I was told to instruct both my tellers and more of my personal bankers
that
they needed to hit their goals no matter what.
The challenges that I faced were
the astronomical goals that were set.
It was the pressure of
having to
hold the team accountable
to very unrealistic standards. And so, it would be phone calls all the time,
it would be emails,
it would be visits, it would be constant in your face.
What are you doing?
There might be conference calls five times a day,
like
the managers would have to be on a conference call at
8 o'clock and then there was a mid-morning check-in call.
Then there was a 12 o'clock call,
then there was a 2:30 call,
and then a 5 o'clock call.
What did you do?
What are your bankers going to
do?
How
many
appointments they have
today?
What
was the appointment set for?
For the bankers,
there
were five profiling conversations,
two future appointments,
and nine core solutions
that were required
daily.
The
icing on the cake for me was when I had my district
manager tell me that I don't care how you get the goals,
just cover your assets.
The district manager had come into my office and she said to me,
"Rasheeda,
I like you.
I don't want to fire you,
but
your bankers are lazy.
They need
to sell more accounts to the clients."
So, the idea was,
"Well,
you're opening this checking account and here's what comes with it."
Well,
"I don't want that."
"Oh,
but it doesn't cost you anything.
It comes with it."
We were told,
well,
you know,
"They could have a checking account for gas
they could have an account for grocery,
they could have a checking account for holiday."
Here's a great idea how you can save for Christmas.
Let's open you another checking account.
She said,
"Well,
how come he didn't sell the customer online banking?"
I said,
"Well,
she's an older customer.
She's across at the nursing home.
She doesn't have a computer."
She said,
Well,
you know,
there's a way he could have done it.
It got to a point where
mentally and physically,
I couldn't take the pressure anymore.
So, I called out,
you know,
I let them know that I wasn't well and
when I got into work the following day, I signed into my email,
and there was an email and the heading
of the email says, "Termination letter for Rasheeda,"
and I thought,
"Oh my gosh,
she's going to fire me."
Then I wrote her an email and I said,
"Obviously, you did not mean to send this to me,
but you did."
Then I forwarded that email to John Stumpf
to let him know exactly what was happening that
the bankers were telling,
telling my district manager that, you know,
other bankers are opening accounts, they're churning, can you look into that?
But I got no response.
I went and saw
my primary physician that same day and I ended up being off for
12 weeks
with severe depression where I didn't drive
for at least 6 or 7 weeks,
I didn't leave the house.
I was on disability. She still kept, you know... She
still kept calling me, sending me texts "Hey Rasheeda,
can you come in today?"
But I couldn't
go to work every day
knowing that what they were asking me to do
I didn't believe in and I couldn't do.