Morgan Balavage - The Bank Job

 

 

It's 2002, I'm 18 years old and I've just dropped out of college. My parents were horrified. But I wasn't sure why I wanted to be in college in the first place, so I decided to go off into the world and see what kind of lessons life had for me. We had some family friends in Seattle, so I moved up here. I needed to find a job, so I asked my parents for advice. And they said I should get a job at a bank. Very practical for an 18-year-old to learn about money. So, that's what I did. I walked into a bank branch in Wallingford, and applied, got through the background check. I was record shopping in the U district when I got the job. So, I had my first job. I had to find my first apartment. 

 

So, the apartment I found with a couple of roommates. My room was so small that when I laid down my head and my feet would touch the opposite walls. It wasn't really a room. It was a closet. It was my first closet. [audience laughter] So, I had my first job, my first apartment, and soon, I met my first boyfriends. We met on a pre-tinder website called Makeoutclub. [audience laughter] And the day he moved to Seattle was the day that we met in real life and also the day we moved in together. [audience laughter] My parents were horrified. [audience laughter] My roommates didn't like it either. They kicked him out. 

 

He got a basement in Queen Anne, and we would spend almost every night there with a thousand spiders and a family of rats. It's not very glamorous. But I was young and in love and I was having a lot of fun exploring Seattle. We would hang out mostly with my boyfriend's friends that he knew from his hometown. I was having a hard time making friends. I don't know if you've heard of this thing called the Seattle Freeze. Yeah. If you haven't, Seattleites can be a little cliquish. It can be hard to break through that armor. 

 

And so, the boyfriend and I would go out, we would go to shows, we'd explore Seattle. We'd spend a lot of time at this 24-hour diner called the Hurricane. Some of you know it. [chuckles] It was at the Hurricane one night, amidst a sea of black emo haircuts, [audience laughter] there was a beautiful red headed mermaid named Blair. Blair and I hit it off right off the bat. We were like soul sisters. We became close friends. And then, we were a trio, the boyfriend and Blair and I. We would go out to shows, we would go to this 24-hour coffee shop called Bauhaus. And she needed a job, so I got her a job at my bank. The bosses were cool with us working together. They stationed us next to each other. So, life without a college degree was great. I was having so much fun. 

 

It was about a month after she started work that Blair asked to meet me at the Hurricane by myself, which was strange. So, I asked the boyfriend if he knew what she wanted to talk to me about. And he had no idea. So, when I showed up at the Hurricane, and walked in and sat down, she had a very serious look on her face. I knew something was terribly wrong. I thought maybe her mother was sick or something. When I sat down, she said, “Morgan, I have something to tell you and it's hard for me to say. I slept with your boyfriend.” 

 

My blood ran cold. And at the same time, this fiery rage started to rise up in me. I had this cup of coffee in front of me, and I considered throwing it in her face like, “Was this what the moment called for?” But instead, I sat frozen as she slid a letter across the table to me. And as I considered my options, my only option was to run away. And so, that's what I did. I grabbed the letter and I ran out of the Hurricane crying. When I got to my car, I opened the letter and it said, “I hope we can still be friends,” [audience laughter] which, no. 

 

I drove to where my boyfriend worked. He was a cook at 13 Coins. [audience laughter] I was so angry, but also so desperate for it to not be true, that when I pulled into the parking lot and met him in the back of the restaurant, I begged him, “Tell me it isn't true.” And initially, he lied to me and he said he had no idea what I was talking about. But I knew that he was lying. I flicked my cigarette at him and he admitted that it was true. I was devastated. I drove home crying to the apartment where I hadn't slept in months. I woke up crying. I drove to work crying and I ran into another coworker who asked me what was wrong. And I told her and she said, “Morgan, you're just going to have to get through it.” 

