A Case of the Mondays

So I get into the office this morning and I have to emails waiting for me from the managing directors.

The first subject reads: Saturday, June 7th - Continued Education Training 8:30am - 1:00pm.

I immediately begin thinking of Office Space, thinking:
"They're gonna have me, the un-paid intern, come in on Saturday, I just know it...And I'm gonna end up doing it, cuz I'm a big PUSSY."

Then Lawrence's character comes into my head saying:
"Well you can get out of that easy. Duck out early, turn off your answering machine, and you should be home-free."

A sense of relief engulfs my body. As if my computer is taking forever to shut down, and I get caught ducking out of the office at the last second by Lumberg,

I open the next email: Friday, June 6th - Team Drinks - Show the intern a Good Time 6:00-8:00pm.

FUCK... I know it will be frowned upon to no-show after such a "bonding experience."

Damn it. I will be working six days this week for a paycheck of a grand total of: -$184.75 (1.5 tanks of gas & 6 lunches)

I do have a case of the Mondays.

The Average Male

I have just returned from another lunch that I wanted to go to alone, but the associates wanted me to go with them. So instead of thinking about jack squat all lunch while reminiscing about how fun summer used to be, I was grilled for an hour about which market multiple, in my own opinion, is the most applicable when trying to sell a company. There is no right answer of course, but the "snooty bull-dike wanna-be-whore but my nose is too big" associate proceeds to rip apart my answer from all angles. I returned and conducted my own investigation on this question to find out, low and behold, I am right. Past Transactions are the most useful. Fuck you bitch. Pay for my lunch.

I have been getting indications from the lower level people that this Saturday's Training is going to be even more miserable than I already think it is going to be. They told me that we will be in the conference room from 8:30 to 1:00 with one break. At least it's casual, right? Wrong.

I am currently pretending to read something about a health center but am instead writing this. My bosses are gone for the afternoon, so this will continue indefinitely. If you feel even the slightest inclination to put a smile on my face, respond and give me something to read. I just got an email from a friend who is in Dublin for the summer. It read, "pissed in my closet last night." That was it. This is a perfect example of what to send me.

Hello all,

I hope that everyone’s Monday was great. Mine wasn’t.

5:40am - Alarm goes off. I sleep through it.
5:45am - 2nd Alarm sounds. My mom comes in frantic. She cannot comprehend how someone can sleep through two simultaneous alarms. A shower and a glass of OJ later, I'm off at 6:10.

If you are wondering why I had to get up so early, let me explain. My aunt and uncle needed a ride to the airport for their vacation to Hawaii. As if this dubious task of driving other people to an amazing vacation isn't bad enough, I had to continue on to work. Not to mention that my uncle picked up his son from LAX the night before, so it was unquestionably his turn.

I arrive at my office at 8 only to be greeted by a locked door. I know what you're thinking. "You had to wait outside until someone got there, that sucks." Worse. They gave me a key just for this situation, so I was able to go in. I was unaware that the office server was replaced over the weekend, so instead of spending the time alone on ESPN.com, I spent ten minutes trying to guess the temporary password I was given. No Luck. Then I have the bright idea to turn on the office TV to watch the U.S. Open Pre-game show. I turned on the TV to find it on CNN. The remote and cable box are in the locked supply room, so I cannot change the channel. FUCK.

Instead of going to sleep in my car for an hour, I decide to make it look like I am that over-eager, go-getter intern who arrives before everyone else. The next person arrives at 9:30. Of course it was no one important, just the lowly office manager. I hate that Patrick calls himself the office manager. You are a god-damned secretary… get over it. That’s the equivalent of a janitor calling himself a Custodial Engineer. Blow Me.

Everyone staggers in during the next few hours. I have my lunch planned out for around 12:30 so that I can watch the last four holes of the U.S. Open. At 12:15, the afore mentioned "snooty bull-dike wanna-be-whore but my nose is too big" associate, whom we will now refer to as simply “Nose,” frantically gives me a laundry list of due diligence requirements that need to be transposed into an Excel spreadsheet. On top of the fact that this task being completing fucking useless, since no one will ever read it, Nose then decides to go have lunch, telling me that she needs it in an hour. I am livid. Neither can this be completed in an hour, nor can I watch golf.

You might be saying to yourself, just do it while watching the office TV. The main managing director, whose name is as Indian (dot not feather) as possible, is stereotypically watching soccer... soccer. Fuck soccer. I am reduced to watching the leaderboard on from PGATour.com refresh every two minutes, having no real idea how Tiger almost got beat. Nose returns extra-perky from her lunch and proceeds to talk to one of her whore friends on the phone about some “date” she had the night before. I know that no such date occurred. The only date she could get would be more like an appointment with a plastic surgeon. If it did, I want to see the poor, ignorant bastard it was with. I decided to wait to give the spreadsheet to her in order to see how “urgent” it was. She casually asked for it from me at 3:30. She almost got a new nose right then.

