Monkey Business (18 page)

I made it to the gate at the airport just as they were about to stop letting people onto the plane. I made my way to my seat,
and there was Gator reading the
Wall Street Journal
and looking fresh as a spring daisy. He glanced up at me and said, “It’s a good goddamned thing you made it, because if you
hadn’t there would’ve been hell to pay. You look like shit. You’re an embarrassment.”

Gator and I had gone through a lot over the previous year. I had a grudging respect for him. I can remember him being a good
guy—at times—but this time he was an asshole. Maybe the pressure to perform pushed him to be a fuckhead. Whatever the case,
I almost yanked him up, pulled his trousers down, and shoved that whole bag full of pitch books straight up his ass.

There wasn’t a lot of love lost between Troob and Gator after this incident. I think that in another life they might have
been friends. They might have enjoyed each other’s company. They weren’t in another life, though. They were in a life that
involved color copies. For the time being that made them enemies.

T
he first weeks and months that Troob and I spent at DLJ as full-time associates were painful. The constant pitching, the endless
valuation shenanigans, the long nights spent kissing the asses of the coterie of word processing pixies, and the gifts to
the copy center Barrio. These exercises in futility clearly weren’t the activities that a young investment banker’s wet dreams
were made of. We continued to hold out hope, though. Hope that we’d turn into deal doers and rainmakers. Hope that we’d have
a compensation review session where the head of our department would bestow upon us a zillion-dollar bonus. Hope that John
Chalsty, DLJ’s CEO, would call us into his office and tell us, “You’re my guys. I need you. I’m gonna build the business around
you.” Selective perception was still operating at full tilt, and for the most part we were still seeing and hearing mainly
those things that helped fuel the dream.

Deals came and went. Different companies, different needs, different industries, and different deal teams. The only real constant
in our daily lives was that we walked into the office every morning knowing that our day was going to be completely different
than the day before had been. We learned to expect the unexpected, and became accustomed to operating as if absolutely everything
we worked on was critical to the future welfare of the free world. We were learning how to operate in a pressure cooker without
getting basted.

Although each day was different there was a broad sort of daily routine that we all followed. Being a junior banker meant
being a night person. That, in turn, meant that none of the associates usually rolled into the office before about 9
A.M
. Inevitably, when we did roll in, there would be something that needed checking. Mornings were checking time. Maybe it was
something that we’d left to get turned through word processing on our way out the door the night before. Maybe one of the
analysts had built a new financial model and left a copy on our desks. Whatever it was, we’d spend the morning going through
it line by line to make sure we weren’t going to get our heads chewed off as a result of somebody else’s screwup.

The checking routine usually lasted until around lunchtime. Now, at most jobs lunch divides the day into two. There’s “before
lunch” and there’s “after lunch.” Once the majority of corporate America has made it through lunch, it’s a downhill ride.
Investment banking doesn’t work like that. An investment banking associate has four parts to his day: “before lunch,” “after
lunch,” “after dinner,” and “after midnight.”

Lunchtime at DLJ meant that the day was just getting started. We usually ate lunch at our desks. That was the low-risk way
to keep our heads down. Sometimes, if we were feeling adventurous, we’d round up a crew of our comrades and head down to the
cafeteria. Eating in the cafeteria was a dangerous game, though. The big risk was that Doug Franken, the managing director
in charge of staffing, would see us there and interpret our presence as a sign of sloth. It was a game of Russian roulette
whenever Franken caught us down in the cafeteria. We knew that one of us would end up having to take a bullet for the team,
we just never knew which one of us it would be.

The “after lunch” part of the day was usually taken up with meetings. Meetings with clients. Meetings with potential clients.
Meetings with deal teams. Meetings with lawyers and accountants. If we couldn’t meet in person, we’d do it by conference call.
We had deal team meetings before the client meetings to figure out what we were going to talk about at the client meetings.
We had deal team meetings after the client meetings to talk about what we’d just gotten done talking about. As associates,
we grew to hate meetings because meetings were the places where little ideas capable of generating huge amounts of work were
spawned. The words “I’ve got an idea…” were anathema to us. When we heard them, our hearts dropped into our loafers.

