$2.38 - a story with two endings

          My train was a few minutes late
arriving, so even though I had no early
morning meetings, I felt as though I were
playing catch up as soon as I got off the train
at the LaSalle Street station.
          I had three stops to make before
hopping on the Blue Line to finish my morning
commute: Osco to get a couple packs of index
cards, the bank to pick up some cash, and the
Post Office to buy the stamps for the office
holiday cards. Osco was first, but the other
two could be in any order, since they were on
either side of the entrance to the Blue Line.
          As I walked past the Post Office, I
noticed that the line was long, but I expected
as such it being just two weeks until
Christmas. So I got my cash and then walked
across the street to the Post Office. The line
was even longer now, maybe fifteen people. I
hoped a few of them were together.
          “I think they do it on purpose,” said the
woman standing in front of me. I gave her a
quizzical look. She explained, “The closer we
get to Christmas, the fewer tellers they seem
to have working.”
          I counted the tellers. There were
three. She was right that there are usually
more tellers in the morning. Last time I was
here there were at least four, I think. But I
didn’t count them that time, since there was
no line.
          Dividing the people in line by the
number of tellers and then multiplying by four
minutes, I decided I’d likely be waiting for
twenty minutes or so. Three minutes each
would make it fifteen minutes. Two minutes
each would be ten minutes, but I couldn’t
imagine they’d churn through customers so
fast. Some of the customers were old and
others had handfuls of packages, going to
different addresses of course. Odds are, I
knew, I was going to be there a while and I
was only getting stamps. I needed 600 of
them or I would have used the machines.
          The truth was, however, the Holiday
Cards were my company’s last effort at
normalcy. Things were terrible and we were
so far in debt that it was unlikely we would
recover. I was planning to put the six hundred
stamps on our American Express cars since
we didn’t have enough money in our bank
account to write a two hundred dollar check. A
year ago we were writing bonus checks,
preparing for our lunch at The Signature Club
and this year our postage machine was out of
stamps and Pitney Bowes wouldn’t fill it since
we were so late on our payments.
          “Don’t you think?” asked the lady. I
tried to recall what it was I should think about
but couldn’t remember the beginning of our
so-called conversation. So I cracked a slight
smile and nodded. She sighed, but it wasn’t at
me. “It’s terrible,” she said. I nodded again.
          About twenty minutes later, I was at
the front of the line, wondering which of the
three people being helped would be done
first. I supposed it’d be ‘Don’t you agree’ lady,
since she only had one package.
          Apparently she wanted to do more
than mail the one package, since she was
there quite a while. Still, she was the first one
done.Finally, the ‘Don’t you agree’ lady left and
the LED arrow indicated I was to go to her
counter space.
          The woman behind the counter
looked as though she had been there all
night. I wondered what the tellers did at the
Post Office during the graveyard shift. I asked
her for 600 stamps for our Holiday Cards,
picking out four different designs and
indicating that I wanted 100 each of three
designs and 300 of the fourth. She was
either exhausted or terrible at her job,
because she kept confusing what I wanted.
Once she had it straight (I hoped) she began
to count out the requisite packets of twenty
stamps.
          Unfortunately, she was interrupted
over and over again by a curt, spiky-haired
woman I supposed was her supervisor. Each
time she was interrupted, the counter woman
lost count of the stamp sheets, restacked
them, and started recounting them.
          After three such interruptions and
restarts, I was getting kind of annoyed. I
muttered, “Maybe your supervisor should
check out some people instead of continually
pestering you.” The line had grown
considerably in the past twenty minutes.
          “What?” she asked. She didn’t seem
cold or suspicious that I was criticizing her.
She was friendly, actually. Trying to be helpful.
She looked extremely tired. I guess she had
had easier days.
          I shook my head. “Nothing.”
          She smiled weakly, stared quizzically
at the two piles of stamp sheets (one
counted, one not yet counted) and to my
dismay put them all into one pile and started
counting them all over again.
          Finally, she had them counted,
recounted, and filled out a sheet, which I
assumed indicated quantities and styles for
later confirmation. She asked how I wanted to
pay and I showed her my Amex card.
          She smiled again, I wasn’t sure why,
and told me the total cost that would be on my
card. “Two hundred and thirty eight dollars,”
she said.
          I shook my head. “That’s not correct.
It should be just over two hundred dollars.”
She stared at me blankly. I explained, “Six
hundred stamps should be just over two
hundred dollars, since they are pretty much
three for a dollar.” She continued staring at
me blankly. I was unimpressed that someone
working at the Post Office, no doubt having
made hundreds of calculations with thirty-four
cent stamps, had so much trouble realizing
that six hundred stamps could not be so much
money. I tried to explain. “Three stamps is
just over one dollar, so three hundred stamps
should be just over one hundred dollars, so
six hundred stamps should be twice that. Or
just over two hundred dollars.”
          I gave her credit that she didn’t snap
at me. Not that I deserved it, since I was right
and had been at the Post Office now for over a
half hour when it really shouldn’t have been
more than a five minute visit. She smiled
weakly, rubbed her eyes, and recounted the
piles of stamps. Then she keyed a few
numbers into the adding machine and turned
the screen to me. The result clearly showed
$238.00, but then I noticed what had
happened. She had multiplied the thirty-four
cents not by 600, but by 700.
          “There are seven hundred stamps,” I
said as way of explanation.
          It was clear she had no idea why this
was an issue. She nodded her head. And
then noticing my curious expression, asked,
“Isn’t that how many you wanted?”
          ‘They’re stamps,’ I thought to my self.
‘We’ll certainly use them. If not for the Holiday
cards, then for bills and payments.’ I sighed,
not wanting to give in but not wanting to watch
her count out the stamps again more. “That’s
fine,” I said.
          She smiled, happy no doubt to get
past one more difficult customer and one
more transaction closer to the end of her shift.I
ran my credit card through the scanner, heard
the receipt printing with some relief that this
was coming to an end, and was handed the
receipt to sign.
          The receipt read $2.38.

          After considering the two scenarios
for what felt like ten minutes, but was really
more like ten seconds, I signed the receipt,
handed her back the top copy, collected my
stamps, and left the Post Office.

          After considering the two scenarios
for what felt like ten minutes, but was really
more like ten seconds, I handed her the
unsigned receipt and said, no doubt as tiredly
as she felt, “I think the amount is incorrect.”

          The clear envelope of stamps felt
heavy in my hands as I walked north on
Dearborn Street. I justified my action with
three strong arguments. I had more than
earned the savings after so much trouble; the
Post Office, likely billions of dollars in debt
already, wouldn’t miss my two hundred and
some dollars; and my business was on the
brink of bankruptcy and we sorely needed a
little luck.

          To her credit, yet again, she didn’t
even sigh or roll her eyes. She simply took the
receipt and looked at the total. A wave of relief
spread over her face. She beamed at me and
smiled, warmly.
          “Thank you,” she said. “I couldn’t
have afforded another mistake like this.” She
called over the spiky-haired manager, who
gave her quite a hard time about it, then, after
a few more calculations and recounting of the
stamp piles, I was handed two receipts to
sign. One for the $2.38 credit and one for the
proper amount of $238.00. I shuddered to
think what my Amex statement would look like.
I hoped my good deed was not about to be
punished with a few hefty overcharges on a
credit card bill I was going to have trouble
paying anyway.
          As I was leaving, she called to me,
“Sir?” I turned, wondering what delay was in
store now. She smiled warmly again, “Thank
you.” She looked as though she wanted to
say more, but glancing behind her and seeing
the manager eying her critically she hit the
button that made her ‘available’ arrow light up.

          I didn’t even know the teller’s name,
so there was no way I could learn what
happened to her. Oftentimes this is the case.
The results of our good and ill deeds usually
play out far from our realm of perception,
becoming part of a cosmic stew, and leading
us to take comfort and refuge in phrases such
as ‘What goes around, comes around.’
          But this is a story. So I can easily
become an omniscient observer and see
what occurred.
          To learn What Happens Next (as A.A.
Milne might put it), we’ll need to follow our
teller home. So let’s wait here, outside of the
Post Office, until her shift is over. You can
admire Calder’s orange-red statue while you
wait. It’s called ‘Flamingo’ but it always
reminds me of one of those Spring flowers
that appears too early, gets pelted by a late
snow, and then gets its head stuck to the
frosty ground.
          OK, there she is. She walks South
two blocks to the ‘L’, hops onto the Red Line
and takes the train North.
          Now she’s getting off, walks down the
stairs and three blocks to her cousin’s
apartment to retrieve her two-year old child.
The child is ill, which is why it’s not at Day
Care, but it’s not sick with Cancer or anything
life threatening. The child, a girl named
Shashandra, simply has a bad cold, complete
with a running nose and bad cough.
          Now we follow her home. It’s just the
next block West. The message light is blinking
as she enters the empty, somewhat chilled
apartment. The teller places her now
sleeping child in her crib, grabs a glass of
water, turns up the thermostat, and checks her
message. There’s only one message: She is
to report to the manager’s office at the start of
her next shift. Her receipts and inventory did
not add up properly. There were three
mistakes. One over two hundred dollars. The
manager’s voice sounds cold, fatalistic.
          The next day, the teller will be told that
she had made three major errors, totaling
over four hundred dollars. She had been
warned twice before that she needed to be
more careful and, sadly, nothing else could be
done. She would be given three weeks
severance, bringing her through New Year’s,
but that was more than generous given the
circumstances.

