Reverse Discrimination Amid the Cubicles

My corner of the cube farm on my birthday this year....

I'm not what people would generally classify as an Alpha Male.  I've never been one to ever "pick up chicks," been confused with what one might identify as "a player" or have ever used my gender to impose upon women.  My wife complains that I'm too nice and need to fight with her more often, so I guess I'm a jerk because I'm too nice and I can deal with that.  My point here is that I'm not an aggressive person, especially when it comes to women, but at work I've never really had any gender related issues.  In fact, one might say I thrived when I worked at a mid-west, regional bank that predominantly employed women.  I was one of maybe 30 or 40 guys out of about 150 people in our sector.  For some reason it didn't bother me, as everyone was friendly, equal minded and fair.  That's what makes my experience in a similar role, working in a suburb of Oregon that much more confusing.  One thing that is different is that I am a man working in the historically female dominated world of Temporary Employment.  Yet I've felt more gender bias at work in this position than any other I've had anywhere else.

Well, there was this one time, fresh out of High School that I worked at a pizza joint in LA where I quickly found myself to be the last male employee amid the host/wait staff and was soon replaced by a buxom beauty.  Did I feel slighted?  You're damn right I did.  Did the owners (a collection of three middle-aged Italian guys), who had no real reason to fire me, look sheepish and guilty as sin when they fired me?  You're damn right they did.

So it's not like I haven't to some degree felt this before, yet for the first time I truly felt I could make a serious sexual harassment claim or as some refer to it, reverse sexual harassment.  It feels easier to do when working in a department comprised of 6 men out 25 total (only 1 male, non-temp out of 10, making it all but impossible to be male AND hired full-time) and our supervisor is a woman.  A person who often strolls around the department, gossiping with the women, rarely taking the time to pay such courtesies to the not quite "fairer" sex.

In fact, she has gone as far as to have discussions with other women, right near me (albeit in a slightly hushed tone), talking about how her daughter's father didn't want anything to do with her before she was born, in turn generalizing about the irresponsibility of men and how it specifically effected her perception of them.  They talked about dating men and what jerks they were.  Most every group conversation, ordering of take-out for lunch and so on was kept within a tight group of women who almost never included those outside their circle. There have been a number of other instances and personalities I could portray here but it was these specific instances that I found most frustrating and inappropriate. And to be clear, there wasn't anything I ever did to individually deserve such treatment nor was anything ever directed specifically at me, yet it hasn't exactly made for a cordial, male friendly environment.

Conversely, it must also be said that I have previously worked in a predominantly female department where everyone knew each other well and there was a more collegial atmosphere where everyone was included and where if someone crossed the line, they let it be known.  My current employment is made more awkward by the fact that most everyone wears headphones almost all day long, making those unused to the environment more socially detached and less conversive, thus a temp-dominant department where everyone is less trusting of each other, in turn making temps all-the-more wary of the persons in charge.

So, I thought about filing a complaint but I knew it wouldn't augur well for my future as a temp in this female rich department, so I kept it to myself.  And of course I had to keep in mind the inherent bias that comes with being a lowly temp, such as having to park clear over on the other side of our huge campus, which takes at least 10 minutes to cross to reach my desk (it used to be worse: temps were once asked to park off campus then be shuttled to campus). Or the confusion that comes from being employed by a temp agency, then contracted by a corporation, which in the end means I'd be filing a claim against someone who technically works for a different company.  I could go on about never receiving a raise in my 13 months of a 18 month contract (something most others were afforded), but I'm not a "real temp" - those often without a college degree, who've worked at multiple sites and tend to be female... which might more specifically explain the slights I perceived to be against me, not my disposition which I had no control over.  Or maybe it's just their way to compel those they know aren't expected to be with the agency long term or complete the contract to leave, making way for those not demanding a higher wage.

What it really has made me stand up and pay attention to, aside from what I've found to be a growing and increasingly socio-economic bit of discrimination in the over use of temps in corporate America today, is the distinctly female environment found in the banking sector today.  This isn't a bad thing, in fact, I'll go as far as to say it's a great thing.  Though it does make me wonder what it is about retail banking that has drawn so many women into it's ranks.  I suppose it could be attributed to the abundance of entry level positions available to everybody, regardless of gender, at branches and call centers in our service obsessed culture.  I don't quite understand why exactly this is, so if anyone has any thoughts on this, I'd love to hear them.

