A Good Girl Gone Bad (Kind Of…)

  For a long time, we had an old man that we called Skippy do errands and shred paper at the bank I worked for.  After a while his mental facilities were failing him and finally one day he came in and told us he would not be able to continue. We were worried about him, but thought it was for the better as well.   The senior vice president had a teenage son named Zach that he brought in to cover the paper shredding. It was interesting to witness teenage angst first hand like that.

  He had a girlfriend that I guess was either untrustworthy or Zach was just paranoid. He would place his cell phone on top of the shredder and shred the paper while he would stare down at his cell phone waiting for it to ring. He was extremely uneasy about her being out and about while he was stuck working. It didn’t make for a healthy relationship.

  When a position on the teller line opened up, his father made him apply for the job. It really put Gary and Alan in a spot. How could they not hire the boss’s son? So they hire him, and he didn’t make it easy for the other tellers to like him. His work ethic was on the low side. Preoccupation with his personal life mostly… after a few months things came to a head when he at an orange while over Amanda’s teller station. When Amanda got back and her station was all gross and sticky, she opted to retaliate by spitting or leaving an apple corp or doing something similar to Zach’s work space. Childish, yes, and she should have known better, but she was really grossed out.

  I was unaware of all this until afterwards. Days later, after Zach complained and Amanda was out on vacation. Alan, whom is the worst secret keeper on the planet let it slip that Gary planned on firing Amanda when she got back. Alan didn’t think it was fair either.

  Normally, I keep my head down and stay out of other people’s affairs, but I felt the need to save Amanda if I could help it. I stewed all evening. Amanda would be fired the next morning if I didn’t do something.

  That morning, nervous as anything, I confronted, Dick, the Senior Vice president. I told him that it wasn’t right that Amanda was being fired. He said there was nothing he could do. Of course he would say that. He would say it was Gary’s call and he couldn’t show favorites. I would have very little clout against Gary alone, but I had an ace up my sleeve. Alan also let slip that Gary planned on transferring Dick’s son to another branch. Dick didn’t know that. I also pointed out that it didn’t matter that they didn’t fire Zach, because the transfer itself would brand him a troublemaker.

  Dick immediately called Gary into the office and closed the door. I was extremely nervous putting myself on the line and essentially manipulating management against each other, but I did it anyway. Pretty much saying the punishment was extreme for both of them, and finally, when it looked like it wasn’t going to work, I confronted with Gary about whether either one had been written up, and he responded that they had not.

  Dick had me leave as they conferred. In the end, Amanda got to stay. I was going to say nothing about it, but I suppose Alan did, because she wrote me the sweetest note thanking me for what I had done. Of course, I still have it saved somewhere. I save everything. After that Amanda considered me a true friend. Enough to dog-sit her pug when her and her husband went on vacation.

  More importantly, it apparently impressed Dick. Enough that he started looking at me as management material. On the other side of the coin, I had to tread lightly around Gary. Luckily for me after being promoted to the Internet Banking coordinator months earlier, I now reported to Cathleen and Dick as part of the operations side of things and not to Alan and Gary who ran the branch.