Tellers forced to be "fake friendly" in unfriendly Northern VA (Fairfax: transplants, sales)

[Future Home Seller]

A friend of mine worked up to recently for Capital One Bank as a teller. She quit last week for a very interesting reason. She was forced to be friendly with everyone! They had secret shoppers who would rate her on her small talk and how often she smiled at customers. If she did not act friendly she would be written up. She was given a list of friendly questions to ask customers..

How many of you have gone into a branch bank office in Northern VA recently? (Especially Capital One) The Tellers are told that they have to make small talk with every customer. There are the standard questions they are told to use:

How was your weekend?
Any plans this weekend?
How about those Nationals?
Enjoying the nice weather?

Trouble is most people in Northern VA don't want to make small talk with anyone. They are TYPE A, rush rush, "I am just to busy for you" types. Lots of her customers at Capital One either did not reply or gave a one word answer to her questions. A number of them told her that was none of her business, or looked at her like she had two heads. A few even complained to the manager that she was wasting their time.

Would this fake friendly work in a regular town outside the Dc area rat race? Is the negative reactions she got to her friendly chit chat based on the culture of the area or something else?

[Forehead]

I'm with Capital One Bank, and I've noticed this the rare occasions I've gone inside. I wouldn't say my answers are one word, but they are short. Mostly, it's because I'm surprised someone working in a bank cares how my weekend was.

[bornindc]

I can't imagine someone who accepts a customer service position such as a bank teller would be surprised that they would be expected to engage in a friendly manner with customers. If she's not able to interact with customers in a social way she'd make a horrible teller anywhere I suspect.

I seldom see people in my travels throughout the area who aren't nice enough to just say hello at least. My guess is your friend just isn't cut out for dealing with customers and bank customers intuited her lack of actual empathy and responded in kind. There may have been a few cranky people of course but you can find those people anywhere.

The area isn't really any more or less social than any other large city I've ever been in. Some people like to talk to others, some don't.

[Future Home Seller]

Actually my friend, the ex bank teller, is a very friendly person with great chit chat skills. And she had worked for a bank as a teller in a medium sized town in Ohio before coming to the DC area. She said the customers at the branch in Fairfax were so different than the customers in Dayton Ohio

What she did not like was having to make the small talk with the customers, every customer regardless of their persona or body language. She could tell some of them were going to react negatively when she asked them one of the standard set of questions the bank recommended. But she was forced to ask anyway.

As for your comment below that Northern VA, and the rest of the DC area is just as friendly as anyplace else, everyone knows this is not true. People may be friendly to friends or relatives or someone who can do them a favor but this is a pretty cold place. My friend, the ex bank teller, always told me lots of horror stories about the high percentage of rude people who were just terrible to her and other tellers.

Originally Posted by bornindc

I can't imagine someone who accepts a customer service position such as a bank teller would be surprised that they would be expected to engage in a friendly manner with customers. If she's not able to interact with customers in a social way she'd make a horrible teller anywhere I suspect.

I seldom see people in my travels throughout the area who aren't nice enough to just say hello at least. My guess is your friend just isn't cut out for dealing with customers and bank customers intuited her lack of actual empathy and responded in kind. There may have been a few cranky people of course but you can find those people anywhere.

The area isn't really any more or less social than any other large city I've ever been in. Some people like to talk to others, some don't.

[hilsmom]

Originally Posted by bornindc

My guess is your friend just isn't cut out for dealing with customers and bank customers intuited her lack of actual empathy and responded in kind. There may have been a few cranky people of course but you can find those people anywhere.

The area isn't really any more or less social than any other large city I've ever been in. Some people like to talk to others, some don't.

I agree with the above.

Frankly, I have a favorite CapOne bank branch where the cute 20-something customer service guys engage me in conversation. They flirt a little, I flirt a little back. It generally makes my day a bit brighter.

I'm a generally friendly person and I appreciate any effort, real or fake.

Your friend likely encountered some grumpy folks and some people who were busy and some people who just are not friendly in general. These people exist everywhere. I don't think this area is particularly unfriendly, although there is an abundance of "I'm more important than you" types. But I don't encounter those in my daily life in the burbs.

[oneasterisk]

I'm a Cap1 customer and I've found them friendly. I don't go into the bank much, maybe once a month when I get a rent check from my property management company. I usually go to the same one since it's close to home and on the way from work. They greet you when you walk in. I usually have the same teller so I'm on a friendly basis with them. I also have a unique name so she knows me by my first name.

Sometimes I go to one closer to work since that branch is open till 7pm. It's convenient that they're open that late. One day the teller gave me a lollipop with my receipt. It was totally unexpected as I didn't ask for it, but I received it with a smile and said thank you.

Maybe it's because I'm a long time customer. I've been with them before they were Cap1, when they were Chevy Chase Bank. Maybe it's a Fairfax thing as I don't do much business in FFX. Anyways I try not to let rude people irritate me.

[Nate_VA]

I had a 'friendly' teller at Suntrust in Tysons on Monday. She asked if I had a nice weekend. I found it to be a little creepy. It was almost like she knew what I was up to, and was goading me into giving details. They should stick to the basic courtesies without getting too personal.

[cdmurphy]

I've been a Chevy Chase / Capital One customer for 14 years. When a new CCB branch opened up a few blocks from my house about 8 years ago, I'd wander in to deposit the occasional check, unload loose coins, buy savings bonds, etc. The tellers were friendly and efficient without being creepy. Since the Capital One takeover, I don't want to make chit-chat with the tellers because they are always trying to upsell me - do you want to refinance your house? Buying a new car soon? Need one of our stupid credit cards? I wouldn't mind questions about the weather, but I don't like to be hounded. (I have family in banking in other states, and it's common now for tellers to have sales requirements, but not all banks do it.)

Now I deposit checks in the ATM, and I take my four-year-olds with me when we do the coins so the teller is incentivized to finish the transaction before my kids trash the lobby. Chevy Chase never pushed the hard sell during every transaction - and in return, I felt comfortable approaching them when I wanted to open up a different account or buy CDs.

[marie5v]

I hate hate hate the fake friendly questions, no matter where they occur. There is one grocery store that does that, and it's just weird. Why would the teller care about my plans this weekend?? And I really don't want to discuss it with her. It's not that I'm unfriendly, it's just that it's not really appropriate conversation for two complete strangers engaged in a brief business transaction, in my opinion. Now if a cashier at a store comments on the items I'm buying, or asks if it's still hot out there or raining or whatever, or compliments my clothing, then OK. That feels natural and normal. But the fake question script creeps me out. This is the work of people who don't have real jobs (i.e. HR people).

[FindingZen]

When my bank PNC started its more rapid expansion here a few years ago, I noticed a sudden shift into "extreme" niceness. I thought it was humorous since, as a former bank employee many moons ago, I knew there was a method to their madness. I never found anything to be too intrusive; I just play along as they do their newly socially-enhanced jobs.

It may depend on one's perspective, of course. This sort of overt friendliness may be foreign to, say, Northeasterners (like myself) though not so much Midwestern and Southern transplants.