by Ira Trivedi
‘Hey guys!’ I said cheerfully. Both of them smiled in return.
Although they were not cool or interesting, not the way I had imagined my banking colleagues would be, there was something nice and real about them. They were obviously really smart and very good at what they did, and they were always friendly unlike Icicle Sally.
‘Hey Sean.’
‘What’s up?’ he asked, already typing furiously on his keyboard.
‘Um, Sean, I was wondering if I’m going to be assigned a project this summer.’
‘Hmm …’ he took a gulp of the Coke (regular, not Diet) that he was drinking and said, ‘I would speak to Sally if I were you. She’s the boss lady around here after all.’
‘I know,’ I said dismally, ‘but I’m totally scared of her.’
He grinned, ‘She may not look so hot, but she’s actually not all that bad. Plus, she’s the one who is going to be giving you the offer, so you’re going to have to kiss ass. That is Amit’s specialty by the way.’
We both laughed and looked over to where Amit sat, poring over a financial model. Apparently he was the expert modeller in the group, an Excel geek par excellence, a financial modelling freak of nature. It took me two hours to muster up my confidence and walk over to Sally’s cubicle to discuss a summer project. I wondered what it was about this terribly unfashionable woman that made me feel like a five-year-old. She was talking on the phone, so I stayed a safe distance away till I heard her hang up. I took a deep breath and ventured forth.
‘Hi Sally?’
She looked up at me for a moment, cocked her eyebrow and then turned back to her computer. ‘Yes?’
Today she was wearing a neatly ironed, though obviously ageing white shirt with a collar and cuffs that had seen stiffer days, a pair of black trousers with no apparent shape, and a pair of flat loafers that were neither Tods nor Prada. Her hair was pulled back in her standard fashion, and I could see her pale white skull through her thin brown hair.
‘Um, some interns that I know have received projects.’ When she didn’t reply, I continued, ‘I was wondering if there was a project that I could work on.’
‘We’re going to have to see what you are capable of doing well. Obviously, PowerPoint isn’t one of your strengths. Let’s hope the other intern is better at it,’ she said, still staring at her monitor. Damn, I had forgotten about the new intern! And was I really so inconsequential that she wouldn’t even look at me while talking to me?
I muttered a sheepish thanks and walked back to my desk. So she had noticed that my PowerPoint skills weren’t that hot, but then it was only my second day on the job, and PowerPoint wasn’t exactly instinctive. Had she already written me off? I didn’t want to be upstaged by a new intern. Paranoia gripped me; I better not fuck up again.
Back at my desk I opened a PowerPoint tutorial, determined to learn everything even if it meant staying all night. By the time lunch rolled around my head was spinning from looking at boxes, squares and columns and I was happy to take a breather, even if it was only for a few minutes. Ivana was waiting for me downstairs, as always immaculate in a well-fitted and stylish skirt-suit and blouse, and a pair of Tods loafers in anticipation of the walk we were about to take. She looked tired though, as I am sure I did too; I hadn’t dared look into a mirror for fear of what I would see.
‘Hey babe,’ she said and kissed me on both cheeks in the stylish European way that she always did.
‘How’s it going?’ I asked, wondering if her day had been as boring as mine.
‘It’s crazy. Our group is mad! All the interns have already been staffed on deals and given a project to handle. I haven’t had a minute of peace since this morning, and apparently all the action happens after lunch.’
‘Oh. What’s your group like?’ I asked, deciding not to reveal to her how slowly my day had been creeping along or that instead of being assigned a project, I’d been told off by my boss.
Ivana, along with most of the banking elite, was in mergers and acquisitions, one of the most profitable groups of the banks, but they also worked the hardest. CDO, where I’d ended up, was apparently a pretty new and complicated financial instrument, and my group was only a few years old. Nevertheless, everyone in my group seemed really excited about the product. Who knew, if this CDO-thingy was the future of financial markets, it meant that I was where the future was.