Lastly and maybe even more disconcerting to me, is the lack of women in the higher-echelons of the financial/banking sector.  And those that do get there, at least in my experience, tend to be hard wired, tiger-lady personalities, often modelling themselves in a high-fashion, sexually intimidating and socially terse way.  I'm not saying that all women who've reached higher financial management positions are like this, but it's been a distinctly obvious phenomenon in the banking departments I've worked in.  Is it the attitudes or sexual bias of men that have pushed them to such extremes?  Is it purely a drive to succeed at any cost, using their youthful looks, dress and attitude to not so much advance but to keep from losing the position they've already attained to some one younger and more attractive?  Is it in anyway the same for men?

Being just a little guy in a sea of cubicles predominantly occupied by women, I've never quite been able to know the captain of the ship. The whole phenomenon is really intriguing to me and it makes me want to know who these women are, what drives them and to better understand this culture.  I doubt I'll learn anything more as I'll most likely be leaving this odd reality in a few weeks having finally found a real full-time job that doesn't reside in the banking world.  It's a liberating feeling, yet we shouldn't escape the reality that we're all curious beings with difficult questions to ask with even tougher answers to derive in light of the accusations and repercussions one might face in attempting to be heard above the din of commerce.  Believe you me, I know how that feels.

Do bank customers secretly love their overdraft fees?

According to Minneapolis newspaper the Star Tribune, since certain new banking laws went into effect limiting the ways in which banks could charge overdraft fees, apparently customers miss them, and so badly, that they ask the bank to charge them, anyway.

All right, that's a little over-simplified, but essentially true.  Here's the gist of it: bank are no longer allowed to approve your debit card if there are not sufficient funds in the account, thereby being able to charge you seemingly endless overdraft fees, due to the way that banks are allowed to manipulate the order of transaction posting.  That is, unless you ask them to.

Sometimes, of course, over-drafting can be  helpful.  If, say, you have $5, need gas to get to work, but don't get paid for a week, over-drafting, while not ideal, is one option if there are no others.  Of course, some people will want to choose the option to overdraft.  But most people?  Says Chris Serres of the Star Tribune:

To the surprise of almost everyone, three out of four Americans with checking accounts have signed up for overdraft protection since November 2009, according to a new study by economic research firm Moebs Services. That's despite new federal rules that require banks to get permission before charging customers $25 or more when they overdraw their accounts[...] 

But public fury over the overdraft charges may have been more manufactured than real. People may grumble about the fees, but millions who live paycheck to paycheck rely on overdraft protection as a backstop when their accounts run dry, researchers say. 

They also lack alternatives. Many consumers are signing up for overdraft protection, in large part, because they can't qualify for credit cards, home equity loans or other forms of short-term credit, say experts. Check writers also fear the embarrassment of having their payments rejected for lack of funds -- a fear that some banks have exploited to get people to sign up.

No, the public fury over the overdraft charges was not manufactured.  But the new regulations, while a great step forward, do little to address the crux of the problem.  The problem consumers had was not that the bank dared to charge them for over-drafting; most people understand that being charged a fee for spending someone else's money is reasonable.  The problem is the sheer abundance and extremity of said fees.  If a customer "opts in," the bank doesn't have a limit to how many, or how many different types of fees they can charge.  And this isn't new; banks have just exercised more restraint in the past, before all these new regulations went into effect, potentially drastically reducing fee-related profit.  For example, prior to this law, my former employer, TCF Bank, limited the NSF fees they would charge a customer to 5 per day, regardless of the number of overdrafts accumulated by the end of the business day.  This was very generous, compared to other, larger banks like Wells Fargo and US Bank.  Since the passing of this legislation, though, they removed their limit, and both TCF and US Bank (among others, surely) will start to charge a daily "negative balance fee" if funds aren't deposited to cover the overdraft. 

Due to banks manipulating the order of the posting of debit card transactions, customers are often surprised to learn that, rather than the one overdraft fee they were expecting for that tank of gas, that they were also charged overdraft fees for each additional pending transactions in their account, because they were posted from largest dollar amount to smallest dollar amount, rather than chronologically.  Rather than one $35 penalty for being broke (really, that's ultimately what it is for a lot of people), they are now upwards of $200 in the hole.  

Leaving aside the fact that "opting out" of "overdraft protection" only applies to debit and ATM card transactions and does not change whether or not checks are paid (a mistake the author makes repeatedly), there's an obvious answer to this question of why customers' attitudes about overdraft fees seem to have changed drastically: the numbers don't reveal the fact that consumers want overdraft protection, they reveal that they are signed up for it.  Willingly or unwillingly, we don't know... for sure.  As Serres noted, perhaps bank employees are instructed to exploit customers' fear of having their card declined.  Or, hey, I have a guess... maybe they're giving customers misinformation, making threats, and given generous incentives to convince people to sign up.  Or, hey, maybe some unscrupulous teller or banker, under pressure from her low-paying and sales-heavy employer, is just plain signing you up, whether you wanted them to or not.  From the Strib article:

Consumer advocacy groups argue that banks have used aggressive marketing to get millions to sign up. In some cases, banks suggested that checking accounts would not work properly -- or customers would be charged a bounced-check fee -- if they didn't enroll in overdraft protection, consumer groups maintain. 

