The experience happened at a bank, a large one with many branches in my region of the country; my SO and I accompanied a friend to there to help her deal with a rather sizeable financial matter. We accompanied her because she speaks very little English and this involved a matter which has some fairly technical regulations associated with it, and we needed a couple clarifications before she could proceed to make a decision. Friend had dealt with this one banker in the past, and mentioned that we could talk to “Anne”. Note, friend is not necessarily enamored with Anne, just had dealt with her before and therefore we had a name and a face that we could talk to that Friend was familiar with.
We walk in. Anne is a “personal banker”; nothing high-flying, no office with actual walls, just a desk out on the open floor of the bank. From start to finish, Anne was quite distinctly cold, sourfaced, abrupt, and very, very clearly gave off a negative vibe toward me (but a fairly neutral vibe toward Friend. Note that it was pretty obvious we were there at friend’s request; we’re all simple-looking folk). Now, I know all of this is relatively subjective, and there are all kinds of things that the casual observer could throw out as mitigating factors on my part, but with God as my witness, I tell you that I was dressed and appeared very neutrally, and literally spoke very little, simply because the whole meeting was so brief. It was not only Anne’s abrupt and snotty speech, it was also how she initially handled asking us to wait, and other things too. For example, when we first sat down with her, Friend and I were looking down shuffling papers; my SO was watching her at this time, and told me later that she was giving me a very direct, long, and sour stare the entire time I was looking down. [Note: my S.O. never notices people’s attitudes, but noticed and commented on Anne’s afterwards. S.O. was as shocked and puzzled as I was]
The more concrete issue is that she gave out some incorrect information; when I asked the question: “What are [friend’s] options?”, she said, “The options are X and Y”. I said vaguely “Hm, I thought there was another option here, option Z”, to which she said “No. X or Y”. Now, I had done whole gobs of research on this, both before and after this meeting, and I know there is an option Z, which would have very significant advantages over the other two options.
The whole encounter got under my skin so much the more I thought about it, simply because, my own wounded pride aside, her drippingly hostile attitude was so egregiously out of line. The misinformation she gave was sort of icing on the cake, but in retrospect we should have been talking to someone on a far more technical plane than her position would entail. [Although, she did not at any point try to refer us to another person or department more suitable to the issue we had; she tried to completely handle the whole thing herself without qualifying her answers in any way] The technical advice, albeit wrong, will not hurt my friend because I have since completely gotten a good handle on it.
One last detail: it did not seem to be a matter of her “having a bad day”, or [as I often try to charitably think] “maybe her mother just died” or even “I’m really busy and don’t have much time for you” [which is a distinct vibe all its own] or something that would explain an overall negative mood. What I mean is, it was pretty clear from her direct staring, sneers, lack of pleasantry, rude way she handled making us wait, that all of this was pretty pointedly directed at me and/or our party, and from the moment we walked in the door.
And, just because I’m a bit of a psycho, I decided to call her today with a couple of followup questions, to both see if she was still rude to me, and to see if she was going to stand by her answers she gave the first time without qualifying them. Her rudeness had abated (she was about normal, not friendly by any stretch of the imagination, but the overt rudeness was gone; this may have stemmed from her having actually seen the amount of money involved afterwards). As for the misinformation, she repeated her “X and Y” options, and even added this: “You do know that regardless of which option she chooses, that action A will happen?” [not true], to which I said “Are you sure about that?” , she said “no, just a minute” went to check with someone, then came back and STILL repeated her X and Y options. So clearly she was in over her head on the issue.
The question is: should I write a letter? Go see the branch manager in person? A letter seems a little, well, cowardly, I suppose, and I don’t really WANT anything speciific from the bank. The reason I’m even toying with this is because I think her behavior toward me was pretty inexcusable (and it bothers me far more than the misinformation part) and I think managers should know these things, as it has a tendency to drive away business. Besides, what if she acts like this every day and the boss just needs some concrete documentation to can her sorry ass? Is there a downside? I don’t want to be petty, but I also don’t want to just walk away from something that I see is downright wrong.