Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Zipper Accidents (7 page)

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n 1992 a British commodities trader named Nick Leeson moved to Singapore to manage futures markets for Barings Bank, the oldest merchant bank in the United Kingdom. Leeson, then only in his mid-20s, was given a great deal of responsibility—and a salary to match—by the bank, and lived it up in Singapore. Leeson was banned from a fancy cricket club for shouting a racial slur. He also spent a night in jail after a booze-fueled mooning spree.

Eager to fund his increasingly lavish lifestyle, Leeson began making risky investments on behalf of Barings. Initially, they paid off, netting him a large bonus on top of his annual salary because he earned millions for the bank. Then his luck changed. As his losses began to mount, he attempted to hide them in an “error account” (which are typically used by traders to correct mistakes) which he labeled “88888” (8 is a lucky number in Chinese numerology). Now a chief trader with Barings, Leeson exploited his new title to conceal a rapidly expanding negative cash flow.

At the end of 1992, the error account contained £2 million (about $1.32 million) worth of Leeson’s mistakes. That amount blazed to an astonishing £208 million ($137 million) by Christmas 1994. The young trader’s house of cards came crashing
down when he made a series of overly optimistic bets on the Japanese stock market on January 16, 1995. An earthquake struck Kobe the following morning, sending markets across Asia, and Leeson’s investments, into a tailspin. Leeson fled.

Leeson’s carelessness quickly brought Barings to the brink of collapse. There was no way the bank could cover his losses of $1.3 billion. While the media began predicting the imminent demise of the bank, an international manhunt was on. Rumor hounds speculated that Leeson had zoomed off to another Asian nation or that he was sailing the high seas on a private yacht. Actually, he was holed up at the five-star Regent Hotel in Kuala Lumpur. Leeson and his wife later attempted to flee to Britain, but he was nabbed at the Frankfurt Airport in Germany on March 2.

By then, Barings had been declared insolvent. It was eventually sold to ING, a Dutch banking and insurance firm, for the meager sum of a single pound, bringing a somber end to more than 230 years of banking history.

Leeson spent more than three and a half years in a Singapore prison but was released in 1999 after being diagnosed with colon cancer. Leeson eventually bounced back. He managed to beat cancer, remarried, and these days he lectures at business conventions on the topic of “corporate responsibility.”

F
eet ‘n’ meat.
Kaylin Frederich went into a Burger King in Sunset Hills, Missouri, with two relatives in August 2009. After the family had started eating, an employee told them that they had to leave—because Kaylin wasn’t wearing shoes, a violation of the restaurant’s “no shoes, no shirt, no service” policy. What was unusual about that? Kaylin was six months old at the time and was being carried by her mother because she wasn’t old enough to walk. Her mother, Jennifer Frederich, alerted the media, prompting a quick apology from Burger King.

Cold case.
Many states restrict or ban the sale of cold medicines that contain the ingredient pseudoephedrine because it can be used to make crystal methamphetamine. In Indiana, you can buy only a certain amount of pseudoephedrine-based medicines in a seven-day period (and you have to fill out a form). But 70-year-old Sally Harpold didn’t know that. One day in 2009, she bought a box of Zyrtec for her husband (who had allergies), and a few days later she bought her adult daughter some Mucinex-D for a cold. That put her over the purchasing limit, so Harpold was arrested for intent to manufacture crystal meth. The charges were later dropped.

He was unarmed.
Steve Valdez of Tampa, Florida, went to a Bank of America branch in August 2009 to cash a check from his wife, but the bank refused to cash it. Why? Because B of A required a thumb-print as a form of identification, and Valdez could not provide one: He has two prosthetic arms. Even after presenting two forms of identification, he was denied and told by the manager to either come back with his wife or open an account. Bank of America later apologized to Valdez.

Alex remains silent.
In 2007 Shelby Sendelbach, a sixth-grader at Mayde Creek Junior High in Katy, Texas, confessed to writing “I love Alex” on the wall of the school gym. Shelby was called to the principal’s office, questioned by a police officer, read her rights, and charged with a “Level 4 infraction”—the same level applied to gun possession and making terrorist threats. (Only Level 5—for sexual assault and murder—is worse.) And she was sentenced to a special “disciplinary” school for four months. Officials said they were just following the rules. (They later reversed their decision and made Shelby write a letter of apology.)

Babyfat.
In 2009 Colorado’s Rocky Mountain Health Plans (RMHP) refused to cover Alex Lange because he had a preexisting condition: obesity. Alex’s parents were furious. Why? “He’s only four
months old,” his father, Bernie, said to reporters. “He’s breast-feeding. We can’t put him on the Atkins diet or on a treadmill.” Amid all the negative press (“RMHP Denies Healthy but Big Baby!”), the company explained that it had a relatively new process of determining which babies were most “insurable”—and at 17 pounds, Alex didn’t make that list. RMHP has since changed its policy to insure any healthy baby, regardless of weight.

Wackberry.
In 2012 Chris Evans used his brand-new BlackBerry, which he hadn’t quite figured out yet, to text a filthy come-on to his girlfriend. Except that he didn’t send it to his girlfriend. Well, he did, but he also sent it to every single person on his contacts list. That alone would make for embarrassment several dozen times over, but it gets worse. Evans, 24, is a community-center swimming teacher in Birmingham, England. The message was sent to two female students, 13 and 14 years old. Under British law, that’s a sexual offense against a minor. Evans was sentenced to 18 months in prison but was released after two—the judge said Evans’s mistake was due to “misguided use” of his BlackBerry.

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n 2012 Microsoft debuted the Surface, a tablet computer designed to compete with Apple’s iPad. The company spent $400 million to promote it, some of which went to secure a spot on Oprah Winfrey’s annual “Favorite Things” list. (When she had a talk show, Winfrey held an annual “Favorite Things” episode in which she showered her studio audience with luxurious products, almost all of which were provided by their manufacturers for a fee. Winfrey does a special called
Oprah’s Favorite Things
on the Oprah Winfrey Network now.) In November 2012, Winfrey wrote to her 14 million Twitter followers, “Gotta say love that SURFACE! Have bought 12 already for Christmas gifts.” However, programs that deliver tweets also display how tweets are sent, such as a desktop computer, mobile phone, or, as in the case with Winfrey’s tweet, an iPad.

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Shortly after the death of Apple’s Steve Jobs in 2011, Margie Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church announced plans to picket Jobs’s funeral to protest America’s tolerance toward homosexuality: “He had a huge platform; gave God no glory and taught sin.” Phelps announced the picket via Twitter, from her Apple iPhone.

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n the 1890s, the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad was having trouble attracting customers in Texas, large parts of it dusty expanses, so the company tasked executive William Crush with boosting M-K-T business there. Crush’s idea: a massive publicity stunt in which the railroad would build a small, temporary city where it would stage a train crash. Back then, as now, people loved to watch things crash into each other.

The railroad approved the plan. In 1896 it funded the building of the town of Crush, Texas, 15 miles north of Waco. The new little town consisted mostly of tents and a large grandstand. In the weeks leading up to the big event, two trains were decorated and sent around Texas to lure people to Crush—via the M-K-T Railroad at special reduced rates, of course. By the date of the planned crash, September 15, 1896, more than 40,000 people had come to Crush, making it the second-largest city in Texas (at least for the day).