‘Not bad,’ she replied. ‘There are six interns, and I’m the only chick. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but I supposed it could be used to my advantage,’ she said with a laugh. ‘Our MD is really young, kinda cute actually. The rest seem pretty standard, but I haven’t met everyone yet.’
‘My group is tiny. My boss, Sally, is the biggest bitch. Not at all Wall Street variety, but I have to report to her and … ugh … she’s totally rude to me all the time.’
‘She’s probably just jealous of you. You know how it is with these aggressive Wall-Street-type women.’
‘Why the hell would she be jealous of me?’
’Cause you’re a sexy Indian girl and she’s not,’ said Ivana and we both laughed.
As we walked to the deli on the corner, I was lost in thought, barely listening to Ivana’s chatter about her group and her projects. Sean and Amit seemed to like Sally and had even described her to me as a ‘genius’. She was definitely not as horrible to them as she was to me. What did she have against me? What had I ever done to her? We reached the deli, and I looked for something decent to eat, but no luck here. I had to settle for a bag of curry flavoured chips and a PB&J sandwich. Maybe I would order Indian food tonight and go eat it in the conference room so I wouldn’t stink up the pen. Back at the office, Ivana and I said goodbye, promising to meet for drinks over the weekend. I quickly walked back to my desk, worried that Sally may have looked for me during what would definitely be considered a leisurely lunch break.
As luck would have it, the second I reached my desk, Sean turned around and told me, ‘Yo, Sally was looking for you.’
The hunger pangs which had been ravaging my body till a moment ago stopped abruptly. I ditched my measly lunch on my desk and practically sprinted in my dangerously high heels to Sally’s cubicle where I found her on the phone. I made sure she saw me, and then I waited a few feet away, taking the opportunity to catch my breath. Her station was very neat, just a few binders, some standard office stationery, and lots of deal toys, nothing even slightly personal. It wasn’t a huge banker thing to put up pictures and personal items—that was more for down-market corporations; still, there was usually a little something. I waited for twenty minutes while she finished and then she turned her attention to me.
‘Where were you?’ she asked me harshly.
‘I, I, uh, just went to get um some lunch,’ I said nervously.
‘Hm. Riya, you may not understand yet, but the product that we deal with is highly time-sensitive and you must be available at all times of day and night to deal with this. If you’re not willing to do this, you’re not cut out for our group and you should seriously consider other, more lenient, groups in the bank, or perhaps a different career path altogether.’
‘I’m so sorry, Sally … it won’t happen again,’ I said once again feeling like the retarded pre-med dork of yesteryears. And you, biatch, need to make a trip to Victoria’s Secret to get rid of those disgusting panty lines, I thought to myself. I stumbled back to my desk, burdened with another set of pitch books and more determined than ever to do a better job this time. The stress of the past five minutes had killed whatever little appetite I had so I donated the sandwich to Sean and ate just the chips, the first solid food I had consumed all day. It was a grim scene in the analyst pen, the tired minions staring into their screens, oblivious to all else, the only sound was the loud, tip-tapping of keys. To my right sat Sean, and to my left sat an analyst from the alternative investments department. He had not even glanced at me in the thirty hours that I had been his neighbour. It was almost as if I wasn’t even th
ere. I hardly even noticed him anymore, though I did smell him when his self-prepared Chinese lunches and dinners were flourished during mealtimes. With a deep sigh I settled in, knowing it was going to be another long, lonely, tedious night.
The Bavards of Banking
Survival on Wall Street without alcohol would be impossible. It is over bottles of fine wine that multimillion dollar deals are made and over casual beers that networking is done. I had been drinking ever since freshman year, ever since I had started The Transformation, but that was nothing close to the way I consumed alcohol now. I had realized that being an intern on Wall Street entails a minimum of three nights of drinking. It’s always ‘drinks’ with someone, the MD, the VP, intern event, or bank event. When you get used to the free drinks, it pinches to pay for your own, so you start attending all the analyst events, associate events, and employee farewell events, tagging along when your intern friend’s bosses are taking them out, all in hope of a few (or many) free drinks. After a while, it is a world of free-flowing booze. How drunk can your intern get? It’s a ritual to train the intern on your desk to guzzle as much beer as possible. You have been a good and responsible full-time analyst if you can get your intern to drink beer like water at the end of the summer. At every intern event, there was always that one intern who went off the hook. On most occasions it was the boys, but sometimes the girls showed their stuff. Getting drunk at cocktails was common, that was the purpose of these events, but it was especially embarrassing, and a sure-shot way to get fired, if you got drunk at a business dinner. It was a test of sorts, if the wine keeps coming, will you keep drinking? How much self-control do you really have? I had heard tales, lots and lots of them.
