flammable money

this is the story of a bank error and much more money than i have. so...once upon a time i walked into my bank (i know, it's crazy!). i was going to deposit a paycheck but when i talked with the teller the first thing she said was "umm...do you know about your account?" ...apparently not...

she told me that i owed about $500 and i had another check for the same amount trying to come through. yeah, i've never, ever used checks. at this point i was slightly concerned.

it was time for an expert. i ended up talking to a woman who handles this sort of thing. she called several people and sent a fax and discovered that the bank had gotten confused. they had accidentally switched the bank accounts of me and someone else who, though we had completely different names and the rest of the numbers were different, had the same last four digits in their account number as me.

the problem was fixed pretty quickly with a fax and phone call but the banker woman told me that if i didn't ever use my checks and i wanted to get rid of them then it would be best to just burn them (as opposed to shredding them). lucky, i was going to a bonfire that night.