The Gerald Incident

For eleven years, Gary Plotnik has kept Ridgecrest Savings Bank running with the precision of a perfectly aligned spreadsheet. Not a single reportable error. Not one unreconciled drawer. Not so much as a wrinkled lanyard. His flawless record has finally put a promotion within reach—until a software glitch sends $200,000 to an aspiring barbecue mogul in Tulsa, a merciless corporate evaluator arrives without warning, and Gerald, a nine-pound emotional-support rooster nobody knew was living beneath the loan officer’s desk, escapes into the ventilation system.

With his immaculate career collapsing around him, Gary makes a desperate choice: if he can’t restore order, he’ll convince everyone the chaos was intentional. Soon an unauthorized food truck, a haunted teller station, a rogue Facebook campaign, and a rooster hurtling through a pneumatic tube are being hailed as the future of experimental banking. Gary has spent his life believing that systems protect us from disaster. He’s about to discover that sometimes the difference between complete ruin and a spectacular promotion is simply knowing how to frame the incident.