It's A Stick-Up

Take off your hats, hoods and sunglasses before entering – That is the handwritten note currently taped to the front door of my bank - Taped on my bank door like some lunch special at a ghetto restaurant. Only my bank is in the high rent district. It was recently bought out by a bigger bank and now refers to itself as a "concierge" bank. Whatever is concierge about it is obviously reserved for its high rollers. The rest of us get the DIY version - 1 poorly trained teller and 2 Darth Vader terminals that no one can figure out or ever use.

I think about the sign on the front door again as I reach for a concierge peppermint candy in a glass bowl. Take off your hats, hoods and sunglasses before entering. The command feels more like an expectation than a deterrent. But you don’t have to be Bonnie and Clyde to knock over a bank these days. It’s just another inside job - a well constructed plan. First the inside trade-tors skim the fat then The Man looks the other way while another empties the vault. They all resume their lives the next day - at the club, by the pool in their planes. No orange suits for them. No 50 bullets like the ones that Bonnie and Clyde took. Just a silent cheer from the crowd excited to witness someone else conquer their impotence - unfortunately, at the cost of their own.

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