Poster child

So we're in Battery Park on a fine spring day yesterday and I'm showing Graham this tugboat that was actually towing a barge, and this kid comes over to me with a wallet: "Is this yours?" He says, handing it to me and walking away. So I look in the wallet for a card with the guy's phone number, and before finding it I look at his driver's license and find that he's 35-ish, white, lives in Tribeca. Upon inspection of his business card, I learn that he's a VP at US Trust. I call his office and leave a voicemail, and then I scan the crowd as Graham and I make our way back over to the playground.

Later, as the fam and I head back to Beth's place, the guy calls me and I wait for him at a designated spot. And here he comes, happy as a clam to have been reunited with his billfold. After brief pleasantries, he reaches into the wallet and foists a twenty onto me. I'm like, "No no, I don't want it" but he's persistent so I take it. And then he turns and literally runs off. Perhaps he sensed that I was gonna network up to him and ask about his role and talk about the people we knew in common and generally make him want to throw a little business my way. I know he wasn't headed anywhere in particular because I saw him going into the convenience store 10 minutes later when I headed into Starbucks for a tall cold one.

Anyhow, I really shouldn't sweat it because a weasel like that is likely to be amongst those who get sliced away when US Trust continues to fail to integrate well into the Bank of America culture after BofA snapped it up off the side of Schwab, where it was also failing. US Trust has a very nice lobby, to be sure, but go upstairs of their Manhattan flagship and you fall into a shithole straight out of Office Space. It's a failing company, and it's because of rude schmucks like Mr. Tribeca.

And his twenty is headed straight for a United Homeless Organization jug.