The Commute

This is by far the worst part of my day.

As the crow flies, I live approximately 10 miles from my office. To the normal person, that sounds reasonable. When you tell this too a fellow Los Angelan, they give you their condolences.

Depending on how much I have drunk the night before, I normally leave at 8am in order to make it to the office by 8:45. I check my iPhone for the traffic report, not because I actually plan on changing my route, just so I can see how miserable the next hour of my life is going to be. The iPhone shows the traffic on the freeways with the colors green, yellow, and red. Could none of those self-proclaimed “geniuses” at Apple figure out a way to show the traffic on side streets? What the FUCK? I don’t understand how they monitor the freeways, but I’m sure they could do city streets just the same. Whatever. Anyone who has spent a significant amount of time on the roads of Los Angeles can tell you that freeways at rush hour are an absolute joke. Most of the time my phone shows yellow during rush hour. Every time I am naïve enough to think that green means light traffic, I get my hopes up.

They get shot down. Hard. In Los Angeles, the three colors have much different meanings than in other regions of the world.

Green = 20mph

Yellow = Parked

Red = Turn off your Engine

I have never experienced a time in my life where 2 hours are flushed down the toilet every day, along with roughly 15 gallons/week at $4.50. I never foresaw myself being in a car so often that my iPod would begin to bore me. I have reduced myself to listening to talk radio.

The morning is quite simple. I listen to 710AM ESPN Radio’s Colin Cowherd first and foremost, but he has an ungodly amount of commercials. Dan Patrick for 570AM Sports Illustrated Radio is a distant second, yet far better than my other options. At 8:30 there is a trivia question show on 95.5FM Mark & Brian. Naturally, I destroy these questions with the exception of those about literature. I read ESPN.com. If the commute takes more than an hour, like most Thursdays, I get the “pleasure” of listening to Ralph’s Show-Biz Beat on 106.7FM at 9. By pleasure, I mean that I am so angry & impatient that I am ready to kill.

The drive home is characterized by me trying to see how many songs will simultaneously be on 102.7FM & 105.9FM. For last three weeks, I dare you to be in the car for more than 20 minutes without hearing Lil Wayne’s “Lollipop.” It is on more than one channel at a time quite often.

All of these things are a bit entertaining, but the monotony of this routine drives one to drink. This was already unnecessary in my case, so use your imagination.

While on the topic of my terrible commute, I would also like to vent about another one of my pet peeves. Motorcycles. More specifically, motorcyclists. Who the Fuck do they think they are? From this point forward, I have zero sympathy for motorcyclists getting annihilated. Those assholes are lane-splitting all day long. My mother always taught me to say a little prayer when you drive by an accident. When they whiz by me at 50 mph during rush hour traffic, I say a little prayer that they get what’s coming to ‘em. And don’t explain to me that it’s legal to split lanes. I know. It’s legal to drink, and I will die from that one day too.

The Chair

Today, I arrived at work around 9:15. I did my usual nothing until about 10:15. Nothing meaning… checking emails, G-Chatting, reading ESPN, Sports Illustrated, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and preparing my Fantasy Baseball for the day. I guarantee that everyone who suffers from having to do the exact same thing every morning can relate. Everyone has their routine. That is why we pussy interns and the like need your help. Being able to read/reply to any sort of mundane piece of technology is paramount in making to graceland: the lunch break.

I have had an especially miserable morning today. Instead of happily being ignored and simply given data entry, the associates have decided to take a special interest in getting the razor that much closer to my wrist. They obviously have nothing better to do so they struggle with very feeble attempts at humor. They have taken away my normal chair and replaced it with the one you see above. I can only think of that episode of the office where Jim pops Dwight’s exercise ball with scissors in that hilarious cold opening. I never really thought this day would come, what with their empty threats of coffee runs and tales of their horrors of interning. They didn’t stop at the uncomfortable chair. They moved my mouse from my right hand to my left. With giggles and very satisfied looks upon their faces, they return to their meaningless spreadsheets. I pretend to struggle with the mouse using only my left hand in order to appease them in the hopes of them leaving me to my morbid thoughts. I never told them that I am ambidextrous. It does not matter. They figured it out when I was whizzing away, surfing the internet without hesitation. Nose asked, “How are you able to move so fast with your left hand?” She has no idea how much my left wants to demonstrate on her schnoz. Ya, I am that talented, and I am smarter than you, BITCH.

Joe Bruin

I have eight bosses since I work for no one in particular, but everyone. Of course of those eight, only two actually use me. The first guy, I like. We share a common bond of being in the same fraternity, albeit at different schools. When he takes me to lunch, he pays. I do not care that he is going to expense it as a business lunch, in fact, I appreciate it. At least he is looking out. The other guy I will refer to as Joe Bruin. From this comment alone, you can probably deduce what school I currently attend.