There were some managing directors who didn’t confine their idea generation only to meetings. Some of them preferred to perpetrate
evil through the voice mail system. The Widow used to use the voice mail system to avoid human contact altogether. He would
sit in his lair and create voice mails full of new ideas, and then send
them to my mail box without ever actually calling me. Many an afternoon I sat at my desk and saw the message light go on without
the phone ever ringing. Whenever that happened, I knew that it was one of the Widow’s insidious mail bombs.

It was tough to get any real work done while the senior bankers were still around. That’s why so many days included “after
dinner” and “after midnight.” The managing directors usually took off by dinnertime, which meant that the phones would finally
stop ringing and that we’d be able to get cranking on the latest fire drill. Before we did, though, we had a nightly routine
whereby Troob, Slick, and I would corral three of our other comrades-in-arms for a tête-à-tête. These three other regulars
were Isaac “Big Man” Johnson, who worked in the high-yield group and who had once walked straight into a wall as a result
of sleep deprivation; Mike “Wings” Roganstahl, who always dressed to the nines and thought he worked in the merchant banking
group but in reality was a generalist peon like the rest of us; and our friend Deepak “Tubby” Verrna from the M&A group whose
fat gut and tiny ass usually made his suit pants look like an opera diva’s muumuu. Each night we would commandeer a conference
room, order dinner, and spend at least a half hour crapping all over everybody who’d crapped on us earlier that day.

Dinner was full of insults and profanity. Nobody was called by their real name. Everybody was “pricko,” “fuck-face,” or “jackass.”
We reveled in insulting each other’s dignity. The free-for-all at dinner was the glue that held us all together. On a nightly
basis, it gave us the opportunity to try to convince each other that the dream was
still alive, while we collectively came to the dawning realization that we were investment banking automatons marching in
lockstep to the same inevitable fate. Dinner was our group therapy.

Dinner wasn’t just five nights a week. We were usually there on weekends, too. Every night at dinner there was one thing we
could rely on—Slick’s dinner order. Slick ordered the same thing every night: penne bolognese, tira misu, and two small bottles
of San Pelegrino sparkling water. The rest of us would mix it up a little, but not Slick. He never deviated. In our first
year at DLJ, Slick was probably on the road a total of fifty days. There were probably a total of another twenty days that
fell on weekends when he was out of the office at dinnertime. That means that we sat in a conference room watching Slick down
penne bolognese, tira misu, and two little bottles of San Pelegrino sparkling water 290 times in that first year. That’s a
lot of bolognese. Troob and I think that penne bolognese was Slick’s emotional anchor. No matter what happened during the
day, Slick always knew that the penne bolognese would be waiting for him at night. It was like a girlfriend, only better,
because the penne bolognese was always on time, didn’t get mad at him for being at work all night, and didn’t yell at him
when he had to cancel a vacation.

“After dinner” was creation time. God may have created first and rested later, but an investment banking associate rests first—at
dinner—and creates later; 8
P.M
. to midnight was prime time. We drafted pitch books, built models, updated comps, and wrote memos. Computers cranked, pencils
flew, and steam came out of our ears. It was the one time of the day when we felt like we were actually
moving ahead and weren’t either treading water or slowly sinking. If we were lucky, if the fire drill wasn’t so urgent that
something had to be created for the following morning, we’d be able to head home by midnight. Often, though, that wasn’t possible.

If the fire drill was real, then the day rolled into the “after midnight” segment. After midnight the associate became a conductor.
The creation of the raw material was complete, but the transformation of that raw material into something presentable was
only beginning. After midnight the associate stepped up to the riser, raised a baton, and brought the orchestra to life. Word
processing, copy center, and the young analyst monkey boys each played their part in the symphony. Some movements played fast
and furious, others slow and serene, but the music rarely stopped. If it did, the associate would slip into an adjustable
chair and close his eyes for a few moments of bliss until the music began again. The after-midnight segment could end at 2
A.M
., 5
A.M
., or it could end at 8
A.M
. All we could hope for was that it would end at least a few hours before the routine was all set to begin again the next
morning. Spending two, or even three days straight on the Ferris wheel with no sleep wasn’t easy.

