e*toile

There’s nothing like Spring to lift the spirits and bring a spring into my step! (sorry for the cheap pun)

Even at the Firm, things are looking up. After a long winter of privation (redundancies and a spate of voluntary departures, tombstone cutbacks. no Christmas and Summer Party last year, patchy bonuses), we finally have a small budget for team events, are going to have a Summer Party. I know it seems silly to outsiders hung up about bankers’ bonuses and the like. But these small things count and are good for morale - everyone, especially the secretaries, who missed out on bonus, will at least have a fun night of free booze, which will help a tiny towards alleviating the sting of lost bonuses and getting wrongly caught-up in the mass hysteria of banker-bashing. I have been disappointed with my recent unsuccessful attempt to find a new job, but this new development has (somewhat irrationally) cheered me up and mitigated my condition. It just somehow feels like the Firm is finally getting more confident and getting back on its feet, after a year of losses and sacrifice.

And I’m going to submit my naturalisation application on Monday. I’ve gotten my first of two referee to vouch for my “good character”, and soon, fingers crossed, I’ll be a fish-and-chip -scarfing, beer-guzzling Brit! After almost 10 years of living in my adopted city and country, almost 6 years of working, over-paying taxes and under-consuming services, and 1.5 years of enduring vitriolic abuse at my industry, my commitment is going to be recognised.

Other little things are cheering me up too: holidays I’ve just taken (Turkey, Syria and Lebanon), our wooden flooring has been installed and furniture-shopping is underway, spending time with girl friends doing fun things (indoor rock climbing, climbing Snowdonia), upcoming plans (Trinity May Ball, a photography course), more holidays planned (Canada/Malaysia/Singapore, Australia). After a long quiet winter of inertia and desperate anxiety (company, finances, work, quitting work), it seems like little green shoots of fun and activities are sprouting, and the invisible weight on my shoulders has been lightened with the longer days and warmer weather.

I hope this lasts.

This week, as I sat and stared during my team’s weekly Monday morning meeting, I was mentally knocking my head against a hard wall, over and over again, in boredom and frustration.

I thought to myself: I can’t deal with this. I want to slit my wrists. Or at least poke needles into the tips of fingers.

But that’s not realistic. I am afraid of pain and blood after all.

Hmmm… maybe I should get anti-depressants, I thought. A couple of pills here and there. And I could get through the day, without feeling suicidal. With a smile even.

That really scared me. The fact that I was being so realistic and reasonable - the fact that I was measuring my problem and mentally taking a calculated step to solve it: “I have a problem, and this is a feasible and socially acceptable to way to mitigate my pain.”

Imagine, *taking pills* to get through the work day. To live life and just breathe.

That the first step down the slippery slope of giving up. The dangerous first step of self-medicating to cope with life.

What next - drugs?!

It’s getting harder and harder for me to stay at my job. I am so bored out of my skull. I find the work yawningly-boring, repetitive, in endless cycles of meaningless urgency and panic. I am getting fed-up of what work, my seniors and colleagues expect of me, which is part and parcel of the job: to drop everything in my own personal life and to be at the beck and call of every client request, every pitch, every presentation that comes along. Each cancelled weekend, each missed birthday, each compromised plan is justified by my seniors as necessary: “this is the most important Board presentation of the year”, “this is the most important meeting of the process”, “this is the biggest RFP of the year and the biggest IPO of next year (in our sector)”. I’m bored of it. I’m bored of having my own life de-prioritised, of making sacrifices because of one imaginary “most important” so and so work deadline after another, which almost invariably turn out to be wasted or necessary.

Cases in point:
1) I was hyper stressed out during my birthday weekend because my VP expected me to work all weekend for “the most important Board presentation of the year” (for that specific client). The specific transaction never happened. Was killed. And instead, a TopCo deal was in the works by other banks which would have cut us out completely, and killed our deal. As it happens, the TopCo deal didn’t happen either. So some other poor f*cks in some other banks have probably busted their balls for nothing too.

2) The Boy and I were supposed to leave on Saturday afternoon to collect Byron from out of town. But because I had to help finalise “the most important presentation of the process”, we had to leave town late, drive at 110 mph or more to rush to town. Stop in the emergency lane of the highway to take a call from my boss. Gobble down an 8-course 1-Michelin star meal (that we’d already paid for) at a rate of one-course-every-five-minutes. And rush back the next day. The result: the client did not want to fund the transaction at the necessary price - they choked at the equity cheque. A bid was never made.

3) “The biggest IPO of next year” pitch - having to work weekends, take multi-hour calls on weekends which, among other things, consist of my MD reiterating everything on his markup, and changing his mind, vacillating over every other point, since at least 4 weekends before the deadline. Firstly, this is not my project. Another girl, who is from the company’s country of origin, is working on a side project and has been swamped, so I am stepping in. This is ultimately her project and will revert to her if we win. Secondly, there are multiple decision-makers in the awarding of this mandate. And my colleague who knows some of the decision-making parties has been told that this segment of decision-makers will back another set of banks to win. Given I have been and will continue working exclusively on this until the deadline, why is it imperative that we spend time on this every weekend?

