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I try not to make my blog about my past work experiences. I am saving that for the memoir. The story I told about losing thousands due to a survey still bugs me, because I really believe BofA rigs your bonuses with so many ways to lose your money. Couple that with the infrequent raises, I was severely underpaid.
Now I know a lot of you “experts” out there will comment and say, “James, Bank of America will soon have a $25/hour minimum salary. They pay well.”
It’s still not worth it.
Yeah, but there’s 50-60% less branch staff, so you get 2x the work.
What’s expected of you will triple, and trust me it was already bad.
Our paychecks/stubs had this phrase on it.
“Brought to you by our customers”
I always used to think it was akin to getting a cut of drug revenue when a small-time dealer has to kick up to his supplier. Sure felt like that.
That hokey saying made it seem like BofA was Chick-Fil-A without the weird Christian passive-aggressiveness. Trust me, I spent the better part of 3 years sitting in a Christian coffee shop, and saw some weird shit as I tried to pick up on a bug-eyed salutatorian who liked Pink Floyd and other rock music but her biggest swear word was “Cheese and Crackers” (I swear to God) named Lori Lynn.
What’s wrong with “Fuck?” Seriously…
Ironically another Christian co-ed in my life used to say, “Oh, My Lanta” when she wanted to swear. I can envision loose stools and her when I see that phrase or that medicine.
Anyway, why did I get off on a tangent already? I was talking about how churchy people can be so cutthroat and mean for no reason. Chick-Fil-A for all of its corporate entanglements still fancies itself a christ-fearing eatery. Closed on Sundays and disliking gay people, allegedly. It’s one of those things where I dislike the holier than thou attitude, pun intended, and damn it, I can’t get enough of their food. When Las Cruces was announced to get 2 of them in the same year, my mind was blown.
They sponsored the college basketball team, and anytime a player from the opposing side would miss 2 free throws, we’d get a free chicken sandwich. Mr. Burner Phone The Notorious Banker had 3 phones on him at all times. Knowing how shitty college free throw shooting was, It was a given that we would get free food. The team would miss, and I would win. Three free sandwiches. I would eat all week for free during lunch breaks at the bank.
CFA stopped sponsoring NMSU sports, so the dream died with the pandemic in 2020. Bummer. I typically go only on special occasions, a once-a-week eating out ritual my wife and I call, “Friday Night Bites.” We cook all other days! Occasionally, the owner of that franchise will have a promotion every few months where they will give away a free breakfast meal or a free chicken sandwich. It’s pretty awesome.
I am certain it’s to boost sales. People will go in for the free sandwich, which likely costs them $1 to make, and then they go, “What the hell?” and buy 2-3 more sandwiches and fries, and a cone. Yep, that’s how they expect the promos to work, and I can tell you, they are spot on. I will buy something else if I get something free, simply because I see it as a value prop.
On the Wednesday afternoon before an NMSU Basketball game, and about to see my wife off to Canada for a week, I said we should go to Chick-Fil-A for dinner and get this free sandwich. My plan was Free Sando, large fries and a cup of water. Yep, I am spending $2.91 today! Wife was sando, soup, and water. Retirements were not going to be made on my meal today.
I have a routine where any place is giving free sauces, I will max out on them. I’m an American and I love to dip my food in other food. What beats a Chick-Fil-A sandwich other than one with Polynesian sauce and Honey Mustard coating it intermittently with every bite? Exactly.
So I do my order. Chick-Fil-A sandwich with CFA sauce and Honey Mustard sauce, plus a large fries with Honey Mustard and Polynesian. Ketchup is for peasants. $2.91! Score.
We order on the app and then set the option to have the food delivered to us at a table so we can eat it there. We quickly move tables because the little RFID table marker was gone and we didn’t know what number it was. We go to table 35 and scan our phones to indicate to them where we were.
In about 3 minutes, I got my food in a bag with my water. I see sandwich, fries, and…that’s it. WTF? No sauces?
