4298: The True Story of the Half-a-Billion-Dollar Blunder
| The True Story of the Half-a-Billion-Dollar Blunder |
 Made by: Jason Tank |
Explanation[edit | edit source]
This strip takes the news story linked to in the author's notes and makes it look like Jon was the Citibank employee responsible for the blunder. The bit about Citibank letting Jon work from home is likely in reference to work-from-home situations that arose due to the COVID-19 pandemic that increased the amount of the workforce doing their work from home.
The author's portrayl of Jon working for Citibank in the first place is likely to take advantage of recent audiences who may not think to take a look at Garfield's beginning and learn Jon's profession (be it through Garfield At Large: His First Book or online archives), and subsequently think Jon is canonically unemployed and thus in a position to take the Citibank job in the first place; the amount of money wired away in the news story and subsequently this strip, $500 million, is likely more money than Jon has ever seen in his life based on his canonical salary as a cartoonist.
Citibank and Revlon would eventually reach a settlement in December 2022.
The author writes:[edit | edit source]
Yes, this actually happened! So far, a judge has ruled that Citibank can't get its money back, but the appeals may last several more years: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2021/02/16/citi-cant-get-back-500-million-it-accidentally-wired-to-revlon-lenders-federal-judge-rules/
Original strip: 2009-12-15.
Transcript[edit | edit source]
Jon: I am so glad Citibank started letting me work from home
SFX: CLICK
Jon: Oops
Jon: I accidentally wired away $500,000,000
Garfield: Ehh, that sounds like a "fix it tomorrow" situation
