bank faux pas
i work for a bank in the proof department. basically, we are in charge of taking the deposits from the teller work and getting them into the system, making sure they balance, and then uploading them to our processing company so they can post to our customers' accounts overnight.

the biggest - and most expensive "oops" - that occurred in proof (and, actually, the bank as a whole) happened one day shortly after i started working there. apparently the closers, who are the ones who upload the work to be processed overnight, well, they didn't balance. our supervisor was at a baseball game instead of being there to close with them, so they panicked and called him; there was a miscommunication but the closers thought the problem had been solved.

cue the look on our supervisor's face the next morning when he tried to look up an item after a customer called to say their deposits weren't posted... the item wasn't there. nor was any single transaction that had been run through the system the day before. $50,000,000 (roughly 24 million quid) was completely gone into thin air. this was a problem that couldn't be contained to just our department - all of our branches were getting angry calls from business customers.

surprisingly, neither of the closers were fired, even though they both should have known better. how they fixed it, i have no idea, as i was literally only there two weeks and barely knew what was going on.

two years later and i'm a senior closer. if we don't balance by even a penny, i make damn well sure we find it and fix it... though i have accidentally missed a corrupted digital transaction, which was only partially my fault since cash management never let on that it was supposed to go through (they made it sound like it had been fixed in another file). it was ~$800,000 of a mistake, but since it was digital they just had to make up a new file and it was memo posted the next day. the customers didn't lose a thing, but the girl from cash management went on a rampage with my name attached when she found out.

the only time anyone notices us is if we fuck something up. i love my job.
( mayonessa, Fri 26 Oct 2007, 4:21, Reply)