The little kid in me wants to get upset, but usually adult James can quell that feeling. But the last week has been weird, because of the Beck’s Coffee Shop issue I blogged about. I feel at times, I lose my trust in humanity, and something so benign can be amplified x10 if it hits me in a weird way.
I was pretty upset, because in my head, I had the whole night planned to the minute, including the basketball game at 7pm. There was a long line to order, because it was right after five, and I was thinking about having to stand in that line. My wife graciously offered to go get my sauces for me when she saw there wasn’t any. She was on her way to get napkins herself. Ok, issue quelled. Right?
Well, no. See, I think because of how I was treated in banking, I am immediately ready to micromanage and nitpick everyone’s performance at their job. This is why The Notorious Banker exists. I do all my surveys, and I was a little upset about this lack of attention to detail in my meal. I was going to break out the phone and do the survey on the fly letting them know why it wasn’t a “10” today.
I do all surveys, and look at name tags, and look people in the eye to see how genuine they are when I ask for help. It’s important to me to be treated like a human and not your problem. The girl who brought it was younger, likely high school age, and it’s possible this is her first job. Was she just in a hurry to speed up her service she spaced out on sauces, a straw and napkins? Maybe. We all want to be go-getters until we see others aren’t.
They are getting a “7” today, which if it is BofA or Kohls, it’s a “0”
I was thinking about how I reach out to companies on social media and I am always respectful, yet in that little swatch of time, I wanted to help with corrective action. My mind is always thinking about what I will write/say next at 100mph. I was writing my tailored complaint in my head. As I was overthinking, in that short amount of time, I get a buzz on my phone. Fun fact: I used to be terrified of the vibrate mode on a phone until I started working for myself recently. I had to overcome my fear to thrive in my line of work. I look and my eyes perk up.
No, it’s not nudes.
It’s a push notification asking me to take a survey and in return, I get another sandwich for free! It’s the holy grail of coupons here.
I get them pretty frequently when I do a mobile order. It was in that moment of joy, I had a moment of clarity. Here it was in order:
The sandwich I got today was free, down from $4.99
I still got the sandwich + fries for $2 less that the cost of just the sandwich.
Fries were awesome.
Got my water.
Likely going to break out my other phone this weekend when my wife is gone to get another free sandwich.
Literally the only thing that was “Wrong” was that my meal didn’t have flavor enhancing sauces that I was going to slather my perfect chicken sandwich with. Basically, I was going to be what the rest of the world thinks as a typical American exhibiting typical American behavior.
Dude, I was going to complain over sauces. Why? What’s wrong with me. Right then and there, I thought about my bonus loss at BofA from surveys and how shitty that made me feel. I thought about wanting to write about it, and I did just that this weekend!
You would get bad reviews at the bank from people if you mispronounce their name. Is it petty? I guess, kind of. But at the same time, you are holding their money, so least you can do is learn their name. White coworkers almost always got us hit on that when they would butcher a Mexican name that had a tilde or accent mark in their name.
Instead of bitching about a low score on a survey, bankers need to do a little extra work. “I’m sorry, I’m new here. How do I pronounce your last name?”
See how easy that is? That attention to detail rarely goes unnoticed.
But as I pondered what I was about to do before the free sandwich, I started feeling bad for a girl I met for two seconds who was just trying to get the wait time down like I used to. I give her a “7”, which will likely be a “0” to her bosses, and they will look back on the tickets to see who took the order, who expedited it to the table, and if that person has fucked up before.
Then, you have some staff meeting where everyone is blowing themselves for how many clients walk through the door, when they talk about their surveys. That girl, who may or may not still be in high school will be called out as a bad employee because Mr. ‘Merica wanted his sauces and wanted them now!
Her boss is going to take her to the side, and reference the times before she also messed up, such as being two minutes late. She was late because there was a car crash and she had to go around because of a detour. The boss will mention how she takes too many bathroom breaks, which impacts her teammates. She went to the bathroom because she is on her period, and she was not feeling well a couple weeks ago, but she still showed up.
