One time when I was working with another fellow, he received a visit from one of his friends while we were on the job.  This friend told him he was leaving town.  After he left the job, my partner told me what was happening.

His friend had checked his bank account and he had way too much money in it.  He drew it all out in cash and was leaving town before the bank caught the mistake.

I asked my partner if he was sure the money hadn’t come out of his own account.  For the rest of the day he looked a little worried.  He must have gone right to the bank after work to check.  The next morning he told me he had checked his bank account and he was O.K.

My wife and I had a similar thing happen, but it had a different ending.

We would get paid on Friday.  The banks were closed on Saturday and Sunday.  The bank had arranged for us to have prepared deposit slips and envelopes so that we could take the Friday paycheck, endorse it, place it in an envelope with the deposit slip, and deposit it in a night depository.  Then we could write checks on the money all weekend as we needed to.  At the time, small town banks were very cooperative in matters like this.

One day we received a bank statement with way too much money in our account.  It wasn’t a round number difference either.  We couldn’t imagine who would deposit money into our account.  My wife, Becky, went down to the bank to see what was going on.

While the bank people were tracking it down, a Native American woman was pacing the floor and loudly declaiming about cheaters and crooks.  She had deposited her husband’s paycheck in the night depository and never received credit for it.

Apparently the bank had given her deposit slips and envelopes with our name and account number on it.  She had not noticed the wrong name and account number.

The bank managed to straighten it out.  I do think we saved a couple of bank employees from getting a very bad hair cut that day.