$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 card 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 he 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. “’Ain't 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.