“I know he did,” I said.
“Then why?”
I looked at Brandon. At his wet red face. At his very clean, very soft hands.
“Because if you fire him,” I said, “he goes to some other bank in some other town. And he takes everything he learned today and throws it away. Or worse, he learns the wrong thing. He learns that the old lady in the dirty boots was secretly rich and powerful, and that’s why he should’ve been nice to her.” I shook my head. “That’s not the lesson. That’s never the lesson.”
“What’s the lesson?” Brandon asked quietly.
“The lesson,” I said, “is that you should’ve been nice to her even if she wasn’t.”
He stared at me.
“Account 0001 isn’t the point, Brandon,” I said. “The point is that every account in that bank belongs to somebody like me. Somebody with dirt on their knees. Somebody whose grandmother cleaned offices. Somebody who came in with fourteen dollars and a baby on the way. Every single one of them deserves to be treated the way you treated me after you saw the screen. Not before.”
