The old man stopped moving.
“My wallet is in my pocket.”
“I said slow.”
“I am moving slowly.”
The manager stared.
The teller said:
“He already verified account questions.”
The manager looked at her sharply.
“I wasn’t asking you.”
She lowered her eyes.
That mattered.
The CEO filed it away.
He took out an old state identification card created legally under his true name but without corporate title.
The manager inspected it.
The address was a modest property owned by a family trust.
Nothing impressive.
The manager handed it back.
“You don’t use online banking?”
“No.”
“You should.”
“I prefer people.”
The manager gave a faint smile.
“People cost money.”
The old CEO looked at him.
“That what customers are now?”
“Cost?”
The manager’s smile disappeared.
“I didn’t say that.”
The teller completed the withdrawal.
She counted five twenty-dollar bills aloud.
“Twenty, forty, sixty, eighty, one hundred.”
The CEO watched carefully.
Those bills came from her assigned drawer.
Not the manager’s office.
Nothing yet.
He took them.
“Thank you.”
Then he placed the forty dollars he had carried in on the counter.
“I also want to deposit this.”
The teller reached.
Before she could touch it, the manager stepped in.
“Hold on.”
The CEO looked at him.
The manager picked up the worn passbook.
He flipped through blank pages.
“You’re making a forty-dollar deposit?”
“Yes.”
“And withdrawing a hundred?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
The question was not banking.
It was judgment.
The CEO answered anyway.
“I want some cash in my pocket.”
The manager laughed under his breath.
Then looked toward two employees nearby.
One smirked.
The young teller did not.
The CEO said:
“Something funny?”
The manager leaned against the counter.
“Sir, we’re a full-service branch.”
“I know.”
“We have appointments.”
“Business clients.”
“People waiting.”
The CEO looked around.
There were three customers in the lobby.
Two tellers free.
“What does that have to do with me?”
The manager lowered his voice slightly.
“It means repeatedly moving tiny amounts of money back and forth wastes staff time.”
The CEO’s eyes narrowed.
“Tiny amounts.”
The manager gestured toward the bills.
“You’re withdrawing one hundred and redepositing forty.”
“That’s correct.”
“Why not leave sixty?”
“Because I want the hundred in twenties and the forty recorded as deposit.”
The manager stared.
“That makes no sense.”
“To you.”
The young teller looked nervous.
She knew something.
The CEO could see it.
Not his identity.
Something about the manager.
She said carefully:
“I can process both.”
The manager turned.
“I said I have it.”
Her jaw tightened.
She stepped back.
The manager looked again at the CEO.