“Pencils down,” reads the email Arthur sends the team just before 1:00 p.m.
John Bukowski: lunch time. Swing by my desk
William Keenan: where you wanna go?
John Bukowski: sandwich place on water and pine st
William Keenan: that place blows
John Bukowski: how bout new Mexican place on maiden lane. Couple laughs, couple cervezas
William Keenan: I do banking and I do just fine for myself
John Bukowski: we do the new Mexican place and that’s what we do
William Keenan: it has a B rating
John Bukowski: who cares, get your affairs in order then swing by my desk
William Keenan: you swing by mine
John Bukowski: na, you swing
William Keenan: you swing
“Another head fake from TTZ,” says Ethan, who materializes at my desk. He shifts his weight from side to side as he rolls up the sleeves of his light pink button-down shirt. “They’ll pull this shit every once in a while, but we’ll be in good spot when they pull the trigger. Lotta dry powder, but they weren’t gonna write an equity check this size.”
“Seemed aggressive, but I thought they’ve cut checks this size in the past,” I say. It’s like someone else is speaking through my mouth. I’m not even sure what I said makes sense.
“Paydown looked good to me, but you never know what these PE guys are up to. Sometimes it’s a chess match with other guys—who’s interested in what assets, bidding up price tags,” says Ethan as he shakes his head, still shifting now front to back. “Hey, you mind if I get some juice for my phone?”
“BlackBerry or iPhone?” I reach down for the two chargers that I’ve plugged into my power strip under my desk.
“Berry.” Ethan hands me the phone which I plug in. “What the hell’s this?” he says, his eyes fixed to my computer monitor as I resurface from below my desk.
“Another deck I’m working on—regression analysis,” I say.
“We do that shit?” Ethan shakes his head then walks away.
John Bukowski: starving. Swing
William Keenan: u swing
John Bukowski: swing with purpose and precision
William Keenan: swing with fervor and fury
“Watch your head, dude,” says Ted as he sits, slowly wheeling his chair toward my cube. In his right hand is a markup of a pitch book, rolled up like a swatter. “Don’t move…just landed on your shoulder.” I freeze as he cocks his right arm and whacks my left shoulder. Then he slowly retracts the pitch book.
“Get it?” I ask.
“Yep,” he says. “Fucker’s been buzzing my tower all morning.”
“Mosquito?”
“Na, they don’t bite or anything. Just annoy the shit out of me. Pretty sure bullpen has the infestation with the goddamn leftover food in there all the time.”
John Bukowski: swing
William Keenan: swing
John Bukowski: swing or I take you off my premium spotify family plan
William Keenan: be there in 2 mins
As I retrieve my wallet from my drawer, my desk phone rings.
“Hello?” I say.
“Am I speaking with Mister William Keenan?” says the voice on the other line.
“This is Bill.”
“Good afternoon, Mister Keenan. My name is Jed, and I’m contacting you today in regard to the outstanding balance on your American Express card.”
“Can you give me a minute, please?”
“Of course, Mister Keenan.”
Rhonda, the administrator I’ve been assigned to, sits two rows of cubes away. I walk to her desk where she’s mid-conversation, holding the phone receiver to her ear with her left hand and cupping her right hand over her mouth, though it does nothing to diminish the clarity of her words. “Don’t give her that moment,” she says in a hushed tone before spotting me. “I gotta go,” she says before hanging up. Rhonda’s cube tells the tale of someone whose tenure at the bank predates many of the senior MDs. A scripture labeled “Habakkuk 2:3” is pinned to the left of her monitor. To the right is a “serenity prayer,” under which is a small piece of paper with bold, black letters reading, “Doesn’t matter the method as long as you get the result.”
“Hi, Rhonda,” I say. “I’ve gotten a couple calls from American Express telling me I have an outstanding balance on my corporate card—”
She shakes her head in a knowing way and removes a notepad from her desk. In the same fancy font you’d see on monogrammed stationery, the words “Shit List” are embossed at the top of the sheet. “AmEx,” she scrawls on the list while audibly exhaling. Above it, I recognize two other items on her list: “Delta” and “Ethan.”
“You have any idea how to resolve it?” I say. “They said they’re gonna charge some fee because I have an outstanding balance, but I haven’t even used the card yet.”
“They should waiver the fee,” she says. “This happens sometimes. I’ll try to get it sorted out, but if they call again, tell them they should know to waiver the fee.”
“Thanks.”
I return to my cube and put my headset back on. “You still there, Jed?”
“Yes, Mister Keenan.”
“I was told to tell you that the fee should be waived. I was told I had an outstanding balance even before the card was given to me, so clearly there was a mistake on your end, not you personally, but AmEx messed up.”
“Thank you for that clarification, Mister Keenan. I do see in your file that you have previously been contacted—”
“Yeah, a few times. Can you just please waive the fee and stop calling? This is getting ridiculous that you can’t resolve it on your end. So please waive the fee, since I’ve been told you’ve done that in the past with DB AmEx corporate cards.”
“May I place you a brief hold while I look into this?”
“No.”
He puts me on hold. Instead of hanging up right away, I stumble upon an idea: instead of playing brutal elevator music while on hold, why not tell the person a story or a joke? Entertain me. I conjure up the mechanics of a licensing deal with a publishing house or Amazon for companies that rely on customer service. It’s at about this point in one’s banking experience that these start-up ideas generate at a torrid pace. They’re then discussed over beers on Saturday nights with friend(s) and quickly forgotten by Sunday morning. Just another fantasy coping mechanism to help get through the week. After making a note of this genius idea on a Post-it, I’m about to hang up when—
“Mister Keenan, I do apologize for putting you on hold. We’ve sorted out the problem and fixed it. We here at American Express value you as a loyal customer.”
“Great. I gotta go.”
“Have a wonderful day, Mister Keenan.”
John Bukowski: de-activating your Spotify privileges in 3
John Bukowski: 2
John Bukowski: 1.5
John Bukowski: 1
William Keenan: coming
“Shitty sandwich place or Mexican?” asks Jack as we exit the building on the Wall Street side to a blustery September day. We pause outside the building as a gust of breeze funnels down the street from west to east.
“Too windy on Water Street,” I say. “My hair’s on point today—can’t take any chances. How about the brutal buffet place on Exchange Place?”
“Line is always crazy long,” says Jack.
“But ramen is decent.”
“Fine.
“So what the hell did you do?” asks Jack. “You’re the talk of the forty-fourth floor. That analyst who looks like a drill sergeant—”
“Leighton,” I say.
“Yeah, he was talking to one of the VPs in your group who sits near me and singing your praises. Then I hear some other guy in your group asking about ‘the new MBA associate who ran the model.’”
The sun peeks through the towering skyscrapers in the Financial District and shines on my face. “I guess you could say I’m glowing,” I say. We enter the jammed buffet place, lower our heads, stick out our elbows, and make a straight line to the ramen-noodle station.
“I wish they could’ve seen you in training,” says Jack. “You didn’t know the difference between Word and Excel.”
“You guys have flies on your side of the floor?” I ask after ordering a chicken ramen bowl.
“Seen a bunch in the bullpen but nothing near me really.”
After receiving our bowls from the sweaty guy in an apron, Jack and I stand in the mass of people, which could serve as a business school case study on how to create a bottleneck.
“What’re you staffed on?” I ask as we finally emerge onto the Wall Street sidewalk.
“I spent four-and-half hours this morning scouring the Internet for pictures and bios of board members for three private companies.”
“You email BIS to see if they could find anything?”
“Obviously.”
“You ever get calls from American Express about overdue charges?” I ask.
“No, but this guy from Northwestern Mutual calls me twice a week at 4:05 p.m. ’cause he thinks I work until the market closes or something. It’s like my aunt who thinks I trade stocks for a living.”
The ding of my BlackBerry is followed by some vibrating. I remove it from my pocket. “Fuck me,” I say.
“Staffed?”
“Worse—gonna get a red flag if I don’t complete those compliance bullshits by 5:00 p.m. today.”
“The hell is a red flag?”
“No clue. Maybe three red flags and you get a stern talking to.”
They hit your inbox once a week on average and are largely ignored, until one day an email with subject line: “URGENT—ACTION REQUIRED” pops up, accompanied by threats of flags in an assortment of colors. Today’s task is completing the “Anti-Money Laundering” module. This is primarily an exercise in clicking your mouse20 as quickly as possible. In previous modules, the “next” or “” buttons were located in the bottom right of each slide. Since these modules were estimated to take thirty minutes to complete but were ultimately completed in two minutes, the format was changed. Not only do the “next” and “” buttons pop up in random locations on each slide, but modules now end in a ten-question quiz. Plus, they incorporate these devastatingly slow transitions between slides.
As I return to my cube on the forty-fourth floor, Ted waits patiently for the competition to begin.
“Alright,” says Ted as he pokes his head behind the partition and glances at my monitor. “Ready…set…comply!”
We hit the “Begin Module” button simultaneously, and the race is on. The mouse clicks are rapid-fire. I rifle through the first three slides but lose ground on the fourth slide when the “” button is camouflaged in the top right corner of the screen.
“Quiz time,” says Ted, moments before I get to the ten-question quiz.
“Already on question three,” I lie.
The first few questions are straightforward, along the lines of:
A potential client, who has no prior affiliation to Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. or any of its subsidiaries, calls and asks if you could help finance the acquisition of assets located in North Korea. He refuses to disclose any further information on the nature of the transaction. You should:
A)Give him Deutsche Bank’s most competitive financing rate and begin the CRM process.
B)Ask for his name, and if it sounds normal, provide preliminary financing rates.
C)Shoot the breeze with him and see if he sounds like a good guy. If so, offer to help.
D)IMMEDIATELY CALL COMPLIANCE AND ALERT THEM TO SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY.