          “How much do we have?” I ask Gena,
who is in charge of our accounts. This is six
weeks later, after the American Express bill
has been paid.
          “Twelve fifty,” she reports.
          “So we have plenty,” I say. “I’ll miss
another paycheck, so we should be okay for
another two weeks.”
          “You don’t understand,” she explains.
“Not twelve hundred and fifty dollars. We have
twelve dollars and fifty cents in our account.”
          “Shit,” I say. “And we need how
much?”
          “Two hundred and seven dollars.” It
sounds like a lot of money when she says it.
          “That’s nothing,” I say. But I also
know that there is nowhere left from where we
can get money. And if we miss this payment,
it’s pretty much the end of the road. They’ll file
suit and our lawyer will advise us, as he has
done a number of times already, to declare
bankruptcy. In fact, he’ll likely demand it. We
owe him money as well.
          Of course I think back the six weeks
to the two hundred dollars I ‘lost’ to the Post
Office. But, really, there are hundreds of other
places I could look. Many, many times I
overpaid or wasn’t careful or made mistakes
that cost the company hundreds, if not
thousands, of dollars. Last year we were
printing money. This year, we can’t seem to
buy any. Sometimes that happens.
Especially after a tragedy like September 11th.
          Gena is simply waiting for my latest
miracle. I have always found a way to make it
happen, find the money, call in a favor. And
this is the smallest number we have ever
been short. But I have nothing left. Nowhere
to go and, really, no inclination to go there if
there were somewhere to go.
          “So that’s it,” I say. “Thanks, Gena.”
What else can I say? She looks at me sadly,
but more for my sake than for hers.
          “Anytime,” she says.
          I chuckle. Taking her up on the offer
seems so unlikely.

          This part really happened. Only I
don’t know it.
          It’s ten weeks later, late February.
Jake, a good friend of mine, was held up at
gunpoint. Or knifepoint. He wasn’t sure what
weapon she had. Or if she even had a
weapon. But he was sure it was a she.
          I know what you’re thinking, but it
wasn’t our teller. It was our teller’s cousin. I
guess she had been unemployed for many
months and, while our teller wasn’t supporting
her, the fact that one of them had a job made
the cousin somewhat secure that a legitimate
career was worth pursuing, that the
straight-and-narrow was the correct road.
          The two of them had been talking and
our teller had explained her reasons for being
fired. The cousin asked angrily, “Didn’t these
jerks know you had undercharged them?”The
teller shrugged, but she also raised her
eyebrows. Her way of explaining that she
wouldn’t speak ill of anyone, no matter how
likely they deserved it.
          “Bastards,” said the cousin. “The
money means nothing to them and they screw
a single mom for another bottle of room
service booze while they fuck their mistresses
at the Drake.”
          Our teller glared at the cousin.
Shashandra is in earshot.
          “It’s time we got ours,” said her
cousin. “’Aint no man going to help a single
mom in this economy.”
          The two of them looked at each other,
the cousin’s eyes hardening at the same rate
that the teller’s soften. Then the cousin asked
a question, “How much?”
          “How much what?”
          “How much did these bastards-” The
teller cocked her head disapprovingly. The
cousin continued, “these effers eff you for?”
          The cousin laughed, oddly tickled by
the ‘effers eff’ phrasing. But she did answer.
She closed her eyes and read the amounts off
the memo she received when she was fired.
“One for eighty six thirty. One for a hundred
and seventeen eighty-one. And the biggest
one was for two thirty five sixty-two.”
          “Is that so,” said the cousin.
          When he was robbed, my friend gave
the cousin his wallet, containing fifty-five
dollars in cash and all his credit cards. She
didn’t ask for his watch or his Palm. She
didn’t even take his briefcase. He thought this
was odd, but not as odd as what followed. The
cousin charged one hundred and eighty
dollars at SouthSide Foods on one of credit
cards. And, as far as he knew, never even
attempted to use any of the others.
          Of course I didn’t know that our teller’s
cousin had robbed Jake. Nor did I know the
amounts stolen or charged. And even if I did, I
doubt I would have done the math and put two
and two together.
          But I did understand the robber’s
pain. Not the hopelessness that might lead to
robbing people in order to charge groceries
on their credit cards. Thank God. But I did
know, in my heart, that I was somehow to
blame here. That by walking out of the Post
Office without correcting the underpayment, I
had somehow added to the wrong side of the
scales. Somehow increased the likelihood
that a woman might turn to robbery. I didn’t
feel that sorry for Jake. It was a scary moment
to be sure. I, too, have been held up. Twice.
So I know how he felt. And how you are
changed, at least a little bit, from that moment
forward. And not in a good way.
          What I understood is that I had
caused Jake’s robbery. Perhaps not directly,
but directly enough that I might as well have
robbed Jake myself.
          I also believed that I had caused my
own robberies. Both of them. It doesn’t
matter that they preceded my experience at the
Post Office. Time if more fluid than that.
          But it’s not Jake that bothers me.
Especially since I didn’t know that the cousin
had robbed him. What bothers me – and
deservedly so – is that no matter which
woman robbed Jake, the reason she did it
was because I had tipped the scales against
her. And against all women like her.
          You might say it’s only two hundred
dollars. And it’s from the Post Office, which
can surely afford it. But it’s more than that. It’s
a dent that I can never, fully, bang back into
shape. No matter how much I try, no matter
how much I add to the good side of the
scales. That dent will remain. Maybe not
visible to others, but always visible to me.

