The other day, after I wrote that SunTrust Bank had nicked me for $5.00 to cash a check drawn on one of their customer accounts, I immediately started figuring ways to “cry havoc and unleash the dogs of war,” as Shakespeare once wrote.

But after looking up the names and addresses of the Senate Banking Committee and vowing to “poor mouth” those disreputable people everywhere I go, I’ve since developed a fool-proof plan to “get my money’s worth” in retaliation and it is so simplistic it almost defies logic: I don’t have to do anything. Nothing that I could dream up could paralyze SunTrust worse than what they are already doing.

People are fed up with SunTrust's greed and arrogance, easily shown by about 50 emails that whirled after I wrote the article, but the deadly killer is this; not one SunTrust employee wrote or called or spoke to me. That's right, not a single one. That has to be the saddest sign of a ship going down that could ever be.

Oh, I heard from two or three former employees, all bemoaning the days when the much-beloved Scotty Probasco would dance through the lobby shouting “Great work!” to the beaming and bubbling employees, but it is pretty obvious from the emails I have received in response that SunTrust, with its ridiculous fees for darn near everything, now has a big-bank cancer that begs for the most-skilled financial physician.

Please, it’s not up to me to batter a bank that reportedly lost a reported $1.7 billion (with a “b”) last year. I would have probably taken my lump quietly, too, had not two guys standing in line at the gas station lamented they get nicked by SunTrust’s “check-cashing fee” every payday. The opinion piece that ensued was popular, to say the least, because America is darn-near ready to revolt against the blatant greed that CEO James M. Wells III exhibits when he accepts a yearly salary of almost $6 million (with an “m”).

But the worst figure, by far to me, was the “zero” I detected when not one solitary person came to the defense of what was once the biggest bank in Chattanooga. Oh, it is resoundingly clear that the people who work for SunTrust, the ones we all love who you see at church and who coach your son’s Little League team and who come by the funeral home have nothing whosoever to do with the scurrilous and insensitive fee policies that are now in place.

Are you kidding me? I’ll guarantee you nobody at the St. Elmo branch enjoys pinning a $5.00 charge on a guy trying to cash a SunTrust check. I know, as well as I know my name, that nobody in the big building at Eighth and Market agrees with a purported $2 fee one lady wrote they charge for using the bank’s “assistance” line.

Oh, you should have read the emails. The best one was about a guy who had a job where he got pretty dirty in a steel-modification plant and the teller at a local branch always looked down on him with disgust. He ignored her disdain when he cashed his paycheck one Friday, but when he noticed a discrepancy after he left the teller’s window, he got back in line and waited another turn.

When he stood before the teller a second time, with his transaction slip and cash in hand, little "Miss Snippy" glared anew behind her window. Before the gritty worker could even begin to explain, she firmly told him that the transaction ends when he leaves the window. He, in turn, didn’t say a word, putting the $20 he’d been just overpaid in his pocket as he headed for the exit door.

That’s exactly my point – I don’t have to do anything to continue the SunTrust hemorrhage. The rash of anger that was so obvious in the emails I have received is - quite candidly - my answer. I don’t need to do anything more to the present-day SunTrust but “watch and wait.” The reason I know? Not one present day employee took up "for the team." I don't see how upper management swallows that.

Maybe I’m making too big a deal out of measuring a company’s pulse that way, but, brother, when I went to bat for Toyota in the middle of their woes, I quickly received easily over 500 emails from places all over America from those who were grateful I was taking up for the company that each one genuinely loves.

I have never been as moved by such loyalty, and isn’t it funny that in a spate of mechanical problems the company is now addressing, not one of the nearly 200,000 could come forward with a flaw? Think about that? Why is it that not one solitary Toyota employee has had a problem that the congressional “witch hunt” would have us believe?

Anyhow, it’s glaringly obvious SunTrust has far bigger problems than floor mats. Cross this one off my vengeance list because, when not one employee cries out, the heartbeat is so faint this once-proud and mighty giant is already staggering toward the ropes. Ring the bell and end the fight.

SunTrust doesn’t need to be popped any more.

royexum@aol.com