I had to stop by our local B of A branch today. While B of A is pretty odious, so are most of the realistic options. (It’s not about the local employees. The branch manager is a complete sweetheart and her employees reflect her influence.) Outside was a security guard, playing with his doodad phone.

This was new, so while I waited in line, and the bank employee was trying to handle some of the transactions with people in line, I asked him: why the security? His tone was sanctimonious. “It’s because of Occupy. Two of our tellers were assaulted in Texas by four of them; one woman had a broken leg. This is to assure the safety of our female tellers.” It was in that kind of tone that says ‘You cannot dispute me unless you want it to mean you favor beating up women.’ I expressed skepticism, and that if that had happened, it was probably done by provocateurs–perhaps even police infiltrators. He asserted that they were in jail. I’d never seen this guy here before at the branch, so one suspects that he was sent to ‘message’ this to clients.

This being Bank of America, I knew it was entirely credible that they would simply invent a story. When I got home, I did some research. Two tellers beaten up badly by those ultra-violent Occupy maniacs (who seem to be most famous for being roughed up, pepper-sprayed and assaulted by police, not the other way around) would seem a pretty big deal. No one thinks it’s okay to beat up on bank tellers just doing their work, or coming or going from it. I searched the google string “bank of america tellers assaulted by occupy,” no quotes, to have the greatest possible chance to learn about this breaking story.

Nothing about any such assault. I found some about bank robbers assaulting tellers, but Occupy protestors are not bank robbers. Same terms into a news aggregator; nothing. I found nothing to corroborate this story.

Unless I find something to corroborate it (and if I do, I will update this, of course), I have to assume that the employee was telling patrons a bald-faced lie. Sounds to me like a slick anti-Occupy propaganda trick, depending mainly upon people being too lazy to fact-check. In most cases, that’s probably a safe assumption. If there really was no such attack, it would say a lot about B of A’s opinion of the public. It would also say a lot about the corporate values–not that most observant people would bet heavily on those, at this stage of the game.