Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Chase Bank Sucks

As many of you know, I am currently unemployed going on about 3 months now. Alma and I were walking to the local shopping center before Christmas. A music store there had recently closed. I assume Chase acquired the property, because it had put up a sign in the parking lot to announce that it would be opening a branch and was hiring.

I thought to myself, "Wow, I have not worked in a bank since my temp job days while in graduate school and it sure would be great to have a job that I could walk to each day." So I applied at the Chase Bank website, filling out their online application and sending them a copy of my resume. I was not expecting too much, not even an interview, mainly because Chase is a multi-national corporation and I have no formal training or experience in finance or business. I suppose I entertained a vain fantasy that my natural charm might win me an interview. Actually, make that my communication skills and ability to write a clear sentence. But when I did not receive a call for an interview, I was not disappointed or even surprised. And I had frankly forgotten all about it.

But imagine my surprise when I received a message a few days ago from the new branch manager at Chase that they wanted me to . . . open an account at Chase. How did they get my phone number, you ask? Why from the resume that I submitted through their online application process. Yup, someone in their HR department had the brilliant idea to just turn the personal data on the resumes they received over to their marketing department to see if they might be able to turn an applicant into a customer. Ugh, that's not banking or best practices, that's just plain scum.

Talk about your scuzzy, unethical business practices. Talk about preying on the unfortunate (in this case, the unemployed). Any thought I might have given to banking with Chase or working for Chase immediately turned to an icy cold disdain. I cannot hope that this branch closes because our primarily African-American neighborhood needs the jobs. But I don't need a job that badly. And any company that treats its job applicants' personal data so cavalierly certainly does not deserve my business.

Just another petty indignity in this post-Great Depression, v2.0 era, I guess. But Chase Bank sucks.

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