"There were a lot of scare tactics," said Gail Hillebrand, a senior attorney with Consumers Union in San Francisco. "Banks were basically calling and inducing people into thinking they had to do something, when in fact they didn't have to do anything at all."

I'll say.  I worked at TCF when all of this was happening and, while I didn't work in the branch, I saw their bulletins, which detailed all of the times in which a teller and banker were to pitch overdraft protection (all the time) and what emotionally manipulative phrases to use.  Naturally, banks deny that anything unscrupulous (or, at least, officially illegal) happened:

Bankers strongly object to the accusation that they misled or scared customers into signing up for the product. Under the new regulations, banks were required to provide consumers with a standard "opt in" form, including a description of overdraft fees and less-expensive options, such as linking checking to a savings account.

Banks were supposed to inform customers of the new regulations, and give them their options, not coerce them into signing up for something they weren't given any decent information about.  And since they mentioned so-called "less expensive" alternatives, let's talk about those.

Linking a checking account to a savings account as a method of overdraft protection is a good idea, in theory.    You're allowing the transferring your own money to cover your own deficit.  That's not the end of it, of course.  Since the bank is making the transfer rather than you, they charge you a transfer fee, averaging around $10, in my experience at TCF and Wells Fargo.  Here's what they never, ever bother to tell you, though: Regulation D.  Federal Regulation D restricts the number of transfers you can make out of your savings account each month.  You are allowed unlimited transfers or withdrawals from tellers or ATMs, but online transfers and ACH withdrawals are limited to 6 per month.  The purpose of this is to deter customers from removing money from their savings account, as deposited money in a savings account is what allows the bank to lend money.  

If you overdraft more than 6 times in one month and your overdraft protection linked to your savings account kicks in each time, you'll get a warning from your bank, and if it happens a second time, you will be charged upwards of $30 for the infraction.  Any more times and you are likely to have your savings account closed and funds transferred automatically into your checking, without your prior authorization.  You see, you already authorized that you understood and agreed to follow those rules when you signed up for your checking account and forgot to read the Terms and Conditions.

(This reminds me of a department-wide metting I attended while I worked in the call center, headed by all the important managers that ignore you when you say hi to them in the coffee room.  They were just unrolling this savings account linking option, and I asked if the transfers applied to Reg D.  No one knew.  I was eventually emailed and confirmed what I already suspected: yes, overdraft protection transfers do count against your 6 Reg D transfers.)

Back to this overwhelming number of people "opting in" thing, though.  As I said, my former employer was rather aggressive in their marketing tactics to get customers to grant them permission to charge them unlimited overdraft fees.  According to Serres,

TCF Financial Corp., the Wayzata-based regional bank, was particularly aggressive. In addition to sending postcards and e-mail alerts, TCF's tellers pitched overdraft protection as customers walked into a branch or pulled up to a drive-through window.

The marketing blitz proved effective. About 90 percent of TCF's new customers enrolled in overdraft protection since the new rules went into effect. About 65 percent of its existing 1.3 million checking-account customers enrolled.

They'll also allow you to change your mind at the ATM.  So if, say, you go to the ATM to withdraw some money but don't have available funds, the TCF ATM will helpfully ask you if you'd like to change your mind and opt in.  You want money, right?!

Sorry, but I don't buy it.  I don't believe for a second, based on my experiences at banks and with bank employees-- especially those who work on commission; sorry, but it is true and will remain true until the entire structure is changed -- and the comments at the bottom of the Strib article, and the stories I've heard, and the simple fact that it doesn't take a genius to get that banks and other large companies exploit and lie to their customers (or are instructed to do so) in order to make a profit... that there wasn't an abundance of deceptive bullshit surrounding the apparently bewildering fact that 4/5 customers "opted in."  

Bank suing the Fed over 'Durbin amendment' to financial reform act

People following the banking industry's shenanigans may be familiar with the so-called Durbin amendment of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.  The amendment targets the interchange fees that merchants pay to their banks for their customers' Visa card use.  In short, merchants have been saying for some time now that the fees are prohibitively high, and banks are saying that the fees are simply the cost of doing business.