          I’m packing up my office. No one else
is here. Anything of value has been removed
or at least tagged for removal and sale at
auction. The phone rings. I hesitate to pick it
up, since it’s likely someone mad about
non-payment or wanting information about the
bankruptcy. Or worse, someone calling to
say they ‘heard the news’ and offer
condolences.
          But I pick it up.
          “Kredgill and Associates,” I say,
“John speaking.”
          “Hey, John, it’s Nathaniel Brown from
Oakton.” Oakton is one of our converting
suppliers, which means they take printed
sheets, attach them to cardboard, then cut,
fold and glue them into the boxes and counter
cards we used to need. My company owes
his company a small, but significant amount
of money. Somewhere in the environment of
$12,000. Not that much in the grand scheme
of things, but obviously far more than we’d
ever be able to repay. He and I had already
spoken at length about the situation and his
accounting people knew which forms to send
where. And knew that it was unlikely they’d
even get pennies on the dollars owed.
          “Hey, Nate,” I say, “What’s up?”
          He starts talking very fast. “Look I
know you’re busy, but I was talking to one of
my clients at EON and they’re looking for a VP
of Marketing. Their old one, my normal
contact, moved to San Francisco to work for
some software company. I didn’t get the full
story, but it wasn’t a layoff or anything like that.
EON is doing great.” He pauses, measuring
his words. “Well, anyway, their President,
Barbara Johannsen, who I am dealing with in
the meantime, asked me if I knew anyone I’d
recommend. And I thought of you. Actually, I
think you’d be perfect since they’re going into
so many new areas right now and they could
use someone with your breadth of
experience.”
          “I appreciate it, Nate.”
          “No, really. I do think you’d be great for
the job and then you and I could keep working
together.”
          I chuckle lightly. “Which turned out so
well for you the first time around,” I say
sarcastically.
          “Whatever,” he dismisses, “it
happens to the best of us sometimes.” Then
he continues earnestly, “I’m sure if you could
have found a way to pay us back if you would
have. And what’s a few thousand dollars after
so many years?”
          I am a little taken aback. “I really do
appreciate it, Nate.”
          He is precise and firm, “So, that
means you will call her?”
          "Yes, I will call her. And if I get
the job-” I was about to promise him enough
work to pay back the debt owed, but he cuts
me off.
          “When you get the job, you will buy
me a drink. That’s what it means. And that’s
all that it means.” He is jovial about it, but I
can see he wants only to do me a good turn
and wants no promise of return.
          “Can I at least make it a double?” I
suggest.
          “It’s a deal,” he says.

The End.