Joe Bruin can only be described as the quintessential UCLA grad. Are you picturing this person? Good. I guarantee that you are thinking of a balding, thirty to forty something Pillow Biter with zero personality. Then you’d be right. Another amazing characteristic of Joe Bruin is that he has recently become a die-hard Boston sports fan. This fair-weather "vagitarian" was born in Encino. Fuck you.

Joe Bruin is the guy in the office who plays his own music. He does not monitor the volume strictly so he can be sure that everyone in a 30 foot radius hears it. He brags of his extensive iTunes collection. Cool… fag. Then why do you insist on playing Sheryl Crow, the Goo Goo Dolls, and weird jazz that no one has ever heard? I have been toying with the idea of playing some really inappropriate Eminem CD’s that reverberates throughout the entire office. At least one of my co-workers shares my contempt for Joe Bruin’s music, so he drowns it out with Dave Matthews, but he is rarely in the office.

Joe Bruin is the guy who gives you a task of some minor importance, and pretends that a lot is riding on your performance. Maybe he thinks I am bored and this will save me from my boredom. He is wrong. I do what he asks, verbatim to the template he provides. When I present him with the finished product, he goes about making utterly useless formatting changes. “Change this font from 14 to 13, and make Header font 22, not 20.” Why the FUCK do you even give me a template if all you are going to do is edit it? And why do you tell ME to change the font? It’s easier for you to change it yourself. Oh, I get it. This is you asserting your analyst status over me. Blow me.

The Project

This story is referring to a project that I was given last week. I have been slacking in posting this since I attempted to drink my weight in beer this weekend. Although it was a valiant effort, I did not quite make it. The best story of the weekend would have to be when my drunk friend’s girlfriend jokingly offered to take her top off and my other drunk friend immediately screamed, “YESSSS!” Awkward as balls for the involved parties, but I could not stop laughing. Still haven’t.

Last Monday, I was given the task of finding ALL of the comparable transactions that have happened within a particular industry so that it would be possible to value a certain company. Two days & 70 PowerPoint slides later, I produced what I believed was a very respectable transaction Comps section. Once again, Joe Bruin comes out of left field with some ridiculous formatting modifications from the original template. Instead of falling into his trap of spending 3+hours changing all of this useless crap on every slide, I corrected the first couple of slides to his retarded specifications and then waste 2+ hours surfing the internet / creeping on facebook. Then I brought the first couple of slides to him so that he can, once again, make corrections to his own corrections. Over the course of Wednesday afternoon on into Wednesday night, he revised my slides a grand total of eight times. EIGHT times. Is it that hard to decide what you want? How inconsiderate is that? Seriously, Fuck you!

I finally get out of the office at 10:30pm! The kicker here is that since everyone is still so unprepared that they asked me to come in at 7am in order to make sure that everything is ready to go by 1:30. I just nodded along like the pussy that I am, thinking the entire time about how they are taking away the only thing left holy and sacred to me in the world: Half-price night at the 901 Club. As I drove out of the parking lot at 10:30, I got a phone call from the office telling me to wear a suit the next day because they are bringing me along to the pitch. This actually brought a smile to my face. I began to think that my hard work was actually beginning to pay off and was actually getting noticed.

I arrived at the office at 7am, ready to proofread this 150+ page pitch book. It was a pretty stressful day as three different managers were adding their own little tidbits of information to the pitch book, all of course needing proper formatting. The final product was printed around noon. I ran across the street to Subway since I hadn’t eaten anything all day. When I got back, my boss informed me that now I wasn’t going to be able to go along with them, because they didn’t want to out-number the clients. You're joking? Not only have you been working me like a fucking red-headed stepchild, but now you made me wear a suit for no reason. I immediately thought, “Fuck this, I’m out.” And I was. I could taste the liquor, and as a result, my 4^th of July weekend started five minutes later.

Potty Humor

This morning was quite amusing. I felt absolutely terrible during my hour long crawl down the freeway. No amount of water could drown the whiskey breath out of my mouth. You know what I mean. When every burp burns and you can feel each sip of water seep into the crevices of your chest.

I arrived in the lobby of my building around 9:05am. I stepped in the elevator, picked the 12^th floor, and hit the Door Close button. Just as the door began to close, I farted. This thing was pretty substantial. As the elevator door was about to close, some over-eager wench stuck her foot in the door. Many people would have panicked. On the other hand, I relish in these types of awkward situations. Not only was this stupid woman oblivious to the extent of punishment she had just gotten herself into, but she opened the floodgates to letting about seven more people get in.

The stench was so pungent, it stung the nostrils. The facial expressions on everyone’s faces went from “not excited about going to work” directly over to confused, accusative, and nauseous. Three stops were chosen before the 12^th floor, along with two after. Some poor bastard had to endure that smell for six stops. It was entertaining to see people hustle off the elevator for the three stops I got to enjoy. That made my morning.