During one corporate dinner an intern got really drunk, turned beet red, made a mess of his dinner, dropped his silverware a few thousand times, and got rather aggressive with the girl next to him. He was kindly escorted out of the dinner and then politely asked not to return to work the next day.
There wasn’t always sympathy for the bavards. Another intern, Katie Peterson, had drunk her way into the annals of company lore. Katie was one of the two women in an all-male group—US Treasuries or some such old-school group. She was an attractive girl, rather voluptuous and she loved dressing up her curves in tight pants, short skirts and skimpy tops, and wearing the reddest lipsticks and the brightest eye shadows. One night the group went out for drinks and Katie the Cool decided to have a drinking face-off with the VP. As it turned out, Katie the Cool was quite the fish and effortlessly put away the free beers while the poor VP ended up getting really drunk and spent the rest of the night hitting on her and most inappropriately slapping her buttocks. Finally, the MD dragged the VP away from Katie and sent him home in a taxi.
The next morning Katie the Cool, the good intern that she was, was the first one at her desk. The VP was still MIA at 10 a.m. He stumbled into work an hour later, still hungover from the night before, and was promptly sent home after he threw up on his desk. Of course, Mr VP was a young prodigy who had been at the bank for seven years, and the group could not do without him, so he was neither dismissed nor reprimanded. Katie, on the other hand, was transferred to operations, effectively destroying her career in investment banking. Conveniently, the VP did not remember much from the night and never did apologize to Katie the Fool.
Girls Gone Wild
It was 11.30 p.m. and the end of my first week at Goldstein Smith. I had been working past 2 a.m. every day, managing with less than five hours of sleep at night. My body was beyond tired; I repeatedly told myself that it was all a matter of getting used to and over time I would be fine. Tonight, I was just happy to be going home early and was hoping that for once I would wake up feeling like a human being tomorrow.
When I reached the shoebox dorm room, I was surprised to see my roommate Martha propped on her checkered Ralph Lauren pillows. She usually returned after I had already passed out and was out in the morning (after her five-mile run) by the time I surfaced. There was no way I could compete with that; I had come to terms with the fact that she was just made of stronger stuff than I.
‘Hey Riya!’ she said, much too cheerfully for the hour.
‘Hey, you’re home early.’
‘Ya! We had one of those silly intern events and I got soooo wasted, I figured I better not go back to work,’ she replied with a giggle.
Martha, the perfect bankerette, was a little drunk. I took a closer look at her and realized that she had changed out of office clothes into a short white skirt and a tight black tank top which showed off her perfectly toned arms.
‘Yeah, I know how those work,’ I said as I lay down on my bed. I was almost about to pass out, still fully dressed, when Martha came over and plopped herself on my bed. When I opened my eyes, I saw her flushed pink face uncomfortably close to mine. I could smell the alcohol on her breath.
‘Sweetie, we have to go out for some roomie bonding. Let’s go out! Let’s go out!’ She broke out in a cheer, clapping her hands in tune and giggling foolishly. ‘You totally have to come out with me tonight.’
‘Usually I’m up for this kind of stuff, but I’m so tired tonight,’ I said, trying my best to be cheerful and friendly though all I wanted was for her to leave me alone.
‘Oh babe, don’t be a bore! It’s Thursday, the most rocking night in the city. We have to do a Sex and the City night, come on! I’m Samantha and you … you can be Miranda! That’ll be sooo cool!’ She giggled again.
