37 Hours and an ambulance later, we're done

That's right boys and girls, 37 straight hours in the office. I (we) worked from 9am on Thursday until 10PM on Friday, non-stop. Oh and one of our teammates left in an ambulance, here's how things went down...

Let me be completely honest, 9am is way too early for me to be arriving at my desk, I was clearly only there for a meeting which got canceled so I was already pissed off. The real issue though was the news my boss, the all powerful Managing Director, was about to deliver. If you're an analyst or associate and you see one of those little fuckers pumping their fist at 9am on a Thursday just know right then and their that you are completely fucked, immediately cancel all plans. Shortly after the phone call the Spaniard, whom to be honest is a really cool guy, delivered the news; we need to deliver a response to a client's proposal by 4PM Friday. To be fair it is a really interesting deal and we have a fair chance of being appointed to advise on it so I'm not really complaining about any of this.

Anyway, Thursday went along fine until 11pm when we went a man down. The guy had been sick with a chest infection for two weeks and yet continued to work 14 hour days. So whilst we are the only ones on the floor, working diligently listening to our I-Pods, he is sitting there unable to breathe, feeling tingles, getting more pale than Casper, and questing if it was alright to interrupt one of us to call an ambulance for him. Luckily he did, and they came and took him away. Now I know what you're thinking, and the answer is no I am not the first person who asked "well what the fuck do we do now, we're a man down". Mr. French beat all of us to the punch, I don't think the patient was in the elevator before he let it out. It had to be said, don't blame him.

So we continued to work, by 6am it was down to two of us, fighting hallucinations, we were determined to turn this thing out by the 4PM deadline and go home. Armed with Red Bull, Coke, and Skittles we completely defied natural law and except for a few nod offs during a conference call made good progress, by the time the MD arrived in the morning the document was in good shape.

Alright I lied, WE thought the document was in good shape. The two sugar cracked guys who look like shit and didn't even have time to go to the level 5 gym and shower, yes WE thought it was fine. The powers that be did not, and truth be told they were very correct. All of the content was fine, but I'm not even shitting you, we had the Introduction section in the appendix, issues. After working non-stop on Friday we finally finished six hour after the deadline. Forty versions of the presentation and 100 "you look like shit" comments later, we were done. I don't think I have ever slept so good in my life.

It's not like these things go unnoticed though and people seemed happy. My Director even commented that this was my first technical all nighter, which he defines as two complete days. Apparently, my rides home at 7am for a shower and a new suit do not count because I left the office.