Has it become common for banks to have no hat policies indoors?

My local WF has instituted this. Wear a hat indoors, no service.
They caught me off guard with it, pissed me no end. Mostly it was the attitude of the suit who approached me while in line. Mostly it was his "You Must, or Else" attitude.

Been thinking about it for several hours now. I'm just not seeing how it's a positive change.

Other than the obvious "it lets the cameras see your face", best I can figure is, it quickly sorts the robbers, who wear obscuring accessories from them that don't. I also expect the immediate result will be for the crooks to focus on the remaining banks. Forcing them to join in on the policy.

At some point, this is just going to make the crooks up their game.

I'd have have closed all my accounts then and there.

I intend to, but it takes several steps.
First of which, Redirect payroll deposits. That may take a couple pay periods.

<rant on>

Yeah, that'll show em.

WTF? Are you serious? Over a hat policy? That is retarded on so many levels.

The banks in Belize have no cellphone policies and I've been made to hang up mid-call by security a couple times. While slightly annoying, I realize it's their bank and they can have any policy they please for any reason they please. It's not like you have a first amendment right to wear a hat indoors (which I would consider rude anyways).

That's also like boycotting all McDonalds because one employee was rude on one day. Report the guy to his manager and be done with it. Why should you go through the major inconvenience of moving all your financial accounts because one employee was rude? That certainly punishes you more than them.

Lasty, repeat after me, "I'm not special." There, say it again and again. Let it become a mantra. You'll win at life a lot more if you realize that.

<rant off>

A better reason to boycott WF is that they, in general, treat their customers like crap.

Similarly, a great reason to boycott Mcdonald's is that they feed their customers crap.

While I may not be special (though I am), if I'm paying someone, I better be treated like I'm special. It's so easy to find businesses that will do this.

It's been years since I've last set foot inside a bank. I'll need to do it soon since the ATM card that I got 14 years ago is started to get sufficiently threadbare that it typically takes four tries for a machine to read it.

Relative to the inconveniences of modern airline travel, a bank asking you to remove your hat isn't particularly uncomfortable. Now, if they were serious about the security issues, they'd require Sikh men to remove their turbans, Muslim women to remove head scarves, and so forth. That would be when things start getting difficult.

There's a difference between one rude employee and a bank policy. Glenn was clear in stating this was a bank policy, not simply an overzealous employee.

And is it their bank? No, it's YOUR bank. It's YOUR money. Take it elsewhere.

If they're telling you they don't want you as a customer, why would you stay?

Some people may want to live in a quasi-fascist state - you see this all the time when you talk to some older Portuguese people saying things were great during the rule of Salazar. It took a revolution to free Portugal, how far is too far in the US?

WF as in Wells Fargo? The multinational investment bank? It seems to me that if the worst thing that they've done for your nation or society over these past few years is overzealously enforce a dress code, you should probably be delighted.

Peter

I pulled my money out of a big bank and into my credit union a while back, but to go through the hassle of switching banks because they're trying to avoid getting robbed seems ridiculous. Yes, policies like this will give criminals incentive to go to banks where there are no such policies, which will lead to the proliferation of these policies which will... make it harder to rob banks. This is a bad thing how, exactly?

As a Wells Fargo customer (via my home mortgage, not my deposit accounts) I am happy they're trying to save money and avoid putting their employees in a dangerous position. As a taxpayer who pays for deposit insurance that kicks in when banks get robbed, I'm similarly delighted that the banks are taking a proactive step to make it easier to catch criminals. And as someone who occasionally likes to wear a hat, I'm perfectly taking it off if I ever have to go into a Wells Fargo brank to conduct business.

How a private company looking out for their customers' interests as well as their own becomes a "quasi-fascist state" is beyond me, but by all means, don't let the man keep you down, boys!

It's a matter of degree, perhaps.

Take your hat and shoes off, remove your belt, strip naked. Etc.

If I were going to Hell next week, I'd sharpen my ice skates first! I'm actually agreeing with Bruno.

[rant] I dumped Wells Fargo nearly 15 years ago when they started charging me $6.00 per month for the privilege of having a savings account that paid less than 1% annual interest. I went four blocks further downtown to a small, locally-owned and managed bank, where they told me that a lot of people had left Wells Fargo and come to them.

I have a relationship with them such that I can pick up the phone and call Patty, a senior vice president of the bank, and ask her to wire transfer $10,000 to my account in Mexico, and she'll have it done within the hour. Or, I can email the request to her and it'll be done by the next morning. In 15 years with that bank, I have not paid a single penny for any kind of service charge, and that includes cashiers checks, regular checks, wire transfers, overdraft protection, you name it. On several occasions I have transferred money from my account to my wife's Wells Fargo account, and rather than do an electronic transfer for which Wells Fargo will charge a hefty fee to receive the money, my bank writes a cashiers check and hand-carries it over to Wells Fargo for deposit. It wouldn't surprise me if Wells Fargo changed their telephones to 1-900 numbers so they could get a service fee every time you called them. I'm surprised they haven't put turnstiles at the door to the lobby so it costs you a quarter to get into the bank.