Well, the amendment was passed with the rest of the Act, and not without fervent attempts (of questionable legality) to stop it on the parts of many banks; notably, Minnesota-based TCF Bank:

Like many banks that issue debit or credit cards, TCF is quite worried that Congress will slash fee income from cards. TCF has asked customers to write Congress to oppose such legislation. And [CEO Bill] Cooper says about 120,000 customers have responded. 

The bank has also asked employees for support. At one point, an e-mail went out to TCF executives asking them to keep track of which employees wrote Congress. That could have gotten the bank in legal trouble, and the request was withdrawn within a few hours.

Cooper said it wasn't his idea. 

"Somebody may have done that," Cooper said. "If that did happen, I don't know about it. And I can assure you that if that happened, it wasn't instructed."

Sure, Bill.  Sure.

Well, now Bill Cooper has decided to take his frustration out on the Fed by way of a lawsuit.

The Wayzata-based regional bank, which collects about $100 million a year from interchange fees, is seeking a court order declaring the Durbin amendment unconstitutional and an injunction barring its enforcement. 

The bank's chairman and chief executive officer, William Cooper, says the law unconstitutionally takes away TCF's property in the form of fees and violates the bank's right to equal protection by favoring smaller banks. 

Unable to sue Congress, Cooper decided instead to sue his own regulator, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and the Fed's board of governors.

You can read the lawsuit here.

If you don't feel like reading all 54 pages, allow me to summarize:

Cooper is extremely angry that this amendment passed because it was pushed through late in the session and wasn't debated.  He's upset that TCF is a relatively small bank compared to the bigger institutions originally targeted.  Mostly, though, he's really upset that he won't be able to get away with charging customers for the use of their debit cards to recoup the loss in revenue:

TCF cannot, in response to the Durbin Amendment, begin charging its customers for debit cards to recoup lost revenues; customers would quickly migrate to the exempt banks, use credit cards (issued by other banks) as debit cards, or return to the more inefficient use of written checks. Nor can TCF drop its debit service--TCF’s customers expect and demand that their checking accounts include this service. TCF is left with no choice but to continue to provide debit cards at no cost to its customers. In that event, TCF’s costs will remain largely unchanged, but TCF will be able to recover only a small portion of those costs.

Since TCF recently had to change their overdraft policies, just like the rest of the banks here in the US, their profits have been cut drastically.  TCF is unique in that more of their profits came from overdraft fees than most other banks, so they're already smarting over that.  In response, TCF is ordering their branch employees to force lie to aggressively promote customers to "opt in" to their overdraft services, which would charge customers $35 per overdrafted transaction.  Keep in mind that TCF, like Wells Fargo and other large national banks, posts their customers' transactions in highest-dollar-amount to lowest-dollar-amount order, potentially causing more overdraft fees than the customer would have received had the bank posted the transactions in chronological order.  Wells Fargo lost a class action lawsuit over this practice recently, and it appears TCF is going to be following suit, as consumers are now suing the bank for the very same reason.

It seems as though TCF is in a bad spot, as revenues from overdraft fees are sharply declining, and profit from gouging merchants for interchange fees are looking to be headed in the same direction.  Cooper's reasoning for the lawsuit, however, doesn't seem to hold water.  Senator Durbin's statement on the amendment:

The Durbin amendment would direct the Fed to issue rules to ensure that debit interchange fees are reasonable and proportional to the processing costs incurred.

Senator Durbin responded to the lawsuit:

"The law in no way addresses the fees TCF, or any other bank, can charge and it does not set interchange rates," Durbin said, adding that the law was a "reaction to the frustrations of millions of merchants and consumers who were getting nickled and dimed by the anticompetitive interchange system set up by big banks and credit card companies -- including TCF."

Cooper insists that, rather than exactly what is written in the law itself, the Durbin amendment unconstitutionally sets the prices that banks like his are allowed to charge merchants who, as he says, are simply trying to rake in more profit for themselves, and will not pass the savings on to customers:

"It is nothing but blatant lobbying by one industry [retailers] to take advantage of the political weakness of another," Cooper said. "Do you think Wal-Mart is going to give this money to charity? Why do you think they spent all this lobbying money to get it done?"

Ultimately, Cooper believes that TCF is too small of a bank to be subject to these new restrictions, and probably just fears that he won't be able to have enough money to donate to Michele Bachmann to do his bidding, and MN Forward, the organization that supports Tom Emmer for Minnesota governor, and is actively hostile toward the LGBT community.  This is unsurprising, as Bill Cooper is the former chair of the Minnesota GOP.

(LOL, he's concerned about lobbying.)

I'm interested to see the results of this lawsuit.