A Very Good Streak of Very Bad Luck
At one point or another, Rudy had demonstrated the prowess of his ineptitude to a rather hapless public. He was an absolute and unintentional menace to the common people and often times himself. It was strange, though, how the worst was avoidable unless there seemed to be an audience to judge his blunders - especially if he were to never again see them.
Filling his car with the wrong gas on the way to work, causing a whole lane to shut down as he waited for the tow truck on the 304 to work. Spilling hot coffee on someone on the way to a board meeting, later to find out it was the visiting president of a merger company. From these extremes to the annoyances of not noticing he had grabbed the wrong kind of cheese until he was already halfway through the checkout at the Ralph's.
Rudy's life was a mess - and not by his choice. Still, he put on a smile and always would say the next day would be better. It never was.Hapless as it was, life went on. The line for the bank was nearly out the door when Rudy had arrived - had he not nearly caused a wreck at the four-way intersection, he might have missed the lunch rush. Now, he was forced to likely miss lunch instead. It was cold inside, as banks always seemed to be, and the soft murmuring of tellers seemed like they might as well have been using megaphones with how their voices echoed around the marbled bank. Nearly half an hour passed before Rudy could count the people in front of him. His check was in hand, ready to be cashed when the doors slammed open behind them, a group of men running in screaming.
"On the ground! Everybody on the floor!" one man shouted.
"Nobody move!" another screamed.
Rudy thought these men weren't very coordinated so he wasn't exactly sure which one to obey. Maybe he could still get in and out before this got too hairy.
"Yes, hi, my name is Rudy Burbank, I was wanting to cash this check please." he said, words softspoken and polite. The bank teller gave him an incredulous look as if it was simply insane what he was doing. One of the men was screaming at him, and fast approaching, but he tried to ignore it. When the man approached, he was yelled at Rudy to get down, a rifle tight to his shoulder as he jabbed Rudy's side with the barrel.
"Excuse me, I don't mean to make a fuss, but I was here first. You'll have to wait in line." he said, sweating bullets. If customer service had taught him anything, it was how to smile when you really didn't want to. The burglar paused. He looked around for a split second before asking if it was some kind of joke. Rudy gave an awkward laugh as if he was trapped in small talk, and said no. A woman on the floor was being comforted by her husband, trying to stop her from crying.
The burglar looked to the bank teller who simply shrugged in response before he motioned his rifle towards her.
"Well, cash this mans fucking check already, what are you waiting for?" he shouted. The bank teller shrunk at his raised voice, hurriedly grabbing the check with a shaky hand. She went through the system database for a few moments, the only sounds in the entire bank that of other men's pacing steps, and the click of a keyboard.
"Be back- Please- I'll be back in one moment-" she stuttered before being interrupted.
"What, you're not going to take him with you? What kinda service...?" the man grumbled before Rudy gave a small nod, trying to play along.
"Yes, I... Err, I'd like to see where my money is... coming from?" Rudy asked. The burglar nodded as if encouraging him. Hurried clicks of heels to marble sounded as the bank teller murmured a scared 'of course, right this way' as she came out from behind the counter, inviting the two men to follow her. Rudy had never been this far into a bank before. Hell, the most time he had spent in here was setting up a new account because his old one had been closed under the pretense of false identity theft.
The fancy interior of the bank quickly disappeared into an architectural style Rudy would fondly refer to as 'Blue Collar Imprisonment'. Marble floors and polished mahogany furniture changed to Ikea chairs from three years ago, and concrete. A mild-mannered office cubical environment meant to protect a few hundred thousand in USD. They came to the vault. At some point, two other men with guns joined them. As the woman entered an electronic code beside the door, a green light flashed on the door and it slid open moments later. The door was nearly two feet thick of solid steel. Inside were a few hundred lockboxes and on the table several bricks of paper money next to a single reinforced laptop. Shakily, the teller approached. As before, she entered something into the laptop before pulling three crisp twenty dollar bills from a stack, writing down the subtraction and stamping the check invalid. She returned to Rudy, handing him his money as the other three men patted him on the shoulder and moved in, beginning to raid the lock boxes with drills and shoveling money into the bag.
The two looked as the armed men began their haul.
"Well, I've got to get back to work." Rudy declares. "See you boys later, err... Take care ma'am." he says, turning around with the same look one would have when told to get a full report in by the next morning. The bank teller was speechless, stammering words that couldn't form a single coherent thought.
As Rudy left through the cubical maze and back into the main lobby, he gave a curt, but polite, wave to the remaining robber who had lined everyone up against a wall and confiscated cell phones. He quickly walked out as if nothing was happening, praying he wouldn't be asked to join the lineup.
The next morning, Rudy's picture appeared on the news under the headline 'Serial Bank Robber strikes for the 12th time this year'. Rudy didn't notice it, and anyone who thought it looked like him always pointed out how he could never rob a bank, he's too unlucky. Rudy tapped away on his computer, thinking maybe he did have a string of good luck sometimes.