My frustration has been growing. I’m tired of not being able to properly plan a simple weekend, always living with the constant stress and worry that my plans will have to be cancelled, or that I have to rush back to work at any point. This frustration has reached such a boiling point that I just don’t want to work. I get depressed whenever I am given *any* work. I feel like knocking my head against the wall at yet another piece of analysis, yet another model to build, yet another presentation to prepare. The same shit, ad nauseum, ad infinitum. I know this is clearly not a healthy work attitude to have, and that’s why I know that really, this is time to say “enough is enough”. It is time to quit, and move on. I am gritting my teeth and barely holding on for dear life: until my bonus (whatever it may be), until my naturalisation.

5 years in one place, one team, is surely an age. Especially in banking. By the time I leave next year, I will have done almost 6 years. I have nothing to prove anymore - to myself, to anyone. If I want, I know I can go on to make VP, D, possibly/probably MD. But do I want to spend the next 7 years being stressed and depressed, living a living hell, carving up my ever-diminishing soul into little pieces and selling them, piece by piece? I have done my time. I need out. I also need the strength to carry on, for just another 9 months or so, if all goes well.

Maybe after having been unemployed for a while, I will be happy to return to the hellish, but fairly lucrative hell-hole that banking is. I know I have been very fortunate to have been in constant employment since my bank-breaking graduation. And maybe, to an extent, I have taken it for granted. But almost everyone I know has had either gardening leave from changing jobs, or being unemployed, or a sabbatical from a firm-sanctioned working-hour-reduction programme, or has taken a break to do an MBA, finish a thesis, further their studies. I am just plain and simple burnt out. My sanity is slowly fraying.

9 more months. 9 more months… I am, I am, I am.

When the head of my team spoke to me earlier this year to give me my bonus number (a derisory amount!) and the usual thank you/congratulatory chat, this time supplemented with an update on how the bank and team is doing, I very gently raised my hand for voluntary redundancy.

I asked him if there were upcoming redundancies in the team. “No, I assure you, there are none planned for now. And if the bank and team continues to perform as expected, there are no more cuts planned in IBD (the already announced cuts being in other parts of the businesses)”, he assured me. But in fact, I fully expected more cuts to come. So I said, well, I’m only asking because, if there are cuts in future, I would appreciate if you spoke to me first, because, while I remain committed to team and will continue to do good work while I am here, I don’t really have any financial commitments (wedding plans, mortgages, children), unlike some other members of the team, and wouldn’t mind taking some time off (of course with no guarantee of employment when I return to Banking) to travel. I was quite surprised that the head of my team, who is a lovely man that I respect, looked quite surprised at my softly-softly offer to be made redundant. I had expected more people to have raised their hand (as happened in other teams, as I later found out).

Predictably - and one didn’t even need my (self-acknowledged) level of seer-like clairvoyance - we’ve announced cuts, and, almost as predicably, much larger cuts than previously announced (*yawns*).

Rumours have been rife in the team. And there have been many quiet coffees and chats that have taken place between people at various levels, between levels, with differing degrees of secrecy, with contents of discussions being shared and passed on, and intelligence and tactics being discussed.

Apparently some seniors have been trying to sound out who will “take the package”, who might leave voluntarily (only relevant for Analysts) post July bonus (hah!), to work out how many to fire, and who to fill the slots. The Boy has put a message to one of the MDs who is he is close to that he would “consider” taking the package depending on the package. In actual fact, he is dying to leave and would quit if not made redundant. So it would be better to leavel with severance at least.

Before I left on holiday, one of my seniors spoke to me to see why I had volunteered and if there was any way to retain me. I was very open with him (I have a personal project I want to pursue, my client is difficult, I find work mind-numbingly boring and the pyschological effort I need to do good work is getting too much for me, I don’t really aspire to what he - some one 4 or 5 years senior to me - does), and his conclusion that I was unretainable. So I thought I was good to go.

Then, while I was on holiday, the de-facto controlling MD called me for a chat to further sound me out. He wanted to understand my motivations for wanting to leave, the level of my commitment to the team etc. I was very, very careful with him. To his mind, he is not inclined to give packages to people who volunteer because they are essentially unworthy and asking for a “free lunch”. Whereas, the other MD that the Boy is close to thinks (and rightly, in my view) that packages should be given to those who would leave anyway. Otherwise, the team is exposing itself to the risk of being short-staffed after firing and then losing additional staff through attrition. So now I’m not sure where I stand.

I’m probably in one of worst-managed and most irrational teams in the bank. The de-facto controlling MD is reportedly against giving package to people he dislikes. I recently found out that the MD dislikes one guy in the team in particular, who has badly damaged the team spirit by doing no work, often coming in at 10am and leaving at 5pm, and has spent the last year constantly interviewing (apparently unsuccessfully) for other jobs. And yet, instead of firing the f*cker, the MD has refused to make him redundant in the last round (hence giving him, an admittedly very generous package, which will not be the case for this round), which has allowed the f*cker to remain, like a parasite, in the team, further demoralising the other hardworking team members. And there we were all thinking that the MD loved the little f*cker and he was protected, and were speculating which worthier person would be fired instead of him. How twisted is that. I wish I was in a more rational team.

