I have a looooong career in banking, and believe me, Mark Hutton is a case study in how NOT to manage a branch during a robbery. I hope no one reading this ever is involved in a bank robbery, but just be a bit at ease ... bank managers are trained to do things pretty much in the opposite way that Mark did:

Armed bank robbers charge into branch -- you do absolutely everything you are told. They want the key ... you give them the key as fast as you can. Mark's actions put his employees and customers in serious jeopardy ... his statement that "you will kill me anyway" was incredibly dumb and self-serving.

Mark's primary job during the robbery is to keep the situation ratcheted down as much as possible -- give the robbers absolutely everything ... ensure that the episode is over as quickly as possible ... one and only aim is protection of human life. Mark did an abysmal job.

Mamma! I completely agree with you. I too have been in banking for a while, and even before they let you work in the branch you go through robbery training. And that training consists of beating it into your head to do every thing you are told as quickly as possible in a robbery situation. They say to not even hit alarms unles you can do so without putting yourself at risk. Mark was definately not doing anything to defuse the situation.

i agree!

I've never worked in a bank, but I did work in a convenience store during college and they said the same thing. Don't fight, just hand over the money.

It's taught to you where ever you work really.

They say if someone comes in threatening you then you do as they ask. They say that your life is better than no life at all. The main thing is your safety.

Former teller here! Go, Momma! I also found it strange that whilst all the attention was drawn to "Maggie" and the manager that no tellers pushed the silent alarm...or even the manager for that matter...there were plenty of opportunities of 'distraction' during that whole sequence that I cannot believe that none of the other bank employees would not have had the chance to hit the alarm. I was waiting for the police to show up near the end because I assumed for sure someone hit the damn silent alarm- they had to have! Plus all the time they spent during the robbery- seemed like an eternity. As far as "how not to act during a bank robbery"- I think that can apply to the manager as much as the robbers! ;)

Well, we do know that she gets caught, somehow. So perhaps the police do arrive, sometimes response time is not as quick as we would hope it to be. Also, the police may want to not cause an escalation of the already violent robbery. They may be waiting outside to catch the felons as they leave.

As I just posted in another thread, Kate's whole planning of the robbery was based on the necessity of overcoming the manager's refusal to hand over the key. And then the manager acted against all the principles of good bank management in order to make it look like her plan wasn't based on totally false and stupid assumptions!

This is really, really bad writing, in which widely known information is thrown out the window for the sake of making the plot work out as desired.

Cardie

I thought that Kate just assumed they wouldn't open the box w/o the signature card. If she'd tried before, wouldn't Hutton have recognized her?

With guns being brandished at their customers, bank personnel are trained to do whatever the robbers ask them to do. Usual banking procedures are out the window. The way safety deposit boxes are protected from robberies is that two keys are required and no one at the bank can get into your safety deposit box without your key. Since Kate had the key, all she had to do was instruct her robbers to bring her the box's contents along with the contents of the vault. If she was worried about being identified, she should have stayed far away from the bank. If she didn't think she could trust the robbers to bring her the box's contents, she should have walked in with a gun herself and demanded the contents of the box. Or she should have hired dynamiters to blow the box out of the wall and bring it to her unopened.

Cardie

As I type this while at work at a bank ;D, this eppy was by far the worst of all of them.

Not one thing made sense in this eppy, from the robbery...all of it was off, to the fact that why did Kate go to such extremes to keep a model plane secret, to why was no one concerned about looking for Claire, or the existance of the others, or Danielle???? These people seem like they are on vacation.

Not one thing made sense in this eppy, from the robbery...all of it was off, to the fact that why did Kate go to such extremes to keep a model plane secret,


This is part of the reason I don't think Kate knew what she was going to find in the box. I think someone else left it there for her, and all she knew was that she had to get it.

She had to think that there was something incriminating in the marshal's case, whatever she found in the safety deposit box and whatever the true significance of the toy plane is. Otherwise she could be completely straightforward with Jack, saying "There are guns and ammo in that case that we don't want Sawyer to get, plus [make up lie about significance of toy plane] that means a lot to me." Both the bank robbery and the pursuit of the contents of the case were way overcomplicated for what the situations demanded.