 

The way I got through it was I stonewalled her. I just completely ignored her. I have a natural resting bitch face [audience laughter] and I was giving her the full on on purpose bitch face. [audience laughter] We didn't have to interact that much. But at this point in my banking career, I had gotten a few promotions. I was the senior vault teller, which meant that I was responsible for all of the cash, hundreds of thousands of dollars in the back vault. If a bank teller was running low on cash in their drawer, they would have to give me some paperwork, so that I could go get the cash to replenish their drawer. 

 

And so, when Blair would give me her paperwork, I would just grab it from her and just throw the cash at her. It was so petty. I was 18 years old. This went on for months. And because of my promotion, I sometimes had to put my next teller sign up and close my window, so I could do some additional paperwork. This was the case one day when there was a line of customers, and I had my head down, working on a project, and someone walked up to my window and just threw a piece of paper at me. 

 

I looked up to tell him he had to go to the back of the line, but I froze when I saw him. He looked strange. He had sunglasses on, like these knockoff Oakleys. He was wearing a hat and he had a handkerchief over his face. [audience laughter] But way before, it was normal to wear a mask inside. [audience laughter] He had long sleeves on. When I noticed that he had gloves on, I saw the gun and I realized I was being robbed. And I froze and he saw me freeze and he said, “You know what to do?” I did know what to do. We had been trained extensively for bank robberies. They happen all the time. We'd been told, you don't negotiate with a bank robber. We'd been told to do whatever they say and we'd been told horror stories about bank robbers who had forced the employees and the customers to take off all their clothes and they'd locked them in the vault. 

 

So, this is what is flashing through my head. I'm going to have to take off my clothes and stand naked next to Blair and my coworkers [audience laughter] when the guy says, you know what to do. And instead, I snapped into action, and I opened the note and it said, put the cash in the bag. And he threw a bag at me, this plastic thank you for shopping bag. [audience laughter] I put my cash in the bag, and I handed it to him, and he handed it back to me and he said, “It's not enough. Hers too” and he pointed to Blair. I had a moment, I wanted to explain the situation to him. [audience laughter] 

 

“Sir, we have a situation. This woman has slept with my boyfriend. [audience laughter] This is going to be very awkward. You are compounding my trauma. I'll steal anyone else's cash, just don't make me steal her cash.” You can't negotiate with a bank robber. So, I walked over to Blair's window. She was helping a customer, but no one knew what was going on. I took the cash from her drawer, I put it in the bag, I handed it back to him and then he asked me, “Did you put any dye packs in here?” I shook my head, no, and he ran out the door. 

 

Now, dye packs are these little bombs. They look like stacks of $20 bills, but inside, there's a little pack of dye that explodes and it renders the cash completely useless. It explodes when it leaves the bank premises after a few seconds. I had put not just one, but two dye packs in there. One, from my drawer and one from Blair's. He was going to find out real quick. [chuckles] So, I ran to get my bank manager to tell him what was going on and we rushed to lock the doors and we called the authorities. While we were waiting for the FBI and the police to come, one of my coworkers said, “Hey, the last time this happened, we ordered a pizza. So, we had a pizza party.” [audience laughter] 

 

At some point, the emotion caught up with me, and I found myself crying. And Blair came over and gave me a hug. And for that moment, I let myself have my friend back. I let myself be held and I felt this anger and this betrayal that I'd been holding on to so tightly, I felt it loosen just a little bit. And then, I felt that rage rise up in me again. Before I knew what I was doing, I pushed her away from me and I went to find someone else to comfort me, someone who hadn't slept with my boyfriends. [audience laughter] 

 

We were robbed three times that year, and I learned a lot of lessons. But the best lesson happens a few weeks later when the district manager came in and pulled me into a meeting and he handed me a check. He told me that the bank had a policy that if you had the courage to hand out a dye pack, they would give you a bonus. [audience laughter] And because I had handed out two dye packs, [audience laughter] I got two bonuses. [audience laughter] And because I was 18 years old, I spent it on a tattoo. [audience laughter] [audience cheers and applause] 

 

So, I learned a lot of lessons in Seattle. My favorite lesson, is that when you work at a bank, it pays to get robbed. Thank you.