I'm back! And why women are killing the banking system Part 1...

I've recently had a career change and now have more time to start and hopefully maintain a semi-competant and possibly even entertaining blog. I remembered I started this one more than three years ago and never got back to it. Shame on me, but I still like the name and template so I will try to post when I can. Comments and suggestions are always appreciated.


I recently left a large bank that I had been working in for three years and want to put some thoughts down in general and expand on them later. For the sake of brievity I will list them and move on as I could probably write a book on the subject if need be and most people reading blogs can''t stomach more than 500 words at a time (myself included). Note that you can probably exchange "banking system" for any other industry that has been inundated with women in the last 3 decades.

1) There is no such thing as accountability anymore.

--- It used to common practice that if you were in sales that the number one decider of whether you keep your job or not, much less receive promotion, was determined by your sales numbers. If you made the company money, you were valuable and they wanted to entice you to stay. If you broke even, as long as there wasn't an economic downturn or tons of more qualified people looking to take your job, you usually stayed on, albeit in the same position. If however, you were substandard for long enough you were almost always terminated or put into a different position that you might be better suited for. Seems simple right? Well, nowadays you would be wrong.

Let's move past the now firmly established quotas and affirmitive action policies that ushered this in. It is old hat and every thinking person that is true to reality understands the problems inherent to these policies. What really pushes things over the edge is a sense that women have to be there and that other people i.e. men will make up the slack. This is unspoken, but is an undercurrent to everything that goes on. This of course is not just tied to sales, every position now functions this way. Managers on the retail level who are female can justify their high pay and existance in the job by making reports for staff, having self-esteem meetings, and constantly getting their employees to move furniture around. Haven't had a single sale in two months? No worries as long as the three male personal bankers make numbers I can go to three hour lunches and make pretty pictures on the white board for our female area managers to applaud us for.

Now as for accountability, if a male does not consistantly make his numbers he will be reprimanded, sent for additional ( and often useless training), or pushed out through whatever uncomfortable means the bank can contrive. He is expected to wear a suit and tie, be respectful of all clients, and not step on any co-workers toes or feelings. This really isn't out of whack as being a banker one should think that this is a requirement. If a woman does not make her numbers consistantly, the consensus is that she is not being utilized properly or she is being held back. CLients are geared toward her so that she gets first crack or it must be the male manager's fault for not training her properly. If she continues to fail, they often will promote her to some marketing or management position where she can make more money wasting company time or having the men beneath her prop her up.

Tellers are a good case in point about how this lack of accountability seeps into all things banking. Tellers are still traditionally considered to be a woman's job despite the growing number of men who work in this line (it sounds bad, but I would venture that close to a third are gay) and as such the tellers in general are treated as a whole like women. I have seen good tellers that can run almost 400 transactions a day, point clients in the right direction, give off a good attitude, and not be consistantly out of balance. On the other hand I have seen lazy Marys do next to nothing, play on the internet, and take as much time as they want to help people. I have seen bad attitudes and unhelpful service. Routinely these people are out of balance which can cost the bank a great deal of money until they are terminated, which of course takes months. There is no difference in pay among these people. Any slight differences in wage are due solely to tenure and what you were hired in at. Even an economics dullard could tell you that a marginal character person or even simply someone who just thinks of the job as just a paycheck will choose the easiest option if there is no incentive to do otherwise. Even the hope of promotion only entails more work as a lead teller at a slightly higher pay wage, but now you are accountable to the whims of your manager and if anything ever goes wrong you are on the spot. Seldom has a teller in my experienced ever been given the option to rise above teller unless they leave and go to another bank. What this breeds is a culture of getting by and doing the minimum all the time. Want to know why your bank screws up some of your accounts from time to time? Or why you have huge lines in the bank at certain times? The reason is tellers have no incentive to treat you like you are their livelihood. They know that if you get screwed over and leave that simply means less work for them to plod through.

2) Clients expect results, women expect happiness.

We all have bank accounts. Most of us rarely ever have to go into a branch unless there is a problem, we have money to invest, or we need a loan of some kind. This is basically it. Some people are regulars because it is their job to make deposits for their employers and some people aren't terribly well off and need to cash weekly checks to pay bills. However, with drive-thrus and the prevalance of online banking, more than two or three yearly visits are uncommon for the majority of people. With that being said, when you actually do go into one, you expect efficient action to take place on your behalf. You entrust a lot of money to their safekeeping or you make the bank a lot of money with loans you have taken out. Even simple checking accounts with a check card make them money everytime you use it. So why does it seem like you can hardly ever get competant, knowledgeable serice? Simple, the bank no longer recruits from college econ or finance departments. It no longer has the option of taking 10 out 10 professional minded intelligent men if they are the best qualified for the jobs at hand, but rather a mix of the requisite sexes and races that it can brag to the press about.

The banks stress customer service and greeting a lot now. They put melodramatic commercials on radio and tv talking about dreams or living solid or whatnot that nobody pays attention to. It has always been my experience that when a client comes in, they simply want something to be done well on their behalf. If an account is in error, they want it corrected. If they are looking to buy a house, they want information and options. If they just came into some money, they want safe options until they can speak to a broker or financial advisor. etc. etc... The banks have lost sight of this. The profitable clients value prompt, knowledgeable, and efficient service above all else. If you are smiling the whole time that is incidental. A millionaire has no use for the smiling idiot who can't tell the difference between APR and APY, much less why FDIC insurance is basically fluff now or why rates are plummeting. Clients at heart want the polished banker who may be a bit of an asshole or the somewhat dorky number cruncher everytime over the minority hire or 23 year old cheerleader for the bank who knows next to nothing. Money is a good distiller of basic qualifying. Would you want to put 200K of your money in the hands of a pretty and smiling young girl or in the hands of a guy who looks like the jackass boss from Office Space? I'll leave tat for you to ponder.

With this in mind as the customer service surveys, greetings, and happy feeling days become more common, clients ironically begin to view banks with more suspicion. Used car lots and retail merchants stress happiness and fake niceness. Banks should stress hard facts and reality. A good used car salesman will smile as he tells you what you want to hear in order to get you to buy a lemon. A good banker should tell you calmly and without reservation that taking out an equity line on your home in order to buy a Lexus is not a good idea if you can barely make payments on the home to begin with. etc. etc... You might not get your Lexus, but you will thank you banker for keeping you financially sound for the next 5 years.

More when I get around to it...