Out of nowhere, Hong Hui-gyeong asked the officers whether we were dating anyone. Kim Jin-ju said no. After a brief hesitation, Bu Ha-yun honestly said yes. I sighed inwardly the moment I heard it. Hong beamed at her.
“Then with a boyfriend, our Officer Bu can bring in twice the sales, can't she?”
Hearing that from across the room, I recoiled inside. That woman was insane. Truly. I never wanted to have anything to do with Hong Hui-gyeong, not the tiniest bit, for the rest of my life. Song called to me from his desk.
“Officer Eun. Do you have a girlfriend?”
“No.”
If I had one, no. If I didn't, no.
“Come on. You're not seeing anyone?”
“How am I supposed to date anyone when I leave work at midnight?”
“You have weekends.”
“I need to sleep on weekends. Aren't you tired?”
“What time you leave work has nothing to do with dating.”
Did a day have thirty-eight hours? When was I meant to rest, wash, or sleep? According to Song, though, no matter how busy you were or how much overtime you worked, you could still date. How? Right. Song could manage it, since he didn't work. Hong called out:
“What about you, Geon-u?”
Flustered by her coy tone, Geon-u said he wasn't seeing anyone. Song curled his lips into a smile.
“Aren't any of you going to get married?”
“You haven't either, Manager Song.”
If I was going down, I was taking him with me. He answered confidently.
“There are women at every branch waiting to marry me.”
Objectively or subjectively, Song was quite handsome. He seemed self-conscious about his height, though, judging by his enormous shoe heels. Apparently he'd been such a famously handsome new hire that employees searched his name in the directory to see his photo. Not as famous as Seong Su-ri at regional headquarters, but handsome all the same.
Song was the only man at the branch who didn't use the residence. He'd bought a home the moment he arrived in Taecheon. Apparently, whenever he was transferred far from home, he bought a place near the branch instead of using staff housing, then sold it later. I'd heard his family was well-off. When I asked him, it proved true.
“Why live in uncomfortable staff housing? Buy a place, live in it for two or three years until your next transfer, then sell it. Besides, if you live with coworkers, you can't invite people over freely. You can't even dress comfortably at home.”
His BMW held designer shoes and several designer suits on hangers. More than a dozen pairs of expensive shoes were strewn across the back seat. When he asked me to help load personal deliveries that had arrived at the branch, the trunk was much the same. As a new hire, he'd apparently driven a Porsche to work and parked across two spaces in the tiny customer lot. After a thorough dressing-down from his branch manager, he'd bought the BMW as a second car and started driving that.
He told me he'd joined Goldlight Bank because he was bored and wanted a respectable-looking job. His family was extremely rich. He was the exact opposite of me, who'd found work to make a living.
Apparently his grandfather owned four universities and more than a dozen private middle and high schools. His father seemed to own several companies too. At plenty of schools, he knew the principal or vice principal. Even Ma couldn't treat him carelessly. Having Song at the branch made hitting targets easy. His promotion from assistant manager to manager seemed to have been almost meteoric.
When Ma told him the branch needed another forty sales that month, Song frowned as though in great difficulty, promised to look into it, and left the manager's office looking grimly determined. Then he spent all his time making calls instead of working. Most of those calls went something like, Where should we go on holiday? Anywhere you like. Guam? I'm bored of Guam. We've been too often. If the deputy branch manager asked, he said they were business calls. I sometimes overheard them while fetching foreign currency. It was ridiculous.
Even when employees from his client companies came in, he sent them to me unless their business directly involved corporate loans, saying he was busy. Most of those accounting or bookkeeping staff brought transfers, tax payments, or payroll matters. He told them the new Officer Eun would take good care of them because he was terribly busy himself. At first, I believed him. Within three days, I discovered he was shopping online, playing games, browsing new designer releases, and visiting every discussion site imaginable on his phone.
Corporate-loan functions were blocked on my computer. I wasn't even an assistant manager yet, and hadn't completed two years as an officer. If not for that, he'd have dumped those on me too. My access only extended to renewing personal and sole-proprietor loans. Occasionally he called me to his desk, pointed at the screen, and explained how to process a corporate loan. He wasn't training me. He wanted me to do his work for him.
