Banks tolerate a precise, tiered quota of customer overdrafts before alarm.

Evidence

At the Bank of Boston, a list of overdrafts emerged every morning promptly at eleven o’clock from a computer on the third floor. Bankers with cause for concern would gather around to watch the printout, and in recent months Pete Briggs was usually among them. The column on the far right of the printout gave the number of times a given account had been overdrawn that year. According to Pete, four or five overdrafts in a year didn’t raise any eyebrows at the bank. Ten or twelve overdrafts, however, was considered sloppy and frowned upon. More than fifteen overdrafts was, as Pete put it, “inappropriate” and would “set off alarm bells.” — , Harr Jonathan - A Civil Action, 2119

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: the quiet, numeric thresholds institutions use to decide when a client crosses from sloppy into ‘inappropriate.’
• SHARE: Send to someone who worked bank operations and would relish the 11 a.m. overdraft printout ritual.