While attending a staff meeting today, I was reminded of a funny thing that happened on Halloween a few years ago. I used to work at a bank branch. Every so often we were supposed to have robbery drills before work. We'd have to follow all of the procedures as if we were really being robbed and police were informed in advance of the drill so they wouldn't waste their resources on responding to a fake robbery.

We never knew when we were going to get robbed, only that it happened during staff meetings (held prior to opening the branch.) If someone was missing, it didn't usually occur to us that we were having a drill. We just assumed they were out ill.

One year our manager had the brainy idea of holding this on Halloween. Imagine this scenario if you will.

Our normally very serious investment rep got to be the robber that day. He decided to dress as a clown for Halloween. Big polka-dotted costume, huge clown shoes, and a huge blue fro-type of wig, and of course, a big round clown nose.

We were in our staff meeting and we hear a pounding on the door. There's bozo standing there with a rifle (it was a piece of wood carved like a rifle.) We go through the drill and all have a good laugh about how the "robber" is dressed and get back to our staff meeting.

The phone rings and it's the police. They said that there is a hysterical woman in the parking lot where our branch was located. She saw someone dressed like a clown holding a gun, get out of the car and break into the branch. The officer knew that we were having a drill, but wanted to verify that this "clown" was one of our employees. I was laughing so hard that tears were coming out of my eyes. That poor woman, I can't imagine what she must have been thinking!

And people think banking is so serious. Ha...