One of my pet peeves is that my office only has one entrance/exit. That means that our secretary knows my exact shitting schedule. I go to the bathroom every day in between 10:30 and 11:00am. There is no way she doesn’t know. Why else would I be gone for almost exactly 7 minutes each day? My other offices have had back doors and different routes to getting to bathrooms so that you can conceal your bathroom tendencies. There is none of that here. Another irritating thing is that the bathroom is literally as far away from my office as possible on the 12^th floor. Naturally.

Today I got up to go to the bathroom, and coincidentally, Joe Bruin decided to go at the same time. He talked to me about random work stuff all the way to the bathroom and actually even after I was already in the stall. That was weird. I chose the handicapped stall, and he gave me a strange look about it. I always choose the handicapped stall. What the fuck? Did he want me to occupy the only other small stall right next to him instead? I thought everyone chose the handicapped stall if given the chance. Why would I make myself claustrophobic in one of the smaller ones? That just does not make sense to me. Whatever. I then pathetically attempted to cover up noises by flushing the toilet. I always employ this “trick,” but has anyone ever really been fooled? It’s weird enough working with the guy, I don’t need him knowing how much I drank the night before.

The next step is when you listen for the toilet paper roll. Whoever commits to wiping first is has then explicitly been granted the rights to leaving the bathroom first. Eye contact afterwards must be avoided at all costs, thus the second wiper has been resigned to waiting until the first wiper has exited the bathroom before opening the stall door. I waited. I believed these rules to be universally accepted, but I also thought that no talking once in the stall and jumping at the chance for the handicapped stall were unanimously accepted as well. But what do I know.

Team Lunch

Last Friday was an impromptu team lunch. My main boss has been placating me since the beginning of the summer by telling me that he “really wants to take me to lunch.” I saw this as standard operating procedure, since I doubted he ever actually planned to take me to lunch. He came up to my desk around 11:30am and asked me to go out with him to lunch. He then proceeded to chicken out about ten minutes later by asking the entire office to lunch. Maybe my presence is just THAT intimidating.

12:30 rolls around, and the entire office is starving. Two of the managing directors are still on the phone. Finally around 1pm, they emerge from their offices ready to go to lunch. I am hoping for something like burgers and fries. Instead there is an idiotic decision to go to some Chinese/Vietnamese food establishment. This is no Panda Express. It serves food like in the picture above. I am not a very picky eater these days, but having no idea what is being put on my plate is a little frightening. The food, for the most part, was okay. Okay, meaning that I would never go and pay for it myself.

I strategically picked my seat directly in between two of the managing directors. I do not have very much contact with them because they have much different jobs than everyone else in the office. Managing directors are the “talkers.” They are on the phone talking to clients all day long. Literally all day. They tell me what information they would like me to look up for certain companies, and then they simply regurgitate what I give them.

The guy to my left is the one that hired me, the same one that has been telling me that he “really wants to take me to lunch.” He has an awesome British accent, yet is Indian (dot). The one to my right is a forty-something white guy who is a Notre Dame grad. We bust each other’s chops when we get a chance, but I have to contain myself. Ripping on Notre Dame is just too easy these days. This clip is proof:

I sent that to him, and he has had much less to say lately. The two of them first ask me what I would like to do after I graduate. It is now my turn to placate them. I tell them that I would really like to work for them at this investment bank. Then I tell them about the internet business I would really like to start as well. They attempt to rip my business plan to shreds, but I am far from discouraged. When I retire the day before I turn thirty, they won’t be invited to the shitshow.

Then the two of them begin to ask me about fraternity life. The Indian guy was not in a fraternity in London, so I can safely assume that he slept at the library like every other one of his kind. The fighting Irishman did not have the opportunity to belong to a fraternity, as they are required to live in dorms for 4 years. Bad football. A dry town. Snow. Indiana. And dorms for 4 years. Who wouldn’t want to go there?

I tell them the politically correct things that I am sure they don’t believe. Like how “it’s about brotherhood, not chicks and beer.” It’s chicks and liquor actually. They keep pressing me for more though. They ask me, “How much do you drink?” That’s a loaded question. There is no right answer. If I tell them the truth, there will be no job offer at the end of the summer. If I underwhelm their expectations, I’m an even bigger pussy than they already take me for. I decide to side-step the question by asking them if they know what a “Power Hour” is. They don’t. I explain how it’s taking a shot of beer every minute for sixty minutes, resulting in a total of about 8 beers in an hour. They gasp. Forget explaining “Century Club.” The Notre Dame pansy says he would be passed out. That doesn’t even encompass pre-gaming for me. The next question is, “How much did you drink last weekend?” I decide to divide by three. I tell them probably around 7-8 beers and 3 cocktails on Saturday night. This still alarmed them. I tell them I went to two Dodger games (which was true), and they relaxed.

I am now scared to say anything more so I change the subject. I tell them that I believe Bank of America’s stock is the most undervalued stock on the market. They kinda shoot me down, saying that financials haven’t hit rock bottom yet. Fucking morons. Bank of America is up 61.5% since that lunch. If only I had one dollar to my name, maybe I could retire even earlier.

Alt + Tab

Last summer, I found a quick & easy way to efficiently hide my lack of effort in the office. For those of you who don’t know about this… You Are Welcome. It’s a little thing called Alt + Tab. From people I have talked to, some know this and some don’t. If you hold down Alt and press the Tab button, you switch between open programs. This probably doesn’t sound groundbreaking to someone who hasn’t spent time in a serious office. To those that have, you understand. When some superior creeps up on you as your eyes are drooping, you need to switch away from Facebook as soon as possible. Scrambling frantically with the mouse and a few quick clicks are a dead giveaway that you are fucking around on the internet. Using Alt + Tab conceals how much you are wasting your time by quickly switching you to some bullshit spreadsheet that you haven’t worked on in days. In situations where you are supposed to be researching useless crap on the internet instead of reading this blog, you can use Ctrl + Tab to do virtually the same thing, just switching between webpages. Either way, these shortcuts are a must not only as I am writing this blog at work, but also to keep up appearance that you too are a hardworking, pussy intern.

With my public service now completed, please understand how fucking excited I am that school is about to start again. That essentially means that the end of this horrendous summer is luckily drawing near. I have had to ask for work throughout the entire summer, sometimes just to keep me from falling asleep on the keyboard. Now that I am leaving, I ask for nothing and have been getting everyone’s bitch-work. It’s as if everyone in the office is seeing the window of their slave labor rapidly closing. My normally empty desk is now cluttered with piles and piles of busy work that I am never going to get to. And that I am never planning on getting to.

The last few weeks have been particularly shitty because of the busy work that Nose has pawned off on me. I have been updating the second quarter monthly balance sheets, income statements, and cash flows for 45 different locations of this certain company for the last eight days. Nose would not dare give me a hard time about how long it is taking me because she knows exactly how fucking miserable the task is. The other two guys want me to help them with somewhat interesting projects, but Nose’s newly appointed “Senior Associate” status means that she can tell me what to do before them. Maybe she can spend her extra $1000/year on that desperately needed rhinoplasty. All this means is that I will be "attempting" to finish this until the end of my time here. I am going to finish working on Wednesday the 13^th. That day cannot come fast enough. I dare them to try and pull some last minute surprise party on me. That would be so awkward. There is no chance they haven’t seen that I already have one foot out the door. I want nothing more than to go get shitfaced with my friends for the first Wednesday all summer without having to get up in the morning.

August 13^th is also exactly one month before kickoff between USC & Ohio State. Since the last few weeks have afforded me little time to prepare for the football season, this may be enough time. I forgot to mention that Wednesday 13^th is the most arbitrary date ever. I have told my entire office that I am going on vacation with my family until school starts. There is no such vacation. I just thought that 10 days was a very believable length of time for a plausible vacation. My parents stopped taking me on vacations when I got my DUI. Now I have to create vacations for myself by manipulating my dad into thinking that every away football game is an amazing opportunity to play some new golf courses. Our Palm Desert house does not fall under the category of a vacation as much as he wants it to.

I am not going to bore you any further with the tragedy that has been my summer, but believe me… I will update you with my lack of compensation/job offer as soon as I am unshackled from my godforsaken cube. All awkwardness will be described with utmost detail.

The very end of this video contains the absolute best fist pump of all time...

Amazing Finish in the Mens 4x100m Relay As the US Wins Gold - video powered by Metacafe

The Future

I did not write this myself, but I found it eerily similar to my current situation. I guess this is what I have to look forward to if I get hired by one of the “great” investment banks.

A Day in the Life of an Investment Banker

“Undergraduate recruiting = four months of Holden Caulfield’s personal hell. An itchy crotch from your uncle’s hand-me-down mohair suit, sweaty palms doused with baby powder, shots of vodka at eight in the morning. Phony, hungry, dismissive smiles. Struggling in vain to recall superfluous names. A pamphlet shoved into your hand. An Asian/Black/Hispanic man and woman huddled before a sleek Titanium PowerBook, now walking down a corridor smiling. About what? Perhaps the presentation. It's really very good, you see. It’s got fonts sliding around. Pretty pictures. It’s gonna rock the financial world. Or maybe they’re just happy to be in each other’s multicultural company. Below the picture, the Asian/Black/Hispanic man or woman describes, in titillating detail, a Day in the Life of an Investment Banker.

9:00 - A meeting with my Managing Director and the CEO of a major aerospace firm! We're advising on a comprehensive corporate restructuring! All this after only three months!

12:30 - Grab a vegetable wrap and fruit salad from the food court! Must stay healthy! Eating on the run because I’ve got to be at the airport in two hours! We’re jetting off to British Columbia to pitch several logging companies! I’ve never been to British Columbia!

