The Fable of the Lazy Security Guard
A man stood outside the
bank. He had a gun, and a handwritten
note demanding 100,000 dollars in small, nonsequentially number bills. An alert
security guard stood inside the bank, behind a locked door. Having been alerted
to the pending robbery attempt, he had locked the door. He refused to open it.
The would-be robber's presence came to
the attention of a bystander, who heard the robber banging on the bank door and
demanding admittance to the bank.
"What's going on," the
bystander asked.
"This darn security guard,"
replied the would-be robber, tucking his gun into his waistband to avoid
detection, "he won't open the darn door and let me in. I want to make a withdrawal!"
The bystander, thinking he correctly
perceived the circumstance as being one in which the unbeknownst to him
would-be robber was, he thought, a valued customer of the bank, became
belligerant and directed his loudly projected voice at the door and the
security guard behind it. "Open the
door, damn it all to hell, people have business in there, and you need to start
doing your job!"
A crowd gathered.
They saw the bystander taking up the
cause of the robber, and heard him chastening what now seemed to be, to their
perception, the indolent, shiftless, lazy security guard for "failing to
do his job."
Finally, seething with indignity, the
bystander took a crowbar, prized open the door of the bank whereupon the
would-be-robber became a robber in fact.
As it happened, he was able to clean out the vault at the bank,
including all the safety deposit boxes.
The next week, a hue and cry arose as
account holders began to receive notices that their payments were being
reversed for NSF (insufficient funds). A
few were further dismayed when they discovered the loss of important personal
valuables, even items they planned to bequeath to their children, now long gone
from the vault.
The Moral of the Story:
