization of the correspondent banking department. Potts had brought in young men from the wildest fraternities at the state universities to train as interns, claiming Snellgrave needed help shouldering the load of nonstop bank client entertainment.

However, the younger, party-hardened frat boys Potts brought onboard did not possess a tenth of the stamina for round-the-clock entertainment Snellgrave had developed over the course of his thirty-five years on the road.

Many of the rookies would complain about Snellgrave’s cavalier disregard for lodging on road trips. The interns had expected hotel rooms, showers, and beds, which Snellgrave overruled. “Goddamn, boys—it’s only an overnight trip! What the hell do you need a room for?”

One intern drew the line at frolicking at whorehouses.

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