Sixteen months later, it’s all crap. There’s no Asian/Black/Hispanic employed at your bank except the one who comes every Thursday to shine shoes. Excluding assistants, only 4% of the professionals, are women. You knew about the sub-culture right from the get go, of course, had heard angst-ridden stories from those who graduated a year or two above you, weren’t oblivious to interviewers snickering when asked what you thought the hours of the job would be. Still, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, you thought you could transcend these brutal norms, carve out a niche of happiness while rolling in the big bucks.

You go to these recruiting events now. You smile and shake sweaty palms. You distribute pamphlets of people who look so bland they couldn’t even model in J.C. Penny catalogues. At times you slip into a mindset you know is a product of environmental forces surrounded by all these desperate A-type over-achievers in a dismal economy, you’re actually pleased to have your job. A warm fuzzy feeling of accomplishment for a minute or two. Then stepping outside to have a smoke, immersed in a circle of pompous nerds adjusting their Blackberry holsters, you want to scream uncontrollably, bellow so it reverberates all the way down the street, to throw your head back and burst into flame.

Instead, you grunt, down your martini. A tap on your shoulder. One of the recruits. He’s smiling broadly. “Man, you’re so lucky. This is exactly what I want to do. I really want this. I want it soooo bad.” You can’t deal with him, not at the moment. You take a piece of paper from your pocket and thrust it in his hand before heading back inside. It reads, “A Day in the Life of an Investment Banker.”

6:15 - Alarm goes off. I’ve told myself I m going to start working out in the mornings. All those late night Subway M&M cookies. A quick calculation, two hours and fifteen minutes of sleep. Not too shabby. Only five or six coffees required to get myself out of bed. That beeping noise. There must be a bunch of sound technicians tinkering away in a room trying to find the perfect frequency to completely crush your soul.

8:20 - Shit. That infernal Pavlovian pushing of the snooze button. Ten minutes until I’ve got to be at a pitch. Can’t remember what it's about though stayed up until four in the morning cranking it out.

8:40 - The Star printed out the books. He’s one of the analysts who sits in my nook of the office. The guy you want to hate but can’t find a reason to do it. He’s simply too nice. Able to work ungodly lengths on no sleep and still has this beatific grin every morning. The Star is passionately in love with investment banking. You’ll be talking to him about this movie you managed to squeeze into your weekend and all of a sudden he’ll have this eerie smile, he’ll rock back and forth on his toes, blurt out, We’re so damn lucky. You roll your eyes. Deadpan serious, “No, I mean, how perfect is this? Can you really see yourself doing anything else?” Try sleeping, buddy.

8:50 - Oh god. Glaring error on page 17 of the pitch book. Forgot to convert Canadian dollars into U.S. Classic analyst fuck-up. I’ve also got to pee. Pee real bad. Client has his eyes half-closed; he’s not even paying attention. The Sycophant, my VP, sits across from me. Client says something. The Sycophant responds. Oh yes, that’s spot on, you really hammered that point across perfectly. Client says something else. The Sycophant says, That’s brilliant, a truly remarkable observation. Even Client cringes. Page 16 of the book. One page away from the Client’s eyes snapping open, suddenly acutely aware of things, a loud and brusque. What the hell is this? The Sycophant has been reduced to a weeping mess, groveling at his feet. At least it might distract me from my bladder.

9:20 - I’m going to piss myself.

9:25 - I’d gladly give up my full bonus for one adult diaper. Half my bonus for a plastic bottle.

9:30 - Way too close.

10:30 - Starbucks. Buy the Star a consolatory cappuccino for printing out the books.

10:35 - The Star really saved your ass this morning. Then there is the Defeated One, the other analyst who sits in my neck of the woods. He’s the Star’s antithesis. He would be the Star’s arch-nemesis if the Star gave any opportunity to hate him. But no, the Star’s just too nice. The Defeated One despises Investment Banking though he’s never going to leave. It’s not that he’s sado-masochistic. It’s the high maintenance girlfriend. It’s the presents that must be lavished on the high maintenance girlfriend after he’s cancelled their dinner plans for the fourth time that week. Also, a particularly nasty coke habit.

10:45 - Sycophant calls me into his office. Wants some follow-up research for the Client. Also 60 bound booklets of trivial information anybody with a web browser could download for themselves.

11:20 - Utterly Incompetent Assistant has printed only one side of double-sided document. It doesn’t matter; document is for the wrong company anyway. Utterly Incompetent Assistant should have been fired long ago but incredibly she’s managed to survive the corporate reshuffling following the tech bubble burst and post 9/11 financial Armageddon. We’re fairly certain she’s sleeping with the Philandering Managing Director, a bulky ex-linebacker Alpha-male type whose previous four assistants resigned abruptly over the past six months. Interrupt her horoscope reading to point out the mistake. Utterly Incompetent Assistant pays no attention. Utterly Incompetent Assistant guffaws into phone, probably to widespread network of Utterly Incompetent Assistants guffawing into their respective phones throughout the downtown core. Utterly Incompetent Assistant knows she’s here to stay, utterly secure in her incompetence.