Then the boss will mention that he shouldn’t have to ask her again to say, “My Pleasure” instead of “Thank You”, like she is the girl Fancy in the Reba McEntire song teaching her how to be a proper southern woman.
She forgot. She has a lot on her mind with school and family.
(By the way, the gimmick is cute, but I am not going to demand someone’s head if they don’t say “My Pleasure”)
So, I know for a fact that horrible managers, and I by no means know this about the manager there, I am speaking in broad terms with corporate America, will find every way to bring you down if given the opportunity, and when they burn you out, you either quit, or they schedule you for 3 hours the next week to make you quit eventually.
I was told that my name tag was crooked 2189372 times at BofA. I was told that I shouldn’t drink water on the clock, and if I do, I shouldn’t have a water bottle with a brand name on it, because “We don’t want people thinking we are promoting your brand in the bank.” as if I had a commission for every fucking Dasani that was bought in the 88001 Zip Code by me pounding water because I talked too much. When I became a manager, I promised I would never be like that to people, and I never was.
As this consumer advocate now, I need to hold myself to a higher standard when I have a customer service issue, because part of what I do is show people how to properly handle issues.
So the fact for a few seconds, I could have possibly added to this girl’s plate of shit by simply giving a lower score because I didn’t get my ‘Merica sauces? Someone is going to yell at her because I am complaining about a free sandwich? No fucking way.
I gave them 10s. All of them. Here’s the thing.
The service was fast. It was missing sauces, yes, but we still got out of there earlier than we thought.
The sandwich was good the fries are good. If shit was undercooked/burnt, then you can complain. If you bitch about this no sauce thing now, and then something REALLY happens later, you are going to be the boy who cried wolf.
Seeing my family run a restaurant my whole life and hearing customer service horror stories from my mom since I was 6, was I really going to be someone’s story that is always remembered? Fuck no. Not to mention my mom INSISTED I never work in a restaurant to avoid stress. If she only knew the bank…
I wasn’t going to be a sniper with my survey, even though a low score and a Twitter complaint may have gotten me a free sandwich as well, totaling it up to 3 from the one visit to the store. Crazy.
So, I know what you are thinking? Why’d you lie if it bugged you so much at the beginning?
Because that’s human nature to react to something “wrong” that happened to them. The problem with the way people are negative these days, and the way we want to show the world how pissed we could be is that they think it is productive, when in reality it is not. Say my sauce bullshit was the reason some girl got fired in front of her coworkers, and then morale is at an all-time low because of that, then I am responsible for that, and guess what? Service will be worse.
Trust me, I have seen enough people get fired at BofA in the middle of the day, including myself, to know it does affect people’s morale!
The best thing you can do is acknowledge you got your food and it was tasty. The sauces were not my food. They are extras. Say a nice thing about the person who likely has 1,000,000 things going on and maybe her manager will give her the kudos and it leads to a more motivated person. Shit like that matters.
Like I said last blog, it sucks when you work hard and someone says one thing, and all of a sudden you lose 1000s because of a vindictive boss. This person could lose their job over something that took 5 seconds for my wife to fix for me.
I said goodbye to a friend at my plasma donation center on Thursday and I thanked her for all she did for me the last few years, even though her work contract said she had to help me. I told her, “Thank you for all you did for me. Good luck, and wherever you land, I hope you find joy.”
Simple thing like that might turn someone’s day around, and trust me that place was a bummer the 2x I went there this week. It doesn’t take much to make a tense situation palatable for someone.
And no, I am not talking about Honey Mustard making things palatable. The sandwich was fine. My desire for excess led to an excessive moment of anger that could have ruined morale for months. Knowing the weight that some score gives you to these big companies, I don’t want to be a part of nitpicking a young girl who arguably will work harder than me today out of her job. It was my pleasure, you hard-working person!
James