So she must have thought the mashal locked something else in the case that isn't in there--and that perhaps Sawyer found and is holding onto?

Cardie

Cardie -- I hear you, but I think one of your facts may be a bit off. In order to get into a safety deposit box, not only do you need the second key (the bank has the first key), but you need to sign in on the signature card, and you have to be an authorized signer, which Kate said she was not. So even if she had walked in there with the key, she would not have been able to get into the box, and she knew that. I also don't think everything was planned to overcome the manager's resistance. If the manager had just handed over the key, they would have gone into the back and got what they needed, including the safe deposit box. But some *unplanned* things happened ... the manager resisted, and the customer tackled the robber and the gun slid over to Kate. So, I think one of the plot points proven here is that Kate is a very quick liar. She was able to pick up the gun and immediately pretend not to know how to fire it -- and she was able to think fast enough to have the robber/boyfriend (with the yucky kiss) smack her so it would look like she was in danger - thereby convincing the manager to behave. SO - other than having the manager resist in the first place, I actually thought the writing of the rest of the scene was pretty interesting.

That said, no excuse for why people were not going ape-sh*t trying to find Claire ... Helloooooooooooooooooooooo?

Mama. I know that she couldn't have just walked into the bank with the key and been given access to the box. What I was saying, in response to the previous poster, is that during a robbery with people pointing guns, the manager would surrender his key to the box just as he would have opened the vault as ordered.

The previous post had implied that because she wasn't on the signatory card, a bank employee who would have opened the vault at gunpoint would still have refused to open the safe deposit box.

I've been an executor and I have a safe deposit box, so I know the protocols in place if no robbery is in progress.

Cardie

What I find interesting is the fact that Kate would have had to reveal she was in on it to get into the safe box. She had the key, and her accomplicies knew nothing about the box. She would have had to be in the vault while the robbery was in progress, and get the second "guard" key to access the box. There was no way she was going to get out of the situation without her connection to the robbery being known.
Wouldn't she have been better off sitting at the manager's desk, quietly letting him know she had a gun and was willing to use it if he wouldn't let her into the box. Or giving him some sob story about how she was supposed to be on the access card, but her father/brother/husband died before adding her. Or forging documents such as a death certificate and will or power of attorney papers to legitimize her access to the box. So many other ways to access that box without staging a bank robbery.
But that backstory wouldn't have been near as interesting as a big dramatic bank robbery. ::)

What robber keeps the safety on? :)

What robber keeps the safety on? :)

Kate told them no one was to get hurt, she probably told them to have the safety on after the initial running in and shooring at the ceiling.

Even I knew that. And I've never worked in a bank. That was just sloppy writing. Its one of the things that's making me not want to watch this show anymore.

Crazy stuff happens all the time. On an average, that's not how most good bank managers would react. Could it happen? Sure. Some guy wants to be the hero and doesn't do what he's been trained to do. Definately believable. Take a hundred bank robberies and would they go like that? Probably 99 of them wouldn't, but one might...

Notice I guess reverse deja vu with 'Kate' feigning gun incompetence

She had to think that there was something incriminating in the marshal's case, whatever she found in the safety deposit box and whatever the true significance of the toy plane is. Otherwise she could be completely straightforward with Jack, saying "There are guns and ammo in that case that we don't want Sawyer to get, plus [make up lie about significance of toy plane] that means a lot to me." Both the bank robbery and the pursuit of the contents of the case were way overcomplicated for what the situations demanded.

So she must have thought the mashal locked something else in the case that isn't in there--and that perhaps Sawyer found and is holding onto?

Cardie


I agree with this except I don't think Sawyer got into the box.

How many bank robbers were there?

At the end, Kate, the manager and three robbers are in the vault. Who's out front watching the rest of the hostages?

well for one probibly the guy that said "I can take him"