11:25 - Starbucks.

12:30 - Finished binding 60 booklets.

12:45 - The Defeated One’s skimming through the Daily M&A Activity Update. It’s from the IT guy. He amalgamates all the porn blocked by the servers and sends it out to the junior employees. The Defeated One has just enough time to close a picture of two midgets doing disproportionate acrobatics with a pylon before Utterly Incompetent Assistant comes by asking if she can help with the binding. There are two very obvious towers of pitch books beside me.

1:20 - Sycophant wants two sections of the books reversed.

1:25 - Utterly Incompetent Assistant gone to read the latest Shopaholic novel on her two hour lunch break. Unbind the 60 pitch books.

1:45 - Rebind the 60 pitch books.

2:30 - Lunch with the Defeated One. We have this new policy of going outside for two, at most three minutes, to enjoy the spring weather before bringing the same congealed General Tao chicken up to our desks. A young couple, clean and preppy enough to be in one of those Gap commercials, the annoying one where everybody’s snapping their fingers, stroll by grinning away like Cheshire cats. It’s fucking Tuesday, the Defeated One grimaces. He’s driving a pencil into his wrist. We’re not even alive, the Defeated One mutters. I’ve heard this rant before. Indeed, I have heard a daily variant of this rant since we started working together. Either: I could be dead and nobody would give a damn, one of those old pricks who passes off in his trailer and the rotting corpse isn’t found for months afterward. Or: I am nothing more than an accumulation of spreadsheets. Really, my neurons are nothing more than linked cells. Shit, I feel a circular reference coming on. It’s one of those jokes that only an investment banker could appreciate but still it’s not very funny. Chuckle as a reflex. He’s managed to draw blood with the pencil. Aren’t you worried about lead poisoning? If only I should be so lucky. It’s not lead, it’s graphite. What about graphite poisoning? Let’s go back inside. The Defeated One stares at the receding backs of the Gap-commercial-clean couple, nods solemnly, and follows me to the elevators.

2:45 - Sycophant wants a precedent transactions multiple analysis: hours of accumulating obscure data that may or may not exist, tabulating a column, inserting some cockeyed formulas and coming up with seven examples. It’s always seven. Across continents, industries, other investment banks it’s always seven. There’s an obvious question begging to be asked. It’s the sort of maddening question that jostles around in your cranium with the vigor of children high on caffeine. I’ve learned its best not to ask yourself this sort of a question. Also, you have just received a phone call from the Sycophant to bind 30 more books while the Utterly Incompetent Assistant has her legs up in the back seat of the Philandering Managing Director’s Lexus. And how can the Star defy the body’s need for REM rejuvenation and maintain that perpetual Buddha-like disposition?

3:15 - Finish binding additional 30 booklets.

4:10 - Starbucks.

4:15 - Still hunting for that elusive seven.

5:15 - Log on to a site storing novels that are too old for copyright restrictions to apply. They’re all in plain text without graphics so the screen is perfectly inconspicuous. Read the first chapter of Siddhartha. Follow your destiny, Siddhartha learns, go scavenge around a forest in India for Enlightenment! I’m going to do it. I really am. Not the India part, that’s too far away, but I’m going to shut down my computer, put the new Air CD in my pocket, give a half-salute to the Star and the Defeated One, push the elevator button for the last time, that little screen teaching me a word I’m never going to use, step out into the cool breeze and smile up at the sky. I see the Sycophant’s reflection in my monitor and close the browser. What’s with only having six? It's supposed to be seven. Yes, I guess so. Why isn’t it seven? I don’t know. Keep on at it until its seven. Sure thing. Note to self: no more reading Siddhartha at the office.

5:30 - Utterly Incompetent Assistant returns from parking garage, face flushed, checks her e-mail, guffaws into phone, heads home.

6:20 - Starbucks.

6:30 - Sycophant drops by on his way out. Client meeting next Friday but wants complete turn of a pitch for first thing tomorrow morning (tomorrow morning = when he finally gets around to looking at it at some point next week). A quick calculation. There’s no way I'm getting out of here before four in the morning.

8:15 - Dinner. Subway. Again. Start with the shredded lettuce, and then gorge myself on six M&M cookies.

9:30 - Argue with the Defeated One over the music selection. His taste was somehow stunted after junior high. He’s still listening to Phish and the Tragically Hip and all those other bands that everybody else makes fun of in a bittersweet nostalgic way because though they’ve officially entered the realm of the has-been, it was still the music that rocked our formative adolescent years, the soundtrack to that first mushroom trip in the bar that served liquor to well developed fourteen year olds. I put on Broken Social Scene. He’s boring the same pencil deeper into his wrist. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The Defeated One writhes on the floor, pulling at his receding hairline.

10:30 - Coffee from the acne-scarred Vietnamese lady who runs the most Depressing Donut Store in Downtown, the only place that’s open at this hour. It’s chock-full of old men literally weeping into their cups of tepid coffee when they’re not coughing up phlegm or gnawing away on chocolate glazed crullers.

