Working at the bank exposed me to more than just banking. I gained career and life experience and met people who introduced me to the vastness of dealings in Kenya. Some bankers used these dealings to build successful ventures. Others ended up on the wrong side of the law. But let me not pre-empt too much.
If you haven’t read my previous posts, you might want to catch up before proceeding.
My first supervisor was a man in his early 40s, he was the cool type of leaders who cared too much about his image and looking like a people’s person than actually helping people and doing the work. It used to be hilarious to me when he walked into the branch with his sunglasses on Saturdays feeling like a hot tamale. There’s not much I can write about him because I was under him for around 3-4 months ivi.
He was the baptism-by-fire type who could watch you drown without lending a hand. He got transferred in my early months. Later, he and the branch manager at his new branch were implicated in a scheme where they “borrowed” upwards of KSh 5 million from the bank vault. That cost him his job.
Then came my second supervisor, a beautiful woman in her mid-thirties, yellow yellow, with an attitude to match. If you met her today, you would be disarmed. She was charming to customers, helpful, and always willing to go the extra mile, even if she would bad-mouth them after they left. She was smart and seemed destined for great things.
The problem was, she was a beautiful thief.
When I first figured out that she was stealing from me, I tried to talk to the other ops lady to see whether she had been suffering the same fate. They had been chummy chummy so I was careful with how I approached the subject. I went like “wah, cash si ni ngumu. Madiff nazo!” She admitted that you can get diffs once in a while but not so much. You should be balancing well everyday, she said.
So that confirmed my suspicion that I was the only one being targeted by my supervisor. Maybe coz I am new, she thinks I am dumb, I concluded. Since that day when I balanced on my own, she never approached to help me balance again. I used to sweat between 3.30 pm and 4.30 pm trying to balance fast enough so that she doesn’t touch my till. For this reason, I got very fast hands and my fingers used to move like lightning while I hand counted cash. You almost couldn’t tell I was a novice. I balanced perfectly for almost 2 months. Her initial shock had waned and this became a way of life. Her attitude had reduced and it seemed she had afforded a small amount of respect for me and how fast I had become good at cash. And life went on.
Until one afternoon.
Around 3:30 p.m., the branch got suddenly busy.
My supervisor handled the bulk (around 3 customers depositing over 5m each) customers. I sorted and confirmed the cash she gave me from them before posting the transactions. She remained at her station while I served the last customer.
By around 4:30 p.m., I was balancing my till when I noticed a diff. But this time, it was an amount that would wake me up from my stupor. 20 Gs!!!!!! And it was an exact figure. I checked the cash going back to the vault, hoping I had missed a bundle of KSh 200 notes. Everything seemed fine. My supervisor noticed my uneasiness.
“Umebalance?” she asked in her familiar high-pitched voice.
“No. I’m missing 20K.”
She looked shocked (pretender). We checked the vault entries, the dollar transactions, and the Western Union payments. Kila kitu ilikuwa sawa.
“Funga till! Weka iyo pesa!” she said casually, closing those big vault books.
The fuck? Nope. Not me. Not this time. “Mi sina iyo doh,” I told her.
“So unataka tufanye?!” she asked.
Being undermined had lit a fire in me after those first few diffs. I had gone back to basics, rereading banking policies and everything I could find in the shared folder. That preparation was about to pay off.
“I want to write an incident report and post it in the PL,” I said flatly. Her face froze. She warned me that Head Office would be at the branch first thing the following morning. I told her I was ready for whatever disciplinary action followed.
“You know I’ll also be in trouble,” she tried again. “Why would you be in trouble? It’s my till that has the difference, not the vault.”
She called another colleague whom she shared dual access to the vault with, and the other operations lady. The three went off to count the vault cash, PR tupu tu! They even emptied and recounted the ATM.
Meanwhile, I printed the incident report and started filling it in. By then, I was mentally preparing for life after being fired. Maybe that was what she wanted. Well, she had won. In my mind, I had already resigned.
It was nearly 7 p.m. I was exhausted, and after counting practically every coin in the branch, they still hadn’t resolved “my” issue.
“Don’t!” she said when I told her I was closing my till and going home. But I was done. I left my till open in the system, a major breach of policy that was unfortunately common back then, and went home. On the way, I called the branch manager(who was new at the time) and explained everything. He told me to wait and said he would address it if the matter remained unresolved the following day.
Next day, I arrived at work expecting to be summoned to his office or kupata watu wa Head Office apo as it was alleged.
Nothing.
I worked as usual. When I balanced my till that evening, it was perfect! To the dot!
I wanted to laugh. I knew that once I insisted on reporting the incident, somehow, somewhere, that money had found its way back.
My supervisor was smart. Actually, most thieves I encountered were smart. Or perhaps cunning is the better word. We worked well after that. After realizing I was not the dumbass she thought I was, she sent me back to the CC desk and would keep me there for a long while.
But another way bank employees made money was through customers, and this would be the beginning of the end for her.
One major account issued cheques and made daily deposits. Because of banking cut-off times, the account needed sufficient funds by around 1 p.m. But sometimes, businesses simply didn’t have the money in time. There were legitimate banking arrangements for such situations, at a cost, of course.
Kenyans being Kenyans, this customer didn’t want to pay the charges. So my supervisor struck a deal with him. She would bank the money he expected to receive, and he would ensure the funds reached the bank by the end of the day.
Risky? Very. It depended entirely on trust, and somehow, it worked for a long time.
But si mnajua siku za mwizi? Head Office eventually caught wind of the arrangement, and that was how my supervisor ended up on compulsory leave pending investigations.
And just like that, the woman who once told me to plug a KSh 20,000 hole in my till was facing questions of her own.