I never could understand why all the really sharp WASP banker girls always acted so ditzy when they were drunk, especially when boys were around. I had noticed it lots of times especially during frat parties, and never really got it. ‘I would have loved to, but tomorrow, work …’
‘Oh shush, you! We’re both bankers here. Don’t you know that all bankers go out on Thursday night? It’s totally like a banker’s night out. Come on … I met this cute promoter at Starbucks and he totally put us on the list at Marquee and we don’t even have to pay cover. Come on, girl.’
Her energy was contagious. Thursday nights were supposed to be the coolest nights in New York, and considering I only had ten of them in this city, I really ought to be doing a better job with them. Marquee was where all the bankers went, I was sure it would be a great networking opportunity. Besides, I didn’t know how to say no to girls like Martha. I had wanted to be like her and befriend girls like her—the sexy, confident bankerettes—so desperately during my pre-med days. And even though my assimilation was now complete, I still felt a little intimidated by super-bankers like her. Girls like her just wouldn’t waste their time; Martha always had it together, at work, the way she looked, her five-mile runs, she must know what she was doing now too.
‘Oh all right, I really shouldn’t … but I guess just this once,’ I said with a sigh. As a wise person once said, ‘You snooze, you lose.’
‘Yeah … that’s my girl! Get ready while I go and get us some drinks,’ she said and ran off into our tiny kitchen.
I decided on a short denim skirt and a white sequined tank-top. It was much too humid and hot outside for a full-scale make-up job, so I settled for just a dash of petal pink blush, eye-liner and lip-gloss. I slipped my feet into a pair of white platforms and I was all set for my night out on the town. Not elaborate, but the skirt was short enough and the top tight enough for a New York nightclub. I went to the tiny kitchen where Martha was perched on the countertop singing off-key to a Madonna track that blasted from the iPod perched in its Bang and Olufsen deck. Next to her was a big plastic bottle of Romanvazia vodka with a fluorescent green sticker that read $7.99.
Martha poured the vodka for me into a plastic cup and added some seltzer water. I took a sip and almost gagged. It was strong and very nasty; this stuff could knock you out. Before we left for the club, she dumped some of the vodka into a half empty bottle of Diet Coke and stuck it in her purse.
The city on a Thursday night was indeed crazy and our cab circumvented its way through the traffic
, reaching 27th and 10th, Club Row, where all the hippest New York night clubs were. We were deposited on the curb outside Marquee, where crowds of fashionable people were waiting in line to get in. I really hoped that Martha had this scene sorted out. By the looks of it, it would take hours if we had to wait in queue. Martha grabbed my hand and pushed through the crowds, and I just followed her, hanging on, trying not to notice the dirty looks we were getting from everyone around us.
‘Hey fella!’ she called out to the big, black bouncer who stood guarding the velvet rope. ‘Hey, I’m talking to you!’ she yelled. The bouncer gave us a sleepy, totally uninterested look. ‘I’m on the list. Mark put me on the list!’ she yelled but the expression on the man’s face did not change at all.
‘Hey cutie,’ said a voice next to me.
‘Mark! There you are,’ yelped Martha and pounced on the thin pale guy standing next to us.
‘Easy there, missy,’ he said with a grin on his face.
‘How long have you known this guy? He looks a bit sketchy,’ I whispered to Martha.
She shrugged, ‘I met him at Starbucks today. Whatever. He’s cute.’
Mark was grungy but in a fashionable kind of way. He was wearing a black vintage T-shirt, a pair of very tight jeans torn at the knees, and a pair of red converse sneakers. He took us past the crowd of screaming people trying desperately to get in, past the big black bouncer and the velvet rope. There were lots of guys in suits, I assumed they were bankers who had come straight from work, several of whom would probably go right back to office. Mark opened the doors of the club for us and I walked in feeling pretty cool that we got to skip the line. The loud, thumping music sent a shiver of excitement up my spine. He led us through the crowds to a table in the middle of the club where several scantily dressed girls stood around the velvet couch. There was only one other guy, and he was pouring drinks for everyone. Mark handed Martha and me much-too-strong vodka–cranberry drinks.