When a woman is inducted into a job and told she must not deal with anyone but the account holder, she may be more likely to be concerned about the rules than a man would?
With the same level of experience I would posit that a male will take more risks with this than the woman. But that's just a guess, pure speculation on my part.
Research into the Risk-taking group of genes or genotype expression does show that it is more prevalent in males than females.

a. The women don't like your tone.

b. The women like to stick it to the man.

c. The women prefer talking to your mother.

d. The men are scared to ask if the deep growl on the other end of the line is, in fact, not a woman, for fear of offending the deep-voiced woman on the other end of the line. Women are generally happy to embarrass other women.

e. The men all figure, hey, I dip into this account all the time; who am I to keep some other dude away from this endless supply of credit.

f. The men are careless with your account, because men are by nature careless; the women are careful with your account, because women are by nature careful.

g. The men are carefully following the rules, because men are by nature careful; the women are carelessly following their intuitions, because women are by nature careless.

h. None of the above.

i. All of the above.

j. As many or as few of the above as you see fit.

k. Something else, some stupid crazy plot, about as convincing as The DaVinci Code or Born on the Fourth of July or Zapped!, that not even my febrile imagination could conjure.

Female agents may also be more sensitized than male agents to the possibility that men controlling funds = men controlling women, and more likely to adhere to the policy to take above-and-beyond protective measures* for that reason.

It would be interesting to see if the reverse is true: if female agents consistently refuse to speak to a female secondary holder when a male is the primary. And, of course, whether male agents consistently consent to do so.

*On rereading your post, I see nothing about agents breaking or adhering to a policy. Re: my hypothesis of "protective measures," please note: I'm not endorsing this viewpoint, just positing it as a possibile explanation. There are many others.

Perhaps, at this point, you're expecting the runaround from women, so when you hear a female voice you start sounding defensive and therefore suspect?

Perhaps female customer service agents who flout the rules are more likely to be reprimanded or fired by their supervisors than male customer service agents who flout the rules, and therefore female customer service agents proceed more cautiously?

Perhaps female customer service agents are more likely to be at or below the poverty line and/or the sole support of their dependent children, and so need the job more than male customer service agents, and so therefore less likely to put their jobs at risk for customers they don't know?

(I understand that you're not actually asking them to flout the rules, just positing reasons they might be more cautious about doing something that seems risky.)

At risk of sounding overgeneralizing in the worst sort of Psychology Today way, women strike me as being generally more risk averse in corporate work environments. My theory about this: it seems to me that women who take risks but fail are punished more harshly -- rather than simply having made a bad judgment call, their mistakes will be attributed to general incompetence or failure of character. At the same time, those women who exhibited the most risk averse behavior often seem to be considered overly insecure, micromanaging, neurotic, etc. It must be a very difficult social terrain to navigate.

Heh. I think it's only a Psychology Today overgeneralization if you claim that women are naturally timid due to genetics, because timid women stood back and let the big strong cavemenz kill the mammoth, thus creating a bond between the timid blonde woman and the big strong food-providing man, and thus ensuring that timid women won the evolutionary race and so aggressive women must be dying out due to intelligent design. Or something.

But if it's a joint account, aren't the rules being broken when WolfDaddy isn't given access after jumping through the proper hoops?

(I don't know the rules; I'd love to say IANAB, but I am, and I still don't know.)

I don't know the rules, either. I honestly think it's impossible to evauluate what's happening without seeing what the protocol is supposed to be. I've never had a joint business account that had a primary and a secondary cardholder, and I'm not sure what the disctinction entails.

I was actually just coming back to suggest asking the agents how you can be added to the account for full access -- one of my roommates and I had this problem every time the cable went out, because her name was on the account and while I was listed as someone who had access to the account in terms of getting service fixed, they didn't have my social security number or some such on file and so refused to talk to me about any financial bits (including not allowing me to pay bills over the phone).

But they of course never told me that they *could* add me in this way until I asked. So it may be worth asking.

So, yeah, Hugh, I would think the rules were probably being broken, but I guess I was trying to get at the fact that a person who doesn't necessarily know the rules but who's likely to be punished for breaking rules will be likely to err on the side of not giving someone access because it might break the rules, even if, in reality, it doesn't.

Dude, they're all lezbos.


What?

Oh, yeah, absolutely, occhiblu. I was just amused at the idea of counterintuitive rules being broken in error by workers who mistake what seems obvious and commonsense for the actual rule (whether it's the case here or not, it's amusing).

The funny thing is, most of the accounts eventually (follow the money FOLLOW THE MONEY!) are owned by GE Financial Services. So I blame them. And yes, these *are* joint accounts, but they all require a primary person to ... I don't know, have one name to put on a bill or something. However, if one is listed on the account as a cardholder/authorized user/whatever and passes all the sixtybazillion security checkpoints, at what point do we pass from cautious to lunacy? I BLAME GE!

I've been both a customer service rep and a manager, though not for bGEhemoth companies. I'd *never* punish someone for understanding procedure and yet not being a total drone about it, whether that person be male or female. I also don't understand why the women, if they *know* they're not going to help me, still make me go through all the security questions/procedures. I think I'll blame GE again.

and I *heart* Hugh Anus for listing out what I'm feeling so succinctly*

In my huge experience with financial bureaucracies, I have found women to be much bigger sticklers to the rules. Also, they'll much less likely to make any judgement calls- they usually will hand it up to their superior. By a very slight majority, however, they've been more willing to take on a problem and make sure it got solved. Guys have been more inclined to say- nope, can't help- sorry- bye-click.

and I *heart* Hugh Anus for listing out what I'm feeling so succinctly

Yeah, totally, dude, that Ron Kovic shit was so bogus!