First Bank and Trust

John White, President and Chief Executive Officer of First Bank & Trust is a veteran of thirty five years in the financial services industry. As a young banker he has always remembered the time his bank lost an important customer because a branch manager followed procedure to the letter. The bank had a policy that a customer had to wait three days before getting cash for an out of state check they were cashing if over $100. Mary Jones, who maintained account balances of over one million dollars in deposits and several million in trust came to a branch to cash an out of state check. The branch manager would not give her the cash because of the banks three day policy. As a result, Mary closed all her accounts. Since then John White has always preached you must know when to break the rules.

Lou Brown was the senior officer in charge of commercial lending. Judy Bolton had just spent a long weekend putting together a loan deal between the bank and Acme Manufacturing. Lou was overjoyed that the deal was completed and told Judy to go out to diner with her husband and charge it to the bank as a reward for a job well done. To make it a reimbursable expense he told Judy to indicate she had diner with one of Acmes officers.

Comment on these two situations. While the textbook may dictate one course of action what do you think we should do in the real world.