So with all this crap, all this garbage that we were piling through, what was the bottom line? A lot of anguish, never saying
no, and about 100 hours a week spent in the trenches. There are only 168 hours in a week, and working 100 of them meant that
we had to work every day, seven days a week. Taking corporate car rides home, showering in the mornings, and searching for
our lost identities before we went to bed at night enveloped 20
hours of our week. Making a lame attempt at a social life engulfed 15 hours of the week. So that left 33 hours of our week
for sleeping. That meant an average of four and a half hours a night. So with this little sleep, there are two obvious questions:
(1) Were we productive? and (2) Weren’t we constantly tired?

The answers to these questions are simple. We shouldn’t have been productive, but we were, and yes—we were always tired. Investment
banks are savvy. DLJ was no exception. It knew how to squeeze every drop of productivity out of our little bodies. The investment
banks keep the climate perfect for an around-the-clock working environment. Within DLJ the lighting and air-conditioning systems
were like a Las Vegas casino. The lights were bright and fluorescent. The air was kept cold, crisp, and dry. It always felt
like the middle of the day, even at five in the morning. When we finally left our investment banking casino and stepped into
the outside world we came crashing down. But while we were inside the walls we were as productive as little beavers building
a dam. We scurried around like lab rats in a cage and were full of nervous energy. Like casino gamblers, we had a lot to give
and expectations of much in return.

DLJ tried to lessen the pain of this grind through the liberal application of its own corporate narcotic—money. Unlike a lot
of other firms, DLJ was clearly with the program. What that meant was that DLJ didn’t nickel-and-dime us to death on our expenses;
the firm knew how to keep our appetites whetted. When we had business dinners they were always first class—the 21 Club, Aureole,
Le Cirque 2000. When we traveled, the charges didn’t get questioned. The firm knew that extravagant
tastes were the best defense that they could ever hope to have against our departure. And when it came to purely social events,
the firm threw just enough corporate clambakes to keep the junior bankers from engaging in open rebellion.

The premiere DLJ party each year was the holiday party. When DLJ threw its holiday party it was no joke. We’re not talking
about paper tablecloths, folding chairs, and spiked punch in plastic cups. The DLJ holiday party was the real deal. It was
an opportunity for the top dogs to loosen the purse strings, pull out a few gold coins, and impart a brief evening of unrestricted
hedonistic pleasure to the masses.

When DLJ threw a party it was always done with style and with no regard for expense, but the holiday party was special for
another reason. The myriad dinners, receptions, and dances that we were becoming accustomed to as associates at DLJ were the
exclusive province of the bankers, brokers, salespeople, and traders. For many of the thousands of DLJ employees, however,
the ability to live large on the firm’s nickel was nothing but a fantasy. Once each year, at the holiday party, that changed.
Every secretary, banking assistant, and receptionist was given five hours in which to taste the good life. It was an opportunity
for them to develop a sense for just how much money an investment bank was capable of generating, and how well paid those
higher up the food chain actually were.

In the weeks leading up to our first holiday blowout, the senior associates schooled us in the essentials of DLJ holiday party
tradition. The rules were simple: (1) get stone drunk (2) avoid vomiting on any managing directors,
and (3) make every effort to get a banking assistant into bed by the end of the night. As legend had it, fishing off the company
pier at the holiday party was more than just a time-honored tradition, it was an obligation that was borne by all. For me,
the possibility wasn’t just a challenge, it was a burning necessity. To start out with, I’d never been a guy who got a lot
of play from the ladies. Now that my every waking hour was spent at the office, short of paying a hooker, the only way I’d
ever get any loving was if a generous BA decided to take pity on my sorry state and provide me access to her honey pot.