After spending four days doing nothing, on the fifth business day he finally made a real call, shielding his phone with his hand. Then he told the deputy branch manager he needed a gift. If things went well, he might bring in sixty sales, but he needed something for a school principal. Once the branch manager approved, Song began browsing the branch's promotional-gift website for the entire day. However busy the bank was, however many people waited clutching tickets, he paid no attention. Neither the branch manager nor his deputy interfered.
Whether 240 customers visited or thirty were waiting, only assistant managers and below cared. Customers who squeezed bank errands into their short lunch breaks sometimes became irritated or angry. Did bank employees really have to eat lunch while working? Only the staff calling tickets worried about those reactions or were frightened by them. Sometimes, when we were especially busy, an impatient or bold customer sat down at a manager's or senior manager's desk and threatened not to leave until served. Only then did the seniors pay attention. More precisely, they messaged Bae or me to take this crazy customer to our desk. The customer sat at your desk. I already have one at mine. Why do I have to deal with yours?
Song suddenly summoned me by message, saying it was urgent. Thinking it might actually be something urgent, I apologized to the customer in front of me and stepped away. Fifteen people were waiting. Every one of them had taken time out of a busy day to visit the bank and was spending precious minutes waiting their turn.
Song showed me a Montblanc fountain pen costing several hundred thousand won and asked whether it was too old-fashioned as a gift for a teacher in their late forties. Ignoring the eyes of all those waiting customers, I wanted to punch him. I held back.
I returned to my desk, thanked my kind, considerate customer for waiting, and handled their business as quickly as possible. Song sent another urgent message. This time I asked what he wanted by message. He told me to install some phone game, add his account, and send him a life or an item or whatever it was. Otherwise, he couldn't keep playing. This crazy bastard.
Looking at the recipient list, he seemed to have sent it to everyone below him in rank. Couldn't he see the angry customers glaring at our faces as they waited? I ignored his message and called the next ticket.
Ding-dong.
I was angry, but the customer in front of me hadn't done anything wrong. My face felt ready to cramp as I smiled. Waving both hands beside my head, I spoke brightly, pitching my voice up to G.
“Hello! Welcome to Goldlight Bank, shining brightly alongside your future. How may I help you?”
When I first joined Hwapyeong, that greeting had embarrassed me so much I wanted to crawl into a hole. After saying it to every customer for over a year and a half, it popped out automatically. I no longer felt shame or anything else. Apparently it used to be ‘Goldlight Bank, making you rich,’ but they changed it because it was hard to pronounce and drew complaints. Stop talking bullshit when you aren't making us rich, customers said. The higher-ups were supposedly planning to change it again. I hoped they wouldn't tack on anything else ridiculous.
While I was serving my customer, Song complained that I was the only one who hadn't installed the game and sent a life. What did he want from me, the lunatic? Was I supposed to abandon my customer, pick up my phone, and install a game? Every breath wanted to come out as a curse, but I couldn't say it. We worked at the same branch, and he outranked me. I told him I was run off my feet during business hours and he should make requests like that after closing. He barely listened and complained that he'd failed the boss stage because of me. Deranged bastard.
Was the branch the only place Song avoided work? No. He didn't work on business trips either.
Once a phone call arranged [Goldlight Bank's Basic Financial Education Lecture] at a private high school run by one of his relatives, the work piled up. We could claim sales for transaction accounts, online banking, debit cards, and installment savings accounts, which meant plenty to prepare. Student paperwork, promotional gifts, travel arrangements: Geon-u or I did it all. Once Song announced the sales he intended to make, he did nothing beyond issuing a few verbal instructions. He didn't lift a finger.
The branch manager approved the trip. The day before we were due to leave, he suddenly called me in and told me to give the basic finance lecture to the private school's students attending the extra term. Since nobody had said anything until then, I'd assumed Song was giving it.
“You want me to give the finance lecture tomorrow?”
What did a branch officer barely into his second year at a bank know enough about to lecture students? Surely you needed to be at least a manager with seven years under your belt before you could claim to know banking. And why tell me the day before? With a few days' notice, I could at least have prepared. When I looked reluctant, Song turned the question back on me in front of the branch manager.
“Then you want me to do it? Why should I when you're here?”
He sounded genuinely puzzled. The branch manager and his deputy praised him for giving Officer Eun Su-won, who'd never delivered a financial lecture to a large audience outside the bank, such a wonderful opportunity.