I gotta love this thread. My career took me into many back offices in mutual funds, banking, insurance, mortgage.... been in a 100s of different offices.
These aren't growing pains they're nothing. Folks expectations are out of line with reality.
I remember when back offices hired trash auditors, yes indeed they had to. See your live checks used to be passed around the processing area before they were processed. It was common practice for a barely over minimum wage associate to throw them out so they could go home at night. Yep, throw live checks in the trash, better then selling them to my not so good family members. [emoji111]
Used to be when any low level associate wanted a break they would "drain the queue". You know that phone queue you have been on hold in to talk with an associate? Want to go to lunch just drain the queue. Oh the callers, they'll call back sometime. What do I care? I'm hungry.
Seen back offices whose IT departments couldn't be bothered to read documentation so many of their systems were frequently down. Seen core systems down during peak times for days, some low level associate tried a maintenance task. When asked how long the system might be down, the response was "How would I know, nobody's ever run this sh*t before. How would I know when it might finish". It finished on Wednesday, unfortunately Monday and Tuesday were business days but the systems down.
A gal that worked on my team would tell stories about her Wednesday night desk checks looking for shareowners paperwork that her team hid in their desks. They didn't want to get fired for throwing paper out so they hid it. To be fair it was death claims, and they are hard to process. Besides the shareowner was dead! She said the widows would be transferred to her when they asked to speak to a supervisor. They were all the time asking about their money so they could keep the lights on and buy groceries.