They say you’re the sum or derivative of the five people you surround yourself with.
“See, I disagree. I would prefer to jump off a bridge, like the Brooklyn Bridge,” says the first-year analyst as he eyes it outside the forty-fourth-floor window. “Drowning is better, since once you give up, it’s not that bad.”
Bart stands from his seat. “Have you ever talked to someone who’s given up? That makes no sense.”
“You’d die from a heart attack on the jump before you even hit the water,” chimes in another analyst as he walks by.
“The way to die is getting shot in the back of the head,” Bart says.
“I’m gonna shoot you all in the heads if you don’t shut the hell up,” says Ted.
“What the hell is that smell?” I ask.
“Put your shoes on Bart,” says Ted.
“No,” I say. “It’s like an electrical type thing—”
“Ozone from the overhead lights burning out,” says Bart. We all look up at the hazardous gas wafting in above us.
“Should we call someone about that?” I say.
“Who? MAKS?” says Ted.
“Maybe that’ll be what kills us,” says Bart.
Electrical fires be damned. There’s work to do.
“Pg. 8—format bust,” reads the highlighted comment in front of me. I leaf through the six pages of comments I printed earlier, double-checking that this is the only outstanding item.
“What the fuck is he talking about?” I say mostly to myself, but loud enough that everyone in neighboring cubes can hear.
“Just call him,” says Bart from his cube.
“I tried—still on a plane,” I say. VPs make a point of traveling only when you require their guidance.
“It’s almost like he didn’t want me to figure out the issue he has. Like he says there’s a bust, but as punishment he won’t explain what the hell it is,” I say, hoping to elicit some sort of sympathy from my cube mates. They don’t care.
“Just mark it as fixed—maybe he won’t check,” says Ted.
“It’s Gareth,” I say.
“Shit. Yeah, he’ll definitely check,” says Ted. “Lemme take another look.” Ted wheels around his chair into my cube, his eyes darting from the sheet of comments to the PDF version of the deck on my computer.
“You sure that’s DB blue, not primary blue?” He clicks the far-left column on the waterfall chart and checks the color code of the shade of blue. “Fifteen, forty-seven, one-eighty-one, yeah, guess that’s right. Maybe the gray in the table….” Ted cross-checks the color codes of the table below the chart. “You sure those headings are all left-aligned?”
I maximize the PPT version of the deck and turn on the grid lines, answering his question.
“Welp, I gave it an effort,” says Ted as he wheels back around in his cube.
“When’s the meeting?” asks Bart.
“Original meeting was a month ago,” I say.
“Follow-up deck?” he says.
Often after we pitch an idea to a company, they’ll request we send follow-up materials: maybe a more in-depth look at a possible acquisition target, or a couple-page analysis of a potential reverse Morris-trust transaction, or really anything they mention on a whim at the tail end of the meeting. I can never tell if companies request these materials because they’re really interested in seeing how the reverse Morris-trust math looks (never good) or just because they relish the opportunity to have bankers flail around and churn out material that will probably never be read.
This deck isn’t a follow-up deck. As the folder in which it resides is labeled, it is rather: “Follow-up to follow-up to follow-up to follow-up to follow-up materials.”
The early-evening buzz of the bullpen restores me with hope. After printing out a copy of page eight, I catch Joel, post-Seamless order, and have him take a look. After some consideration, he wrangles up a few more analysts from the bullpen, and within minutes, there’s a symposium in the middle of the bullpen with talk of 95 percent transparency colors, heated debates on footnote-font size and spacing, and arguments over pasting charts as HTML format versus enhanced metafiles. I tune out while Joel moderates, but even after consulting prior decks, the problem remains unresolved.
A VP enters the bullpen, markup in hand, with designs on ruining Joel’s night.
“Ready to go over this,” says the VP as he taps the thick deck against the top of Joel’s cube.
“Any chance we could push like forty-five minutes? I was gonna get a quick workout in.”
“You can do push-ups on the floor here while I go through the deck.”
No one laughs because he’s not joking.
“Any luck?” asks Ted as I return to my desk.
“Nada,” I say.
“Got one last idea—you’re not gonna like it though,” he says.
“Anything at this point.”
“Right on cue,” says Ted as he flicks his head toward the hallway behind me.
Leighton’s 6:38 p.m. arrival to the office happens not a moment too soon.
“Just remember,” says Ted lifting an index finger. “You got no shot if you tell him you have an issue and need help. Gotta make it some sort of academic exercise or challenge.”
After letting Leighton get settled in his cube, I meander back into the bullpen with page eight in my right hand. With Joel preoccupied by his Mexican food and in no position to rile up Leighton, I make my move.
“Hey, man,” I say. “Just had some free time and made this page for kicks to practice my charts. Purposely made one single-format bust. No one’s found it. Want to give it a go?”
Leighton, his eyes fixed to his one enormous monitor, lifts his right hand with an open palm. I place page eight in it. His eyes move from his monitor to the sheet. He grunts, then removes a red ballpoint pen from the mug beside his monitor, uses his teeth to remove the cap, and draws a circle around the bust. It takes him all of five seconds to find it.
“That it?” he asks.
I’ll give you a hint: you won’t find it. (See next page.)
In what has become standard bimonthly practice, DB recently updated the nomenclature for its various divisions. Bottom left of the page—“Banking” to “Bank.”
I make the change. My VP signs off on the deck around 11:00 p.m. that night, and the MD gives his sign off just after midnight, after which I send the deck to the client. Two days later, they revert: “Appreciate this, guys. Can we see analysis including all EMEA gas comps? Tx much.”
Old version
Updated version
Follow-up to follow-up to follow-up to follow-up to follow-up to fuck my life.