Cash, then checks

A customer at the counter presses too hard on the top copy, certain that force improves accuracy. The deposit slip does not need force. It needs only two columns, filled in the correct order: cash, then checks, each check numbered and dated in a hand that gets smaller as the line behind grows. A carbon sheet rides underneath, faint and blue grey, holding a duplicate the customer will lose within the week. Nobody has ever framed a deposit slip. Nobody has ever kept one on purpose. And yet the ritual persists past the point of necessity: tellers could enter the total themselves, a machine could read a card, and still the slip appears, blank, ruled, waiting to be filled out by someone who learned long division before learning to use a debit card. The date line asks for the year in full, a small formality nobody obeys anymore. Below it, a signature, rendered in the same rushed cursive used for everything else that day. The carbon copy tears free along a perforated edge that never quite matches its printed line. What remains at the counter is the original, filed somewhere, counted twice, and forgotten by the third of the month.

Beatrice Womack