Chase Slammed for 'Poor-Shaming' After 'Motivational' Tweet

Chase Bank's #MondayMotivation tweet was better suited for #ToneDeafTuesday, according to critics. The since-deleted tweet set up a hypothetical conversation between a bank account and its owner, who ponders the reasons for a low balance. "I guess we'll never know," the customer said, despite the bank account's advice to "make coffee at home," "eat the food that's already in the fridge," and "you don't need a cab, it's only three blocks." The backlash was "swift," per NBC News. Some reactions:

• A critic of big banks, Sen. Elizabeth Warren posed her own hypothetical conversation in which taxpayers remarked, "We lost our jobs/homes/savings but gave you a $25b bailout." Referring to the 2008 government bailout, the tweet was liked more than 72,000 times as of Tuesday morning. CNN notes the bank later repaid the Treasury.

• Referring to the JPMorgan Chase CEO, whose 2018 salary topped $31 million, Barron's reporter Ben Walsh joked, "It's well-known that Jamie Dimon earned his riches making coffee at home and eating leftovers." But he saw truth in the "core insight ... that people see their bank balance as a kind of omnipresent numerical scold judging them for their multitudinous personal failings."
• California Rep. Katie Porter, a member of the House Financial Services Committee who recently grilled Dimon about wages for low-level bank employees, suggested #ToneDeafTuesday and #TimetoRetireThursday labels in tweets. "It's outrageous," she adds, per NBC. "They pay their workers barely enough to make rent, and then try to shame them into thinking it's their own fault for buying an occasional coffee."
• Other Twitter users claimed the tweet was out of touch and evidence of "poor-shaming," though Fox News reports some "agreed with Chase's suggestion to be more mindful of spending habits."
• Chase deleted the #MondayMotivation tweet within three hours, per the Washington Post. Without further comment, it then shared a new one. "Our #MondayMotivation is to get better at #MondayMotivation tweets," it reads.

(More JPMorgan Chase stories.)