Dennis Culpepper, who joined The Windy City Dispatch last Thursday as a general assignment reporter, has been terminated from the paper effective immediately, this reporter has confirmed. The cause: an unreturned calculator.

According to multiple sources within the newsroom, Culpepper borrowed a TI-30X scientific calculator from the accounting department on his first day of employment in order to, in his words, “double-check some figures for a story about crosswalk buttons.” He did not return it. He was asked to return it on Friday. He said he would. He did not. He was asked again on Monday. He said it was “in his bag.” It was not in his bag.

By Tuesday morning, the situation had escalated beyond what anyone involved now considers proportionate. Accounting filed a formal asset recovery request. HR opened a case. The calculator, valued at approximately $11.99, was logged as missing equipment under the paper’s fixed asset policy — a policy that, until this week, had been invoked exactly once, in 2014, for a missing projector.

“I want to be very clear: this was never about the calculator,” said Dispatch managing editor Linda Choi in a brief statement to staff. She paused. “It was a little bit about the calculator.”

Culpepper, reached by phone Tuesday afternoon, said he was “blindsided” by the decision and maintained that he had always intended to return the calculator. “I was using it,” he said. “I’m a journalist. Journalists use calculators. I was going to bring it back. I just — I needed to finish some calculations first.” When asked what calculations, he said, “Long division. For a story. I’d rather not get into the specifics.”

The accounting department confirmed that the calculator was eventually recovered from Culpepper’s desk drawer during the processing of his departure. It was returned in working condition, though Senior Accountant Phil Murakami noted that the battery cover “was on wrong, like he’d opened it and put it back without understanding how battery covers work.” Murakami declined to speculate on what Culpepper had done with the batteries.

Colleagues describe Culpepper as enthusiastic but perhaps not ideally suited to the operational rhythms of a working newsroom. “He was here for five days and he sent fourteen emails to the all-staff list,” said one reporter who asked not to be named. “Three of them were just to say good morning. One had an attachment that turned out to be a photo of the lake.”

Choi said the paper wishes Culpepper well and that his position will be posted internally before being listed on the paper’s careers page. “Dennis was a nice young man with a real passion for journalism,” she said. “We hope he finds a newsroom that’s a better fit. Preferably one with a more relaxed equipment policy.”

Culpepper’s sole published article, an investigation into decorative crosswalk buttons in the Loop, will remain on the Dispatch website. As of Tuesday, it had received 28,000 pageviews — more than any other article published that week. Culpepper said he was proud of the piece and that he “left everything on the field, journalistically.” He added that he is open to freelance opportunities and can be reached at his personal email, which he asked this reporter to include in the article. We have declined to do so.