The shitshow

Do you want a glimpse of how FI-nance guys rocked their show pre-recession, read this hilarious article put together by a Private equity guy in 2006:

I work in Private Equity at DLJ Merchant Banking. You are probably familiar with the name from Monkey Business—Credit Suisse was hip enough to pass the infamous title of its acquisition to its most elite group, and we make sure to rub it in everyone’s faces. I’ve been there about a year, and it is pretty much living up to everything I’ve been dreaming about since I was a young chap in an overcoat, freezing in the cold New England winters at Deerfield. Anyway, whatever, forget about me.

The point here is somehow this guy landed a job here straight out of Consulting. How bushleague. What’s next? Accountants, auditors, Chinese gold-farmers? When I heard we were hiring someone from Bain (or maybe it was McKinsey or BCG, anyway, one of those places the “liberal arts” kids interviewed at), I thought to myself “maybe he’s pedigree?” “maybe he’s a Rockefeller?” But no, I checked my trusty pocket-sized Social Register, and his surname didn’t appear anywhere. How curious.

I soon found out that this guy was more than just not pedigree. Josh (that’s his name) was a skinny little Jewish dude from Jersey with a lisp. He had an awkwardly receding hairline and talked, stammered rather like he was 12 making up for an excuse why his socks were always stuck together. Let’s forget about the schmoe’s God-given features, get this—on his second day Josh comes into work at like 9:10, and he’s rocking tan KHAKIS and a long sleeve polo. I swear I almost fell to the ground laughing when I saw those hideous pleated monstrosities and that shitty lint-infested, vertically disintegrated manufacturing-made shirt. What a doofus.

Bro, I know you only made like $55k traveling to Bumblefuck, Idaho every week to provide “strategic insight” and “thought leadership,” but please, at least go to TJ Maxx and get some some slightly imperfect Brooks Brothers. Get on eBay or something and buy that shit used for God’s sakes. Yes, your Mom and your broke-ass girlfriend both got you gift certificates to Banana for Christmas, but that doesn’t mean you wear that Middle-America shit to work, son! This is FI-nance. FI as in “FIx me a drink, Jeeves.” FI as in “FIlling my wallet with Benjamins.” FI as in “FIckle with my private jets.” Not FI as in “FIt really well when I tried it on at the mall in Piscataway.” Ugh.

Whatever. Apparently, dude must have made sense of all our glares and cough-covered laughs or someone must have taken him aside and informed him there are no “casual” days around here, cause Josh shortly thereafter managed to find some passable, yet still vomit-inducing (Men’s Wearhouse or some shit) clothes.

But then, a few days passed…and Josh didn’t really do anything too stupid. I guess I was starting to come around. I started to think maybe I ought to give ole Joshua a shot. I figured, maybe consulting isn’t all aligning boxes in Powerpoint and “value-adding” and ocean-boiling and ass-pounding. Maybe there was something more to it than lop-sided Pyramids and uninterpretable charts. But boy was I wrong…consulting really must be some serious horseshit.

Let me explain. So Josh sits next to me, and I can see his screen (Princess Joshephine reads DailyCandy.com religiously). And on around his 6th day, homeboy gets his first real assignment (some trivial EBITDA bridge analysis for a portfolio company), and so he loads up The E (Excel), and tries to start getting to work. The stench of this kid’s cluelessness was worse than the smell of the refrigerator in my Korean friend Matt’s house—and kimchi smells horrendous. You could spot dude’s lack of comfort from miles away, so it was actually physically painful to me at only 3 feet. I watched in horror as Josh busted out some dirty old hideously colored model to build off of, and nearly passed out when I saw him start navigating.

Get this…HE WAS USING THE MOUSE!! …“WTF?!” I nearly shat myself with incredulity. I was so embarrassed that he was my colleague and I was his that I almost went and told one of the partners about the act of blasphemy I had just seen and that I would quit if some action wasn’t taken. But I restrained myself. I had to calm down. I turned back to my computer, loaded up ESPN.com, took several deep breaths and let myself get hypnotized by the ever-flashy Flash advertisements. After a moment, I knew what I had to do.

I turned and tapped Josh on the shoulder to get his attention. I didn’t say a word, but my face said “Yo…yeah you, McKposer.” We locked eyes. I slowly and dramatically reached for my mouse cable. Staring him down, I methodically unplugged it from my computer’s USB port. The cable came out slowly but smoothly and with it’s final, climactic release, I heard Josh gulp with fear.

I continued to glare at him as I started to “fly around.” My eyeballs burned through his unweathered, 60-hour-a-week-when-he-should-have-done-90 face as I hid and unhid sheets and conditionally formatted and applied validation to cells with triple nested conditional and indirect functions and then culminated by on-the-fly writing a macro that took my data and made it into a Marimekko (and we don’t even use that shit!). I never turned to look at the screen, and my eyes never left his.

“Welcome to PE, bitch,” I growled, crunching the last word like making radio noises. Then, mildly irritated that I had revealed my lame TiVo watching habits but proud of my masterful display, I turned back to my computer.

As I resumed my modeling, I could heard his hurried breaths, shaky and intermittent, and I knew that I had proven my point. Josh might have “exceeded expectations” at fingerpainting and storytime over at True North, but his career in PE was blah!

source: https://www.leveragedsellout.com/2006/02/the-shitshow/