In case you aren't certain, I am not a fan of Wells Fargo. [/rant]

As far as the idea of no-hats making it harder to rob a bank... that's just plain silly. Do they think robbers stand around in the lobby waiting for the best time to put on their masks and pull out their guns? Robbers come into the bank with faces covered and guns at the ready, and whether or not they are wearing a hat is totally irrelevant.

tanstaafl.

Open the new account at the new bank now. Then when you are through transitioning, close the Wells Fargo account and tell them why.

They won't care. I think that Wells Fargo regards individual small accounts as a pain in the ass, and only want to deal with large business accounts, to the point of actively discouraging the private ones.

tanstaafl.

Over a hat? Yes. And it sounds nuts to me when I say it.

And my desire to get on an aircraft is lacking much these days.

Still, I'd like to know how common it's become for banks to prohibit hats?

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Btw, that branch has had a guard on duty for some time. Didn't stop the last robbery. The one they had is gone, and the new one was chosen for having a more, humm, no nonsense attitude and appearance. That change, I approve of, presuming he is there for more than aiding the bullying of customers into compliance. The previous one looked and acted like a uniformed doorman.

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No cell phones. Is that no talking, or no use at all? So as to prevent signaling accomplices.

You've been watching too many caper movies. 95% of robberies are covert robberies where people leave a note and want to get in and get out without causing a scene. No Guy Fawkes masks or drawn guns, just a note demanding cash and enough of a disguise to conceal their identity without people saying "hey, who's the nutjob with the ski mask and the Glock?"

I can't find any rigorous studies on whether policies like this help reduce robbery rates, but this article mentions that robberies went down in Missouri after instituting the policy, which is not to say post hoc ergo propter hoc, but to shift the burden of proof to those who insist policies like this must be worthless simply because they're inconvenient or somehow infringe upon liberty in some meaningful way. There's at least circumstantial evidence that the policies can be helpful, and I find these slippery slope from taking off your hat the bank to tyranny arguments unconvincing.

If someone thinks that having patrons remove hats is somehow going to reduce the likelihood (no matter how remotely) of them getting robbed, then that's the kind of moron I most definitely don't want handling my money.

Seriously, why would anyone trust these jokers with their money?

I'm pretty sure there's a "no robberies" policy at every bank on the planet, yet that doesn't stop the would-be criminals.

Once you impact the normal behavior of your every day customers, you've gone too far. It used to be banks, like most other businesses, needed to compete to earn your business. I try to remind them of that every chance I get. BTW, I worked for a bank at the retail level for over 5 years.

Must be put away. Security guard is on you like white on rice if he sees it out. The two times I've been asked to stop, I've walked into the bank already in the middle of a conversation, not thinking about the policy.

Interesting, how those articles hit all the same talking points.

Sorry, Bruno, your post must have gotten cut off right around the part where you actually supported your assertions with anything other than more assertions. Repeating over and over again that the policy can't possibly reduce the likelihood doesn't make it so, especially since we know that a vast majority of the robberies are covert, so the use of an inconspicuous disguise including hats, sunglasses, etc. is important.

It's totally intuitive that taking steps to prevent people from hiding their identity in a bank would reduce the ability to execute a covert robbery, and there's anecdotal evidence that this is, in fact, the case. The tin foil hattery in this thread is really something to behold. If you guys spent one tenth of the time worrying about the real abuses the banks are engaging in instead of worrying about whether they make you take off your hat, we'd be in much better shape.

If someone is coming to rob a bank wearing a hat, how is a policy going to stop them? Like I said, there's already a no gun, no robbery policy at every bank.

Maybe the next step is that no one with black skin can use that bank? Because you know, in certain locales, perhaps African ethnicities perpetrate most of the robberies. Will these banks ask someone to remove a toupee or a wig? A turban? WIll they make you shave before coming in?

I'm sorry, a hat is not much of a disguise. I've worked on the inside and know the security measures that were employed in the mid-90's company-wide. Having worked at some 20 or so branches in a 50km radius, a number of them that had been previously robbed (all perps were caught).

The bottom line is that it's their property and they can institute whatever policies they want. I don't have a problem with their rights to do this. However, it's my money, my mortgage, my investments, and I can do business with people I don't consider to be idiots. And it doesn't even matter whether I ever wear a hat. It's the principle, and knowing that the institution isn't at all serious about security.

Being serious about security means evaluating whether a small inconvenience can lead to catching more perpetrators, and therefore recovering more funds. It logically follows that clothing and accessories that cover the face in any way are going to be a problem in recognizing and catching criminals, so I don't see how this qualifies as security theater as you seem to be implying.

Your toupee/wig example is reductio ad absurdum, so I won't bother to respond to it. There are obviously problematic corner cases like religiously-mandated head coverings, and I think the policies on those need to be clarified, but I really don't see the massive infringement upon liberty of asking customers not to wear anything that can cover their face during a covert bank robbery. Focusing on this tiny inconvenience when banks are doing so many worse things on a daily basis is missing the forest for the trees.

