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Abigail’s head was filled with numbers. They weren’t the numbers on her timesheets at work or the numbers on her IRA brokerage account statements. They were numbers of no importance to anyone but her. They kept her company all day and held her captive at night.
Low Fat Yogurt with blueberries: + 120 calories
30 minutes on the cross trainer: - 250
When New York began requiring calorie counts on chain restaurant menus it got worse. Given a choice, she’d dine at one of the relatively small local chains and study her options carefully… dinner salad with shrimp and mangoes 550 versus salmon and avocado sandwich 490. When she learned EXACTLY how many calories were in a fruit smoothie she switched to unsweetened iced tea.
Was she obsessed with her weight and appearance? Yes, but it was more than that. Her finely tuned antenna was focused on any deviations from her ‘norm.’ She sought out anything in her life that created changes and maintaining her perfect size 4 body was one of the few things she could control by creating a perfect balance. Perfect size, perfect balance, perfect peace… at least that was the goal. The reality was a hectic series of silent calculations performed like a prayer before each meal and after each workout. Maintaining balance took time. It took effort. It took energy, but it burned painfully few calories.
This intense focus did not make her popular at work. It was simply no fun to go out to lunch with a young woman who would not, could not, break a silent, but obvious, personal food rule without great pain. After a while her colleagues stopped asking her to join them at the deli for lunch or inviting her to half price Margarita Night at the Mexican place down the block. She dined alone with her calculations or went to the gym to burn off the imbalance caused by a muffin the morning or the memory of a cookie eaten the night before.
But Abigail’s obsessive behavior, like most notable personality flaws, had a hidden upside. Her obsession with creating perfect balance enabled her to see slight shifts in the numbers that others would ignore. Intuitively, her eye found the flaw in any calculation and she saw patterns where others saw the usual ebb and flow. It wasn’t her job, but it was her nature.
Was this really important? Oh, yes… as Abigail was the assistant to the bank president and, although her job description limited her activities to answering the phone, typing memos and keeping the bank branch president’s official calendar, her eye for balanced numbers often strayed into the minutia of the banks day-to-day practices. She was the first to see the trend toward under-collateralized mortgages in the summaries the mortgage officers sent to her boss. She’d proof read the reports her boss sent to his superiors, and one day she called his attention to the numbers.
He smiled but didn’t see a problem.
“They know what they’re doing, Abby,” he said with a smug tone.
He always called her Abby and not Abigail, as if the nickname demonstrated a close relationship that didn’t really exist. Surely if he really knew her well, he’d know that when she noticed something out-of-whack in the numbers, it was time to call out the forensic accountants.
Abigail stewed for day but didn’t say a word. If her boss noticed her change of attitude he didn’t say a word, either. She finally concluded that he didn’t notice her altered mood anymore than he noticed the growing imbalance in the numbers. The next month’s reports were worse. This time, Abigail took it upon herself to test the system. She began to look for glitches in every transaction at the branch.
Had this been a larger institution, Abigail reasoned, there would have been many layers of oversight. But since this was a small branch of a local community bank she feared the laxity demonstrated by her boss was simply a symptom of the focus on being friendly and helpful to customers on a day-to-day basis. It wasn’t. Over the course of the next several weeks, Abigail uncovered more than one nefarious glitch in the system.
The loan officers were dissembling on two fronts: they padded the fees borrowers paid for the load transactions and they plumped up the stated assets so the borrowers appeared to be more worthy of the bank’s confidence. In essence, they were picking the pockets of the same people they were setting up for likely loan defaults.
The branch manager was siphoning off a little here and there to cover his gambling debts without his wife’s knowledge. He’d also taken out a loan to cover a gap in his household expenses and forged his wife’s signature.
But it wasn’t until she reached the highest levels in the bank, that Abigail shivered in her seat. Someone had installed a program that, at random intervals, shaved a penny off all deposits ending in an odd number of cents. These pennies — millions and millions of pennies — were then sent to off shore accounts in wire transfers of four or five thousand dollars at a time. The numbers were staggering. This was happening every day, little by little the bank was raiding its customers’ accounts and no one was looking — no one but Abigail.
There were 100,000,000 pennies in a million dollars. Abigail tried to wrap her head around the idea of a pile of pennies that large. She felt faint, and left her desk. She hurried passed the ladies room, to the small kitchen where some of the staff members ate lunch. There was a soda machine. She flattened a dollar bill and fed it into the machine. She then hesitated for a second before punching an unfamiliar button. A can of ginger ale tumbled down the slot. Her hand was shaking.
“Here let me help you with that,” Felix, the new teller, said. “Your hand is shaking.”
He took the can, tapped the top, paused and then gently pulled the tab. He took a paper cup from the cabinet and poured it out for her.
“Sip is slowly,” Felix said.
She nodded and followed his instructions.
“You look very pale. Ginger ale is good for that, calms your stomach and the sugar will help you perk up again.”
“Thanks,” was all Abigail could manage to say.
It wasn’t until she was back at her desk that she turned the can around and read:
150 calories.
She drank the rest of the soda anyway and formed a plan.
Step One: Remove money from bank accounts.
Step Two: Research prerequisites for CPA Certification
Step Three: Call Uncle Billy about a job.
Step Four: Resign.
Step Five: Write a letter with documentation for banking regulators.
A week later she was working as a part-time bookkeeper at Uncle Billy’s accounting office. She’d spent summers there as a teenager and enjoyed it more than she’d expected. Billy had encouraged her to study accounting but she had not seen herself following that path. Now she did. Billy would allow her to work just enough hours to get by while getting her CPA.
“It’s great having you back,” Billy said. His big belly jiggled as he talked. “Now, tell me why you’re REALLY here. Your mom said you were happy at the bank.”
Uncle Billy was the one relative who almost understood her passion for diet math. He counted cards and played numbers games for fun. Of course his math kept him on his butt gaining weight while eating cheesecake. As a teenager in his office, she’d only seen the differences in their perspectives and not the similarity. Now she saw it.
She outlined her discoveries and showed him the paperwork.
Billy rose from his seat, opened the cabinet next to his bookcase and pulled out a bottle of 30-year-old single malt scotch. He poured two fingers each, into two glasses and brought them back to the table where the bank’s papers lay spread out.
“Drink up Abigail. We’re going to write one heck of a letter!”
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