John Bukowski: pls distance yourself from me
William Keenan: Did you leave a post-it on my desk with a dick drawn on it?
John Bukowski: of course…your face is torched
William Keenan: I fell asleep Saturday afternoon at the seaport on a client call that lasted 4 hours
John Bukowski: might as well been on a carnival cruise or honeymoon in oahu
William Keenan: you know what “on the cum” is?
John Bukowski: I do not know you.
William Keenan: This MD kept saying on this call Saturday. Has to do with incorporating numbers into income statement or dividend or something
John Bukowski: you have the wrong person. bye
“Hey, Ethan. You have a minute?” I say as he flashes by the forty-fourth-floor kitchen in a blur of navy blue and fake tan.
“Tee off in an hour—car’s downstairs waiting for me.” He glances at me, then does a double take. “Looks like someone enjoyed the weekend. Got some good color. Hit the links?”
“Was just at the South Street Seaport and fell asl—”
“I’m thinking about trying out a belly putter,” he says as he spots the old Wilson putter that resides on the forty-fourth floor.
“Nice. So yeah, just a quick question on your comments for the Cornerstone deck.”
“Walk and talk,” he says as he starts down the hallway. I hasten my gait as he turns the corner.
“Sounded like the meeting got pushed to next week. I know you said earlier you wanted a market-updated version as of Friday’s close, but since the meeting isn’t until next Wednesday, are you good with us just market-updating on Monday?”
Ethan blows by his office, so I keep following.
“Gotta hit the head,” he says. “Yeah, meeting is next week—” he continues. I pause outside the bathroom, but he continues speaking as he opens the door so I follow him in. “And I probably won’t look until Monday night, but just market-update the book for Friday.”
I can tell his level of engagement is at historic lows as I stand a few feet behind him while he unzips his fly at the urinal. Beside Ethan stands a towering VP in the group whose piss stream sounds like he’s wearing one of those massive Super Soaker backpacks. In the mornings, bankers stand close enough to slam dunk their piss in the urinals. By afternoon, they’re at the free-throw line, taking suspect aim.
In one of the stalls to the left of the urinals, someone is committing a hate crime.
“Look, just market-update the book. Should take two seconds, right?” says Ethan.
Excel will crash most likely given the number of comps and financial data we have pulled in from FactSet. Then I’ll run the troubleshooting-utility tool, which will inevitably lead to a lengthy call with the FactSet team. Once resolved, I’ll then re-paste in all the charts, graphs, and updated tables of numbers, which, in this case—since the deck is seventy-four pages, excluding the appendices—will take some time, after which I’ll spend another hour tying numbers. In all, I’d say the market update will take three solid hours.
Ethan’s body shivers and shimmies momentarily before he zips up.
“I can’t hold your hand on this, right?” he says as he pumps the hand sanitizer into his left hand with his right elbow. After a quick glimpse of his hair in the mirror, he lets me swing open the bathroom door and we emerge onto the floor.
“Sounds good. So I’ll get this updated for Friday’s close, then I’ll plan on doing another market update for next Monday.”
“Yeah,” says Ethan as he pops into his office to grab a vest. “Don’t spin your wheels on this, but get the thing updated.” This exercise is the definition of spinning one’s wheels. “Need you taking some responsibility now.”
“Will do,” I say. Then, for no other reason than it’s become habit, I mutter, “Thanks.”
“Alright,” says Ethan as he slides his arms through his vest. “First time with the new Callaway sticks.” He faces me for the first time with a big smile. “Just hope they put the right grips on.” He slaps me on the shoulder as he walks by me.
“Enjoy,” I say as I lift my middle finger in my right pocket then head back to my desk.
“Shit,” he says, doubling back and walking to my cube. He unplugs his BlackBerry and iPhone from the chargers at my desk. “Almost forgot.” He tosses the wires of the two charges on the ground. After he disappears down the hallway, I re-hook both charger wires to the handles of my drawer where I keep them.
Ten months ago, this was an assignment I’d welcome, providing me with an opportunity to showcase my skills and gain familiarity with Excel, PowerPoint, FactSet, and finance in general. However, as I approach the end of my first year as a banker and have a better understanding of what I’m actually doing on a daily basis, this is the type of assignment that justifies why banks retain so few junior bankers.
