I know some bank tellers who say they are taught to comply with ANY robbery instructions. Even if it's as simple as someone slipping them a note saying, "This is a robbery" with no explicit threats. If they feel comfortable, they can slip him the marked bills or dye packs, but they won't be punished if they don't. Get the robber out, lock the door, call the cops.
I could totally see the tellers recognizing the avocado for what it was and figuring it was on the cops to catch him, not theirs.
For us it was 'hit the silent alarm as soon as it is safe to do so' instead of calling the cops ourselves. Hitting the alarm would trigger a whole chain of events, which included alerting the cops, region manager and an emotional support team and sending out a notification to our intranet that your office would not be reachable for the rest of that day and the day after. It would also immediately notify the correct police departments, which was another reason why we were instructed to not call the alarm number.
Our robber wrapped a plastic bag around his arm so probably didn't have a firearm, but you simply do not take that risk. Although my colleague had to tell that nitwit that he walked into a branch office that didn't handle money and had nothing on premises, which was clearly advertised at the door. It did have an ATM, but, as was also made very clear on the outside, we didn't have access to that. Never seen somebody so confused, fortunately he 180'd out of there. We were lucky that it was probably just somebody who acted on an impulse, another office a few streets down had a real armed robbery, where one of my colleagues got a gun put to her head. Took her years to get her live back on track.
You can get a fairly decent new car for that money or you can where I live anyways.
Might not be the coolest car in the world but it will be fine.
Not saying that robbing banks with an avocado is a good idea though.
Here they wouldn't get shit because nearly none of our banks handle any cash. My bank decided in 2008 that only ⅓ of their banks should handle any cash. It seems that they have since gone completely cash free.
Banks are cash free now??? What a world. At what point to we get to where banks don’t really do anything at all except legally rob you and bill you for stupid shit?
What the fuck are you on about? I just bought a 2002 VW Jetta for $9k, practically new, 150k miles and only one broken motor mount. Cars are... Fuck my life.
On a somewhat related note, that Sun Tzu quote reminds me of something he did. Sun Tzu had a rivalry with this other general who he often got into skirmishes with and always defeated him or outmaneuvered him with some kind of trickery. So one time this rival general actually had Sun Tzu on the ropes and had chased him into a bit of a corner. Sun Tzu was in a smallish fort with the enemy general closing in and he definitely did not have enough soldiers to hold the fort for long.
So instead of trying to intimidate his rival with a show of force or making his army seem bigger than it was or whatever else he might have tried instead when his rival arrived at the fort he found the front gate fully open and nobody in sight except Sun Tzu himself sitting on the battlement playing an instrument somewhat akin to a lyre I think.
His rival was so wary of trickery that he assumed it must be a trap, or a distraction while a larger army moves in to reinforce him, so he left and Sun Tzu and his army survived.
Oh interesting! I must have mixed my facts up or something, my bad. You're right that it's attributed to Zhuge Liang, but it seems like Wikipedia thinks it was a fictional story when attributed to Zhuge Liang, but it looks like he wasn't the first to use this strategy and he wasn't the last. Regardless, I was wrong about Sun Tzu having done it and I learned more about history, so thanks!
Legend has it they needed an extra casket just for his balls when they buried him, and it required twice the number of pallbearers his actual body did.
"I HAVE A GRENADE! GIVE ME MONEY!" (it's an avocado)
"OH GOD! HERE! TAKE IT!"
Still not as bad as that time Verizon handed over their customer's data to some idiot that said he was an FBI agent. And in case it wasn't obvious, he was a fraud and he didn't have anything that looked like an official warrant either.