I just deleted a pretty long reply, can't be bothered with the fine points. In the end I don't think they're relevant anyway. My personal stance is that I would not want to do business with a bank that instituted policies that I don't agree with. The hat issue is one example of one that I don't agree with.

As mentioned, I worked for a bank and I know the real and concrete steps we used to take for security and I personally know two people who were robbed in the typical one-man-one-note fashion. The hat theory is simply bullshit and anyone stupid enough to try robbing small amounts of money in this way will be stupid enough to do it regardless of policy and regardless of hat.

The real and concrete steps your banks took has nothing to do with whether a policy like this can increase the chances to identify a robbery suspect when those countermeasures aren't enough. There are obviously other policies and procedures banks can implement that will reduce crime more than asking people to take off hats and sunglasses, but if two banks implement all of those other security best practices, but only one of them implements a no hats/sunglasses policy, the bank that doesn't is in a weaker position to identify suspects in a covert robbery.

You've done nothing to refute this argument other than invoke appeal to authority, where the authority is yourself. If that's all you've got, then we can just agree to disagree.

I am amazed how many times, on the news, we're asked to identify some bank robber, and all they have is a picture of the top of a baseball hat...

Let's just suppose that there is an actual, proper, clear study (or more than one) showing that a no-hat policy does reduce the rate of robberies in banks by 10%. Would you then agree with a no-hat policy? I would.
Let's instead suppose that the study shows that such policy would reduce robbery rate by 0.001%. Would you then agree? I most likely would not, after investigating what an inconvenience that is for customers (or, better, how inconvenient they perceive/consider such policy).
Let's suppose finally that such policy was instituted just because the security director thought "hey, I want to see people's face, so you'll see they'll stop robbing us!"... Then I would not agree, and consider that bank run by at least one idiot. Probably more.

All three scenarios above are possible, to me.

None of the above has anything to do with being rude or polite. I would not want to use a bank where personnel is rude. It did happen to me in the past and it was one big reason, albeit not the main one, to change bank.

I see no matter of principle in this no-hat policy, but rather balancing pros and cons. I don't even see an infringement upon freedom. A no-hat policy does not particularly touch ethical, moral, religious values, in most cases (and when it does I agree with Tony C that that should be clarified). Asking to be naked in a bank is in no way similar to wearing no hat. Nudity has moral, ethical, religious implications for 99.9% of customers in the Western world, and possibly all over the world. No-had is just like no-phones. If the benefit is tangible, measured, real, then it can be easily assessed whether the policy makes sense or not.

Mostly, I find in this case that the bank did a very poor job in communicating to the customers, and treating them with the very due respect. Signs everywhere, politeness, and even apologizing for the inconvenience, together with an explanation of what the benefits are and how that is all done for the sake of everyone's safety, would have been much more effective.

I'll just chime in and say that this is not necessarily true. At least in my area.

There is no state or federal law that says I can't conceal-carry inside a bank. It's up to the property owner to make these rules. Because it's relatively difficult to get a carry license in New York, most businesses don't bother posting a no-gun policy at the entrance around here. This includes banks. In the south, it seems more common to have these policies posted even in restaurants.

I keep a TD Bank account open just for cash deposits. I can then pull from TD to my credit union. The TD branch I use most often has been held-up at the drive-thru teller window twice this year. A no-hats policy wouldn't have helped that and they still don't post a no-guns policy at the entrance. There is no security guard either which is something I've never seen at any bank I've been to in this area.

I was only thinking that maybe the ceiling is not the best place for security cameras.

I've always wondered what is the reasoning behind the various, so different security policies around the world. Here in Rome, virtually all banks I went to in the last 5 years have security guards; most of them have metal detectors; very often security doors where you actually walk into a boot that can fit just one person, you are scanned by metal detectors while personnel watches on monitors, and you are actually weighted too (!!).
Sometimes, which is very annoying, you have to leave all metal in security boxes before you even try to get in or doors won't open (including keys, mobile phones, sometimes belts and pens too).
Sometimes I wonder if that's all useless. I don't know.

I imagine that requiring people to strip naked outside the building before entering would reduce robberies by 95%+. Let's do it!

And while we're at it, here's a way to eliminate perhaps 99% of all auto crashes, both minor and "serious":

Just require all vehicles to include a very sharp and pointy 20cm dagger mounted in the centre of the steering wheel, pointed directly at the driver's chest.

Very effective. Obviously we should do it!
And also ban body armour on the driver's chest.

Right, because being forced to take off one's hat is a similar assault on one's liberty to having a dagger put through one's chest if one gets in an accident.

As incursions on freedom go, no hats/sunglasses in a bank is a rounding error compared to things we all have to do each and every day. 10 items or less in the express lane. Don't park in the handicapped space unless you have a pass. Only vehicles with two or more persons in the HOV lane. And on and on.

By textbook definition, each of these infringes upon our liberty in a measurable way, but most of us submit to these restrictions for the greater good. In this case, the greater good is the possibility of a reduction in robberies, which logically follows from the fact that less ability to obscure one's face makes them easier to pick up on the surveillance cameras.

I just don't see the big deal.