Joseph L. Kagle, Jr. Essays

Extreme Makeover

Did you ever walk into a business where you had been a loyal customer for 20 plus years and think to yourself, as a flash of insight, “I wonder if someone had been watching television and tried to combine Extreme Makeover and Fear Factor into one commercial statement and interior design?” The feeling that the sight conveyed was an epiphany where you picture this scenario: “Your mother has recently passed away and now your father has a new girl friend. He dresses in his pre-50’s attire, thinking that it is up to date, trying to impress the new love but does not act like the gentleman he has been and really is.” The shock of this extreme makeover of a locally-owned bank which has helped me through the years with car loans, home mortgages, personal and business loans, house improvement projects, checking accounts and savings is amazing. It split my personality into many parts so that I began to critically examine what had been done to my warm-feeling, Romanesque-arched bank from multiple personality points of view.

As a professor of the history of American architecture, I saw immediately that the renovations had made a comfortable space narrow and cramped. Whoever designed the interior forgot the important lesson that one cannot pour two gallons of fluid into a one gallon vessel, no matter how much money you spend on the fluid that is poured. Walking into the interior, one feels that the advertisements outweigh the traditional service that has always been the hallmark of this established institution.

As a Fulbright salesman for American free enterprise, I was shocked that what the Soviets had preached to their satellite countries for seventy years may have had a glimmer of truth. My students abroad said, “Money corrupts and America is more interested in money than people.” I told them that money was a vehicle to get you from one place to another and the best of America used money to convey pride in our diverse democracy. I counted the images in my new/old bank and they were all white, young and pretty. There were no Rembrandt faces with character, just a collection of Bob Barker’s Beauties from The Price is Right.

As an artist, I was used to bad art but this bothered me because it was “good” design without the recognition of where the bank had been and who its customers were. The great wall of propaganda that now stopped anyone from smiling or waving to a friend in the inner offices was filled with words: “What a bank should be: Simple (nothing was simple in the design), Comprehensive (it was that and more), Trustworthy (that was still true), Accessible (the wall stopped that), and Comfortable (probably the most uncomfortable design job that I have ever seen).” This was by the book. The designers just used the wrong edition and the bank bought this extreme makeover.

As a traveler in the world, I was shocked by the omissions. Anyone who has seen the statistics knows that Texas will be 51% black, Hispanic and other minorities of today by 2020. All these faces on the signs were Caucasian. The whiteness was an affront to anyone who now believes that we all live on the same planet. I knew (behind that wall) my now-invisible loan officer was Hispanic and some of my long-time friends were non-white who worked for this special bank. Walking into this new interior was like getting the annual report of a company where I owned stock but had no personal workings with the staff.

Lastly as a customer, the images of white, young faces with a finger to the right cheek saying to me in unison, “Under insured? Over insured? Nor Sure your insured?” was offensive by its repetition. Even if you try to circumnavigate the awful interior design the same white faces are between each of the Roman arches and beside each of the drive-in vacuum tubes (in fact, if you come in the wrong way, the images are also on the back of the signs). My dad used to tell me: “KISS, son, in all that you do. Keep it simple, stupid.” This interior and exterior is certainly “Simple” (like in Simon). It is just too much of an extreme makeover which causes a fear factor to ignite in this loyal customer.