Project Circus

So I don't think I've made a posting for nearly five months, both my life and physical appearance have changed immensely since that last post.

My life will never be the same again, welcome to Project Circus:

All nighters: ~15
Nights sleeping on the couch in conference room 2: ~5 (excluding naps)
Weekends off: Huh, what are those?
Delirious moments with senior people: Countless
Canceled vacations: 2 personally, 5 team wide
4AM coffee trips: 7,842 (Yes, they open at four)
Pens chewed through: 36


It all started when I was asked to assist on a project while two people were on holiday, naturally being at the bottom of the totem pole like I am, this was only phrased as a question and was never intended to be one. So the project kicked off, I didn't mind, it was a live deal which means that rather working on a marketing project, I was working on a transaction for a client. In this case, we were advising a client on buying a waste business, yes, a business that deals with trash. It turns out that trash is actually ridiculously profitable, maybe not for the guy hanging off the truck whizzing through traffic, but for the fat cats in suits it sure is.

There are two key internal players on the transaction, The One and The Half: The One didn't get his nickname for being the nicest guy around, he is in charge of all of the juniors at the bank and is known for being a complete pric. The Half goes through seven pairs of knee pads a quarter servicing The One's every need, he makes Monica Lewinsky look like a nun.

So essentially this deal was all about two things, The One always demanding far more than can be delivered in a 24 hour day, even an Investment Banker's 24 hour day and The Half always freaking out because despite how senior he is, he is scared shitless of The One and gets flustered by the most insignificant things. We produced over fifty presentations for this project, we produced a financial model that is more than 20 Excel sheets with each consisting of more than 500-1000 lines that are linking into each other, and some of us even had to go a landfill and walk through trash. Nothing was ever good enough for The One, and if it was, he would use his catchline phrase "let's do some further analysis," in other words great work guys now that this is done, despite the fact that you just worked 30 straight hours to do it, here is another 10 hours of work to do. Ever been up for 30 hours straight working and had your boss come up to you in front of everyone on the floor and say "Why hasn't this been done, did you just not feel like doing it?" Yea let me know how that goes, how about fuck you. If The One weren't a 6'2" boxer looking fella I think someone'd have beat him senseless, shit I thought about giving it a try and I'm like a toothpick these days. Then it's 6AM and you're about to send a document to the client and just as you go to hit send, The Half scrambles downstairs and is worried The One won't be happy with one of the numbers, what are we going to do, oh my, what are we going to do. Turns out The One gets up at 8AM, is fine with the numbers but heck, let's show some more, and offers up that we make more slides, it's 8AM and he's fresh out of bed that fucking pric.

Yea, so those of you thinking about joinng a bank, think twice. The books are hysterical, Bank is a great book, tons of laughs, problem is that once you are actually a banker, you realise the book is true! It's not so funny anymore, instead, go enjoy your 9-5 and complain that bankers don't deserve bonuses.