Max Taking Too Long to Finish the Typing Test -- "Predicting" His Robbery Screw-Ups

MAJOR SPOILERS

I liked how in the early scene where Max(Hoffman) is taking a typing test under the supervision of Theresa Russell, how he keeps on typing...and keeps ON typing...long after Russell has called "time!" He even manages to irritate this young woman who has barely been on the job a week. The scene tells us a little bit about Max's stubbornness and refusal to follow orders.

But what we don't know is that it is showing us the key to Max's destruction (eventually) and that of his partners(immediately.)

Because:

FIRST...during the bank robbery, Hoffman refuses to leave the bank with Stanton under the time limit(Stanton yells "Go! Let's GO!") They get out in time...just barely...and Hoffman's contention is that if he hadn't stayed longer, "you'd have made me leave $8000 behind!"

SECOND...during the jewelry store robbery. Stanton has trusted Hoffman to behave this time, but Hoffman is WORSE, lingering forever to try to find a piece of jewelry in all the broken glass that "I swear is here." This time, the delay is disastrous. For Busey can't/won't wait that long with the getaway car and disappears with it; the cops are able to chase Hoffman and Stanton on foot, and a final shootout occurs that kills Stanton with Hoffman wounding a pursuing cop(under the "felony murder" rule, Hoffman will be held legally responsible for STANTON's death as well as wounding the cop.)

Hoffman refuses to take responsibility for his delay at the jewelry store in any way pushing Busey to take off in the getaway car. Instead...he kills Busey(now he has a direct "first person" murder on his hands.)

What's interesting to me, if you back up to the beginning, is that the "little" scene of Hoffman refusing to stop typing at the "time!" command, lays out his biggest character flaw(well, other than a con's hair trigger temper, but they are connected), and that flaw reveals itself first in the bank robbery and then in the tragic aftermath of the jewelry store robbery.

Side irony: Stanton saw Hoffman's dangerous inclincation to "stay too long" when they were at the bank, and yet he goes along one more time on the jewelry store robbery -- and Hoffman does it AGAIN. Given that Hoffman's earlier still attempt to rob a poker game with Stanton fell apart because a guy didn't show up with a shotgun, Stanton really trusted his old pal Hoffman far too much.

Hoffman was a dangerous screw-up...and Stanton(and Busey) paid the price.