Beyond Brown Bags — a Guide to the Bank Lunchroom
I was visiting a friend who was the chief economist of a Wall Street bank. We went to its dining room for lunch. It was crowded.
“Money is easy, now,” he said, looking around.
“How do you know?”
“When money is easy and we are trying to push new loans, the dining room is crowded with guests. When it is tight, no one is here — our lenders are all out being wined and dined by the potential borrowers.”
Lunch can also tell you who is boss.
I had lunch with the top officers of a mutual savings bank. Everyone got one lamb chop, except the CEO. He got two.
Why do banks even have fancy dining rooms in the first place? It’s not just conspicuous consumption, even though some have hired chefs from top restaurants to run their kitchens.
An officer explaining his bank’s operations told me, “If you can feed a banker graciously without alcohol and have him back at his desk in half an hour, considering what you pay him per day, it is a bargain to have this room.”
Having a lunchroom gives the CEO a chance to mingle with various groups and learn what is going on. It is also a morale builder.
I remember when a major New Jersey bank had to fire a CEO who never mingled with the troops.
(He even used a helicopter to travel the 28 miles from his bank to New York City, though a train ran every half hour from a station a few doors away.)
Staff people I knew were thrilled when his replacement would come into the lunchroom, get his own coffee, and sit down with an informal group, giving a clear sign that the imperial presidency was over.
Years ago, in a story about the decline of a major New England bank, The Wall Street Journal reported that the first sign of impending trouble was that the CEO stopped eating lunch with his staff VPs and ate alone.
Though it is nice to hobnob with the CEO, an in-house lunchroom also lets staff members sit with others they hardly know and learn things that turn out to be useful.
Some banks invite new hires to eat with top officers. Some choose employees to do so on a regular schedule, and call the program something like “Lunch with the Chairman.” That helps morale and encourages the flow of information up and down the organization.
I have seen CEOs who enlist new hires as drivers for a day, use the opportunity to learn what they do in the bank, and generally pick up information.
These are all smart things to do. Here is a stupid one: Make people sit at the same table day after day to make it easier on the people who serve lunch. What a wasted opportunity for communication.
It is mostly very large banks, of course, that have grand dining facilities for their employees. But even what others provide — a room to eat in, with a refrigerator to store your brown bag till noon, or a small lunchroom operated by a subsidized outsider — offers some of the same communication and morale benefits.
Some banks expect a lending officer to have a lunch date every day that will help build business. This can be abused.
“I’ll take you out on my expense account today,” one lending officer says to a colleague. “You take me out tomorrow.”
