Kathryn's Inbox Exclusive: Bank Employee Cleared of Stalking Charges

A brochure from the Heart Foundation
like the one Mr Hoarse found in
his letter box ...
ADELAIDE AUSTRALIA--A female employee at a local bank was cleared of stalking charges this week, after a complaint from one of the bank's regular customers was ruled to be a misunderstanding. Ms Bree Tanner, 25, an employee at the Rich Bastards Bank, was accused of stalking by a Mr Henry Hoarse, 57. "I don't quite know how it happened," Ms Tanner told our reporters. "In fact, I barely know the man and I have never even spoken to him outside of my workplace."

The misunderstanding began, after one day when Ms Tanner served Mr Hoarse at the bank. "As part of my duties, I am instructed to offer every customer a friendly verbal greeting, so that they may feel welcome at the bank," Ms Tanner explains. "It seems that Mr Hoarse took my greeting of, 'Good morning,' a little bit too literally and thought that I was genuinely excited by the prospect of speaking to him and wanted to engage in some kind of relationship outside of working hours." The misunderstanding was further fuelled by the fact that the Rich Bastard Bank has a policy of regularly updating their customer databases and on that morning, Ms Tanner was prompted by her computer system to ask if Mr Hoarse was still residing at the same address. "At that point, Mr Hoarse began to get a little anxious," Ms Tanner reflects. "I didn't think anything of it though; sometimes customers just don't like to give out their details or prefer to have something in writing from the bank before they do so. It never occurred to me that Mr Hoarse might think that I was asking for his address for personal reasons."

The misunderstanding was further complicated several weeks later when Ms Tanner moved to a new residence. "I was in the middle of a messy divorce," Ms Tanner explains. "The house had just been sold and I was looking for somewhere new to live. Anyway, I found this great flat that was just a couple of streets away from my work. I didn't realise that Mr Hoarse lived just around the corner, or that he would think that I had moved to the neighbourhood just to be closer to him. I saw him around a couple of times, yeah, in the supermarket and at the local take-away place, but I didn't really think anything of it. I mean, when you work with the public and live in the same area, you're bound to see some of your regular customers around the place from time to time."

The whole misunderstanding finally came to a head when Ms Tanner's vehicle broke down in the same street where Mr Hoarse lived. "I was on my way back from the pizza shop when the engine kicked out." Ms Tanner shrugged. "I rang the RAA and they asked me to wait in the car, so I did. Anyway, they were there in about ten minutes, which is pretty good service, I think. But Mr Hoarse seemed to think that I was sitting in my car watching him from down the street and he called the police." This, Ms Tanner adds, was despite the fact that her car was parked on the opposite side of the street, pointing in the other direction and parked at least one hundred and fifty metres away from Mr Hoarse's home. Mr Hoarse later admitted that he had only been able to see the car, and its driver, from the third floor balcony of his townhouse and even then, a pair of binoculars had to be used in order for him to confirm the identity of the driver. He also admitted that he lives on a busy road which acts as the main thoroughfare to the local shopping centre, where Tasty Pizzas is located.

The police investigation was quick to dismiss any charges against Ms Tanner. "The cops were pretty good, all things considered," Ms Tanner said. "They took the time to explain to Mr Hoarse what behaviour constitutes as stalking and what doesn't. They also took his binoculars away, after he admitted that he had been using them to watch the women who live in the house next door to him, which I am glad about. No one deserves to be watched like that."

When questioned by one of our reporters, Mr Hoarse was a little embarrassed, though unapologetic, about his behaviour. "Sometimes it's very hard to tell," he says, as he runs his chubby fingers through his thinning hair. "A man with my natural good looks and good standing in the community does have an awful lot of admirers. Just this morning, I had someone deliver a Valentine's day card in my letter box." Mr Hoarse then held up the Valentine's day card for our reporters to see and appeared to be quite embarrassed when informed that the card was not a Valentines Day card, but, in fact, a brochure from the Heart Foundation ... 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean...
Read more

Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt and the Football

Image
One of the longest, and arguably, most infuriating, running gags in Charles Schulz's otherwise brilliant Peanuts comic strip, is where Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown and then pulls it away at the last minute, causing Charlie Brown to fall flat on his back. A typical strip looks like this: Source: Go Comics The gag is one of the darker themes in the strip. It works on the concept that every year, Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown. Every year, Charlie Brown is initially filled with doubt but is eventually pushed on by a kind of optimism that perhaps, this time, Lucy might just let him kick it after all. As a metaphor for life, it is pretty simple. It talks of the moments when we choose to put our trust in people who have let us down only to be taken by surprise when they let us down, again. Lucy is, arguably, one of the crueller characters in the comic. Described as crabby by the other characters, she is often selfish, takes delight in wilfully hu...
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A...
Read more