John Bukowski: big staffing brewing in industrials. Hear MD in office near me on speakerphone with someone
William Keenan: details pls
John Bukowski: Tons of chatter about needing juniors with “sufficient bandwidth”… project ”will take up all their capacity”
William Keenan: good grief
John Bukowski: your staffer there?
William Keenan: away at meeting. Think he’s back this afternoon
John Bukowski: man, this thing sounds horrific. “gonna need all hands on deck” says MD
William Keenan: you’re my eyes and ears. keep me abreast.
John Bukowski: can u Just say “posted”
William Keenan: k keep me abreast posted
There’s nothing more unsettling than a swirling staffing. In recent months, I’ve done a decent job of avoiding them. The key is a combination of displaying the right stuff on my monitors, coupled with a convincing default facial expression that exudes just the right amount of despair and frustration. For me, it’s this furrowed brow I’ve developed where a passerby might think I’m trying to calculate the WACC of a private company in my head when I’m really on Seamless trying to decide between a carnitas or shredded-beef burrito from Toloache. To be caught enjoying yourself, which can manifest itself in a number of ways on the forty-fourth floor, including twirling the shitty putter that resides in the bullpen or taking cuts with the baseball bat that leads a nomadic existence traveling from cube to cube, can spell disaster in the midst of a swirling staffing. It’s best to hunker down in your cube and hope that this too shall pass.
* * *
“Happy, happy Monday,” says Alonzo, the nineteen-year-old mail guy with a sick flattop, as he strides down the hallway of the forty-fourth floor pushing a dolly stacked with boxes. “How we doin’ everybody? Another bootyful Monday afternoon.” A few people acknowledge his presence with slight head nods or grumbles, but he goes largely ignored.
“Lauren?” he says pausing a few rows of cubes in front of me. “Is there a Lauren here?” He checks his sheet of paper. Seconds later, a hand pops up from a cube. He walks over. “Just need a signature here,” he says handing her an electronic device and large brown box.
Lauren, a fragile-looking, bespectacled, second-year associate, with what looks like an expensive carpet draped over her shoulders, stands. “Yay! My deal toys?” she says, her hands on her cheeks.
“Uh, it would certainly appear so,” says Alonzo surveying the outside of the package. “How ’bout Joel. Joel here?”
“Yo, ’Zo” I say, waving him to my cube.
“What up, slick Willy style?” he says offering me a handshake that I flub. “You know where this guy Joel is? He got a package been in mail room damn near a month at this juncture.”
“He quit a few months ago. I still talk to him, so I can give it to him.”
“Works for me, bro,” says Alonzo as I sign for the large box.
John Bukowski: incomingggggggggggg
But I’m too busy fist-bumping Alonzo to see Jack’s message on office communicator. As Alonzo informs me of his new scheme to fix the upcoming basketball game at his old high school, the group staffer catches me mid-laugh as he strides down the hallway with his roller suitcase.
Getting caught laughing—that’s all it takes. I’m fucked. My beet-red, sunburned face doesn’t help either. Within the hour, I’m staffed on the project that by now is the talk of the floor: an IPO bake-off, which occurs when a company decides to go public and then schedules a day for a number of banks to give presentations on why they should lead the transaction. It’s like a condensed, finance version of The Bachelor—each bank gets limited one-on-one time with the company and tries not to act as desperate as they really are. The winner gets hired and a rose, and the relationship lasts a few months.
First order of business is purchasing SPF 100. After I place my Seamless order for dinner ($24.78), I receive an email from the VP on the bake-off. He asks me to send him a PIB on the company as well as all the pitch books we’ve created for them in the past couple years. Cc’d on the email is the analyst on the project, a first-year whose name I don’t recognize. While I’ve worked on bake-offs and projects like this before, it has always been with Joel, Leighton, or another senior analyst. Now I have no safety net.
My appetite subsides after my food arrives, and I’m only able to drink the three sparkling waters I ordered. As I throw away the burrito I barely nibbled, I notice the box Alonzo dropped off earlier in the day. Using the point of a pen, I tear through the adhesive tape holding the box shut, and just as I open it, I hear a ding at my computer—one new email from the VP on my bake-off:
Inside the box, I pick up one of the “Deutsche Bank Industrials Banking Group” vests, zip it all the way to my chin, and hope the banking gods help me channel my inner Joel.