When a customer of First Missouri State Bank recovered a zip-top bag of cash he’d misplaced during the ice storm last winter and the flooding in March, he got an unpleasant surprise.
The vinyl bag had been left in a wooden desk, unzipped, and he told Michelle Johns, manager of the Jackson branch, that it had been damaged by rodents.
He brought in the bag in August to see if anything could be done.
“I told him I’d take care of it because we were really busy that day,” Johns said.
When she and employees Cristal McCoy, Wendy Aufdenberg and Jamie Koch dumped out the contents of the bag on the bank’s long counter, most of the bills were mutilated beyond recognition and littered with bird feathers and rodent feces.
Federal policy dictates that both serial numbers, in the top right corner and the bottom left, are needed to get credit for the entire amount of the bill, so the employees set about the task of piecing together the shredded cash.