Internally, we are expecting the death-list to be published in early May/late April (potentially as soon as this coming Wednesday). So let’s see what goes.

I am so good at my work!

There are some days when I feel really proud of myself, of how productive I can be, the quality of my work, like these past couple of days.

Yesterday I managed to check/finalise a book for printing last night while leaving at a relatively decent time of 11pm while spending most of day helping my friend review and revise his Business school application essays (and I’m still very impressed with my bullsh!ting skills, after all these years), and also managed to squeeze in some work on a personal project.

Today, in the course of one day, I have: refined my work on personal project, tanked a restaurant on a review website,drafted some CSS code, helped my friend iterate his application essays until he submitted it at 11pm, completed a tedious benchmarking exercise (finally, a work project!) with an admirable degree of professionalism and thoroughness (this should be a piece of exercise for my junior but he is on holiday) and drafted excellent points to advance our position on the work project.

It’s days like these when I feel like I am on a hill at the top of the world. I feel like a force of nature, a one-woman powerhouse, a superhero wonder woman! And I’m so impressed with myself, that I truly wonder why others don’t appreciate my ability and talent - my seniors/colleagues (I’m not top-rated),potential employers (the company who rejected my application but had employed the lame back-stabber instead), my Ex-boyfriend… It’s days like these, when I feel energised and excited, that I actually know, that I can do anything, and everything, that I set my mind to. I could, to quote J, build a rocket to the moon if I wanted to. The only problem is that I have very few of these days, when I’m all excited and a-buzz and blazing through my to-dos like Usain Bolt on fire. Most of the time, I’m just generally bored by work and life and quite contented to chill out and avoid mental exertion.

I should really find something that I’m passionate about, and enjoy doing, so I’m energised and happily buzzing all the time!

I got backstabbed by an ex-colleague recently, which really stunned me.

People tell me it’s normal, and very common even, to be backstabbed by colleagues. Maybe I’ve been fortunate, for not having encountered much of it before. Sure, there has been gossip about the Boy and I, and one of my colleagues has even commented that I’m “technically not a woman” (not sure what is the basis of his conclusion), but those were speculations and personal opinions, which, however misguided or otherwise, they are entitled to express.

This was the first time that someone has maliciously lied about me to another person who had asked him for his opinion on my work performance/ethics. I had had an interview with a couple of guys from the company where this ex-colleague (let’s call him B for “Batard”, a french equivalent of a similar English word) now works (he joined the company just a couple of months ago), and my interviewers had asked him about me. The gist of what he said was that I’m “lazy and care more about going to the gym than working”. I’m particularly shocked because, although I don’t think he’s particularly bright, nor do I like him much as a person (different personalities), I have always been polite/civil to him, especially after I discovered we had common friends. And when he got fired from my team, I even put him in contact with one head-hunter that I was in touch with, just because I thought, well, if I can do something that can help him in his time of need that doesn’t cost me much (it’s true he’s competing in a job market that I would have liked to explore as well, but given he had no job and I had one, I didn’t Need a new job as much as he did, despite being depressed by my job). So, while I’ve never been super nice to him, I’ve always been decent to him, and arguably rather nicer to him than otherwise. And therefore, I was completely shocked that he would slander me thus! WTF… why would he do that?!

I moved to defend myself. I had my performance review on Friday, and the review was very good, despite my manager disliking me and downplaying my strengths. I am thankful that he was fair enough to quote verbatim some of my reviewers’ comments, which were rather more glowing and hyperbolic than I am used to, but mostly representative of the good work I have consistently produced historically (even if recognition has come belatedly, at a lag of about a year). Among other things, there were comments on how super hard-working I am (truer in the rather more distant than recent past), how amazingly motivated I am (my motivation has nose-dived since I was unfairly abused at my last review a year ago), the “state-of-the-art” work I have produced(that speaks for itself, surely.. I’m a junior investment banker, not a rocket scientist), and how helpful I have been to the juniors. —I scanned a copy of my review, and sent it to my interviewers. The ideal outcome, would be for the interviewers to be impressed with my review, and invite me to the next round(s) and for me to eventually get the job. That would be B’s greatest nightmare probably. But if that doesn’t happen, I would be happy if B was discredited, or this plants seeds of doubts in the interviewers’ minds about his motives, or even if they don’t conclude that he is a lying back-stabbing b*stard, that he looks at least a little bit stupid and their opinion of his judgement (of character, investments as well as, hopefully, general judgement) dims a little.

There’s a Chinese saying “井水不犯河水” (”Well water does not offend river water” or “well water does not intrude upon river water”). I generally subscribe to that doctrine, and he should do so too. He should just mind his own business and not be hostile against me. I’m usually pretty relaxed. But if attacked, I will defend myself.