But they get progressively more difficult. The required score to pass is 70 percent. Basic strategy says you sabotage the first attempt at the quiz. Since the module alerts you of the correct answer after each question, you can jot down the answer and ace it on the second attempt.
“C…A…A…D,” I hear Ted mumble in his cube.
“Mother fu…nbags,” I say as I narrowly miss passing the test on the first try. I’m redirected back to question one after the 60-percent score.
“Done!” says Ted. “And new PR: three minutes, thirteen seconds.” He marks it on the sheet pinned to the inside of his cube. “Here’s the thing, you develop instincts over time. As a senior associate, there are some things I just can’t teach you, and one of them is knowing where to click on compliance-training modules. That said, I think you’re looking at two guys who are fully compliant.” He stretches out a reversed right hand, palm up, and I slap him five just as I’m notified of my 70 percent passing score.
* * *
“BlackBerry or iPhone?” I ask.
“iPhone,” says Ethan. “Fuckin’ battery is dog shit. I charged it an hour ago.” I retrieve the charger hooked on my middle drawer handle and plug in his phone. As Ethan disappears into the bathroom, Joel jogs out of the bullpen, stops, and surveys the floor. He looks like a kid who just saw Mickey Mouse for the first time, though the stubble on his face ages him slightly. “Guys,” he says with little success in garnering anyone’s attention. “Guys!” he says louder this time, puffing his chest out and adjusting his tie, which features enormous footballs. Bart spins around in his chair. Ted continues to ignore him. I look up from my cube, as do Gareth and a few others who sit in the cubes one row over.
“Have you ever seen a term loan with grid pricing of a low single-B company trade at a discount?” Joel scans the faces of his audience. Gareth puts on his headset while Bart spins back around to face his computer.
“Sit down, Joel,” says Leighton from the bullpen. “And yes, I’ve seen plenty.” The bickering between Joel and Leighton subsides as my attention turns to the computer screen a row across from me, which determines my fate on a minute-to-minute basis.
“Uh-oh,” says Ted.
“Yep,” I say. “Not good.”
One row of cubes over from Ted and me sits the group’s staffer, a VP responsible for determining who has capacity to get staffed. He determines all workflow for junior bankers, and thus serves as the group’s puppet master. His decisions determine the fate of weekend trips, friendships, relationships, and even marriages.
Raising the height of my chair slightly so I can peer over the cubicle divider, below is what I see on the staffer’s left monitor:
It’s the gray—unstaffed projects—that’s terrifying. And let me tell you something, after the 1:00 p.m. “pencils down” from Arthur, I’m as vulnerable as it gets.
The staffer’s phone rings. He picks up the receiver. “Hi…yes…I’m sorting it out now…I understand, working as quickly as possible…okay…understood.” He returns his attention to the staffing log. The anticipation is all-consuming—I can barely focus on the episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm I have streaming in the lower right-hand corner of my left monitor.
John Bukowski: something’s abrewing in industrials. Sounds bad
William Keenan: details pls
John Bukowski: just heard industrials MD in office behind me barking orders to get something staffed immediately (with fist pound)
William Keenan: pray for me
John Bukowski: na
It’s like spotting an enemy sniper loading his rifle. The staffer cranes his neck from left to right. Then he types into one of the rows of gray cells, and although I’m too far to see names, someone’s in for it. The next step is drafting an email to the targets.
“Christ,” whispers Ted. “Lengthy fuckin’ email—never good…ever.”
I’m forced to pause the episode of Curb during the denouement, of all places.
“Already on fourth paragraph,” I say to Ted.
“Fifth,” he says. “If I had to guess, which I will, I’d say we’re looking at a financing for a new client—full KYC, CRM from scratch with no prior model, Industrials doing everything, lev fin doing jack shit…looking at two fucked weekends, possibly three.”
The staffer retracts his hands from the keyboard, then rereads the email before putting his hand on the mouse.
“Here it comes,” I say.
But then the staffer stands, walks over to another VP, and they have a short exchange in hushed tones.
“Pure agony,” says Ted. “Just toying with us.”
After concluding their conversation with successive head nods, the staffer returns to his seat, puts his hand on the mouse, and clicks “SEND.” The message disappears from his monitor, and I instinctively hold my breath.
One, one thousand.
Two, one thousand.
Three, one thousand.
Four, one tho—
“You gotta be kidding me,” says a voice in the cube across from me. Bart slowly rises beside the constant stream of steam produced by his humidifier.
“Was I right—new client, financing?” asks Ted.
“Spot-on,” says Bart. “At least I don’t have to go to the in-laws this weekend in Poughkeepsie.” Bart shrugs, pops a couple pills from an unmarked prescription bottle, then washes them down with black coffee from his DB mug.
“Who’s the analyst?” ask Ted.
“Barty boy!” says Joel as he struts out of the bullpen. “Looks like a nice, juicy term loan.” Joel rubs his hands together as he approaches Bart’s desk.
I fight off a smile as I lower my seat and nestle down in my trench. Joel and Bart’s conversation, sorting out who’s doing what, fades as I put my earbuds in and resume the episode of Curb.