Massive cheating by thousands of Wells Fargo employees shows how corporations have turned us against each other
Read the Wells Fargo CEO's memo
Whenever I get in a dispute with a customer service agent, I try to humanize the dialog. "Do you think this is fair?" I'll ask. And if I can pierce the corporate-speak at all, I usually saying something like, "Look, you are I have way more in common than you and Mr. Verizon/Comcast/Wells Fargo. We are on the same side here." Then I ask for a fee to be waived or a grace to be extended.
It doesn't always work. In fact, I think these humanizing discussions have gotten more difficult over the years. Thursday's shocking news of widespread cheating by Wells Fargo employees offers a little insight into why.
In what can only be described as a massive case of groupthink gone horribly wrong, thousands of Wells Fargo employees lied viciously and stole from consumers in order to earn bonuses. (I covered the news over at Credit.com.)They created fake accounts, and moved around customers' money, without their knowledge. They even went so far as to create fake email addresses to sign up customers for online banking. The bank was hit with the biggest fine in CFPB history. CNN reported that 5,300 employees -- or 1 percent of the workforce -- were fired over the scandal.
I sure hope they were big bonuses -- big enough for those workers to sell their souls as they did. I'm going out on a limb and thinking the payment was probably more like 30 pieces of silver.
There's so many things wrong here I don't know where to start. But let's begin with what economists call "perverse incentives." These are the undoing of free markets, and the foundation of Gotcha Capitalism. When companies set up systems that incentivize cheating -- and, by simple math, punish honesty -- mass theft is inevitable. Imagine what it was like working at Wells as an honest employee, watching others get bonuses you couldn't dream of attaining
We all know, deep inside, that this happens all the time. That's why it's so hard to cancel an account with a firm like AOL. Customer retention specialists get bonuses for putting up roadblocks for you to quit. It's a terrible, rigged system. But it works, for a while, to the benefit of cheaters.
Perverse incentives led to the sale of millions of bad mortgages. They've led to cars that cheat safety tests. They lead to cops handing out tickets at the end of the month. They are the fault of institutions. Wells, obviously, should have known better.
But today, I'm more interested in these 5,000-plus employees. I'd love to hear from a few. Clearly, they picked their side. They sided with Mr. & Mrs. Wells Fargo, not the human beings they attacked. They essentially committed identity theft. They are unemployed now, and lucky no one has figured out a way to bring criminal charges against them.
What made them do it? No doubt, low wages were part of their personal ethics equations. But that's not always the case. I've talked to customer service agents who have no money on the line - no bonus, not incentive, not even a pat on the back -- but still, they fall in line and enforce some terrible company policy.
On a human scale, that's terribly alienating and dehumanizing. Who sells their soul for a chance at a $100 bonus? Or a raffle ticket for a new bike? Or ... nothing?
On a nationwide scale, this is horribly depressing. While corporations create unfair policies, hidden fees, sneaky contracts, someone has to sell them. Somebody had to encourage all those under-qualified homeowners to take out mortgages they couldn't pay. No matter what they say, most of those folks have trouble sleeping at night. Stealing is stealing. And it's a terrible way to make a living.
At this point in this discussion, someone always points out that perhaps the workers had no choice. Perhaps the call center notorious for sneaking useless ID theft services onto consumers' credit card bills was the only game in town. Perhaps workers had no choice. And that's the real problem here.
I often call this Gotcha Capitalism; there's no way to profit without gotchas. But I have another name I use privately. In this case, the profanity is worth it: This is the a$$hole economy. There's no way to make money unless you are an a$$hole. And that, my fellow Americans, is a national crisis.
Hopefully, the problem isn't this bad. After all, I suppose we could believe that 99 percent of Wells workers *didn't* cheat. In fact, I promise you, there are heroes among them. People who stood on principle, resisted temptation, maybe even turned in co-workers. They deserve our praise (and I'd love to hear from one of them, too)
But for now, we are left to gaze at the depressing truth that thousands of professionals at Wells were apparently happy to sell their fellow woman and man down the river for a few bucks. It's heartbreaking. And not an isolated incident.
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