Failed This Joint Exercise

A woman wants to open a student account because she’s going for her PhD. I make small talk as I’m bringing up the procedure for account opening pre-checks. All is well until she mentions that it’s going to be a joint account with her husband.

Terms of the account state that it’s only available as a sole account because the usual holder is eighteen to twenty-one years old and not married.

Me: “If you’d like, I can open the account as a secondary account, and you can use Internet banking to send money between the accounts as needed. You’ll still reap the benefits for yourself.”

Nope. She goes on a rampage.

Caller: “I want to speak to your manager!”

My manager comes over, I explain, and it’s a new one to my manager. She explains to the woman what I’ve explained, tries to find a workaround, and even tries the account-opening team for their workaround, and gets nothing.

Caller: “In that case, I want to complain.”

That was okay — quick and easy and would get her off the phone quicker. She was still ranting and raving, trying to make it seem like the banks didn’t want married women going into science, proper head-bashing stuff.

I hope the complaint team had fun with that case.