10:30 - There’s a little concealed niche between the back of my desk and the window. God, could I squeeze back there. Probably not after all those Subway cookies. Note to self: lose weight, then bring in blanket and pillow.

10:35 - The Defeated One returns from the washroom sniffling.

10:45 - The Defeated One says, "I’ll bet you boys don’t think I’d jerk off in front of you, eh. You think I would do something as crazy as that, huh?" The Star and I don’t look up from our Excel macros. Slumping in his chair, the pencil again at his wrist, "you guys are so fucking lame."

12:15 - E-mail from your buddy’s Blackberry. He works at the investment bank in the next building over. Hey dude, got off work early, having a couple beers with this smoking new associate, what do you say? Though the situation has been reversed many times, though you’re well aware he’s getting his ass clobbered just as bad as you, you write back: Capacity. That word is thrown around in the industry like candy at Bar-Mitzvahs. He writes back: Climbing the Corporate Ladder.

12:30 - Rest my head against my desk.

1:45 - Wake up. The Defeated One’s gone. The Star’s mirthfully plunking away at his keyboard, occasionally stopping to kick his legs in glee. I wipe the drool from my desk, get back to my spreadsheet.

3:05 - The Star yelps. It balances, it balances. His eyes glazed over in sheer bliss. He rocks back and forth in his swivel chair and then does three full rotations, giggling like a Japanese school girl in a Tarantino movie.

3:50 - Finished. Leave the Star to his swivel chair rotations.

4:00 - The only people out are the homeless. The Asian lady who sits in the bus shelter with her shopping bags full of garbage. The young girl that looks a heroin addict with a ratty copy of Atlas Shrugged beside her filthy blanket. Can’t think straight. Everything is foggy, like a heavy mist has set around my brain. That girl. If she can get through that god-awful 100 page rant at the end of Atlas Shrugged, even worse, if she believes in it, truly believes that everybody should become capitalistic bastards, shouldn’t help each other out, should stop being human, shouldn’t care if you’ve got a cold and all you want to do is go home and get some sleep, not work until four in the fucking morning, then surely she’s equipped to find the elusive seven. I’ve stared too long, thus she throws a piece of donut at me. What did I do today? Bind 60 booklets 120 times. You know there’s something important, buried in the contrast between you and the Asian lady with the garbage-filled shopping bags. It’s really not buried, it’s obvious. It’s right there in front of you, the way she looks at you when you give her five dollars, but then you’ve lost it. You know it’s a bad thing, to have lost it, but all you want more than anything else is to fall asleep, to escape, to dream about being young, when life wasn’t like this."

The Fedora

This story was written by a friend of mine to his co-workers about something I did. I am leaving the story with his original wording, as I thought it would not be fully believed had I written it myself. Thank you BuckWalter for having a better memory than me.

“Last night I had the pleasure of hearing a friend of mine completely ruin a douche bag. Actually to call this guy a douche bag is an insult to douche bags. He was wearing a really sweet stripped fedora and my friend just couldn’t resist. It was just about time to call it a night, when we decided to leave. I was caught in some traffic so I had a good view of everything that lead up to this. He was making his way to the door when he spotted this guy and made a direct B-line to acknowledge this guy’s amazingly gay hat.

The first thing I heard when I finally caught up was ‘Hey, so how many guys have you fucked in the last month?’ The guy asked ‘what?’ but he knew exactly what my friend had asked. My friend repeats himself a little louder ‘how many guys have you fucked? With that hat, you must be cleaning up.’ The guy still has no response and tries to laugh it off. But my friend persists, ‘I want to know? You must be doing pretty well.’ The guy tries to insist he is not gay but my friend neither believes him nor lets him off the hook. My friend bluntly states ‘that is the gayest hat I have ever seen there is no way you don't fuck guys.’ Then the guy mentions he has a girlfriend, and he fucks her. Likely story.

Telling my friend this was so stupid because you all know where he is going to take that. ‘Does she know your Gay?’ He says no and that she picked the hat out. ‘I think your boyfriend picked it out and you are afraid to tell anyone.’ Then my friend finally decides to cool off and says something along the lines of ‘I am sorry, but I couldn’t resist. I had to make a point to tell you that you are a huge faggot and that is the gayest hat I have ever seen.’ We left.

The best part is about ten minutes later we are sitting outside our house when this same faggot walks by us alone! No girl to be found... So of course my friend has to bring up the hat and the fact that he is alone. He shouts, ‘You are so gay. Where is your girlfriend, you fucking loser?’ The guy says, ‘She is waiting for me at home.’ Yea fucking right. His final words are something to the effect of ‘maybe you should stop making fun of my hat and try to get some chicks.’ My friend’s final words are, ‘Whatever, douche bag.’ That guy needed it. I bet he’ll think twice before wearing that thing out again.”