Monday, July 30, 2007
Breaks In The Track
I sent the email last week:
Friends and colleagues,
After two very educational years, the time has come for me to leave Goldman Sachs. Beginning in August, I will be moving on to my next adventure, The Carlyle Group in New York. I have attached my updated contact information below, and look forward to keeping in touch.
Warmest regards,
It took me like 6 hours to craft that exceptional bit of prose, but I think it turned out quite nicely.
To be truthful, I had already been pretty checked out for the past few months. Ever since I got my PE offer, things were almost pointless. Most recently, I’d taken to coming in at like 11:00am and, in general, not really giving a FUCK.
I still got everything done exceptionally, of course, and I still came in some weekends, but it was almost just out of habit. Then when the summer started and the clueless “ex-entrepreneur” MBA summer associate starting coming to me asking for help, I would just peek up at him from behind my kicked up bare feet, and tell him: “Give me a shout on Monday.” I’d look annoyed, as if he’d interrupted some sort of bare-footed piece of analysis he’d never be able to comprehend, and to accentuate that I didn’t really want to be bothered on Monday, I’d shoot him a look of I-don’t-give-a-fuckness that screamed: “What’s more busted bro, your dot-com or your girlfriend’s face?”
And now I’ve left, and I’m jobless. Well, I’m obviously not jobless, but that’s the liberating feeling of all breaks along The Track:
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| Innovative graphic design courtesy of Mercer Management Consulting (they’ll take whatever business they can get, apparently). |
The Track is what separates man from beast. It’s what separates Banker from every other ungainfully employed idiot that exists out there. It’s magnificent in its simplicity and supreme in the rewards of its end-state.
And thank god it’s set up how it is. When an “artist,” writer, or other unspeakable is “in between jobs,” he ends up giving blood 12x a day, wearing homemade jorts, and living off Gray’s Papaya (or whatever the outer-borough version of that is). When a Banker is in between jobs, he’s just fucking around for a couple months with >$100k savings until the next leg of The Track begins.
I’ll admit, I’m rather enjoying waking up whenever the hell and going to the gym 2x a day. Just this week, I watched Transformers in the theater at 3 in the afternoon after lifting. Halfway through that exceptionally manly movie, I felt like a meathead trader I was so jacked up on testosterone. I almost picked a fight with the dude in front of me, but instead of absolutely destroying the 85 year old, handicapped Asian man, I went home and stood in front of my full-length mirror and watched myself rapidly change from my street clothes into my Banker clothes.
One second I was an innocuous American car, wearing shorts and a polo. The next second—BAM! I was transformed and growling back at myself in a $3k bespoke suit, 1000 feet tall, ready to shoot M&A lasers out of my elbows.
The Optimus Mother Fucking Prime of Banking, baby.
Then I chuckled to myself and made a clever joke about the demise of Optimus Subprime, a once promising autobot.
Now, I’m going to “travel.” I’m not entirely certain why, but it feels like the right thing to do. There are a handful of developing third world nations I’ve heard are worth visiting: Turkey, Croatia, Fire Island, et.al., and this is the time to conquer them, if ever.
I may go through the motions of seeing a couple sites, but the experience is more so that when I do start work and people ask me what I did during my time off, I’ll be able to casually say: “Oh…I was traveling.” And then, we’ll bask in 15 minutes of stimulating conversation about the insanely high prices of Icelandic beer and the rich body of Turkish tobacco. After a few days, I’ll start circulating some lavish sex stories involving me, an excess of HRK, and several runway models with broken English—just so the word gets out that I’m “’bout it.” The message will disseminate, and I’ll be set up well. Actually—if I didn’t take this time to travel, I’m not even certain how I’d break the ice.
Anyway, after rounding out the European leg of the trip boozing on my boy’s yacht in Istanbul and abusing whatever the Turkish word for “baller” is, I might even stop home for a spell. I project I’ll be able to stand at most 2 days before I’ve grown disgusted of my friends that were fun in the moment but never made it past community college and will have completely exhausted my phonebook of elementary school teaching sluts that try ferociously to reel me in with their expertise in homemaking. Poor suburbanites.
Soon after, this break along The Track will be over, and my next “adventure” will begin. While it is fun living this jobless lifestyle, I’m glad I’ll be back at work in a few short weeks—the economy needs me.
September 4th, 2007 at 11:08 am
Hablador, Check your grammar man. You?re missing a ”To” in front of your first statement. For your rant, I think you?re the one who is miserable (who else would type such an unstructured tirade early in the morning? ). At least everybody is doing something productive in the morning and not blurting out semi-coherent prose attempting to belittle the bankers; rather unsuccessfully that too. Stop living in the 70s (”working for the man”?give me a break!). Also, try taking a creative or a just a structured writing course at a JC (it might help you).
September 4th, 2007 at 11:49 am
Hablador, Would you shut up, we?re busy. Your bitterness and jelousy is obvious but rather than solve it by insulting us, maybe get off your poor, unemployed ass, turn off the online porn and get a job. Maybe one day you?ll be lucky enough to work in one of my portfolio companies. And then I?ll fire you. Because you suck at life. Peace, your fucking loser
September 4th, 2007 at 10:52 pm
all the Anonymous writers at 11:08am on September 4th, lick a dick. It was a command, are you familiar with that part of grammar as you are as the inner workings of a male?s anus?
September 5th, 2007 at 9:48 am
Hablador, In life there are winners and losers. You are the latter. Stop breathing my air.
September 5th, 2007 at 11:33 am
Anon, are you an Indian version of Anonymous? You can also lick a dick, or an Indian crack like the one the punjab princess Natasha has.
September 22nd, 2007 at 5:39 pm
Don?t know if you ever heard of Peter Chung, but openly bragging about your sexual exploits isn?t going to get you too far in Carlyle Group http://www.snopes.com/risque/tattled/chung.asp
September 24th, 2007 at 12:37 am
Dude, great post but a little unrealistic. There are only 1-2 associates at Carlyle?s NA buyout group that are from Goldman. Carlyle is a decent shop but everyone knows that the best GS bankers go to TPG or Blackstone.
September 24th, 2007 at 3:41 pm
Your ego is really just masking your huge insecurities. Money is great, i love it and have a bunch of it, but there is value in other things in life. Life can be pretty lonely when you have nothing but cash.
September 27th, 2007 at 7:30 pm
seeing ”goldman sachs” written on my paycheck makes my life worth living
October 3rd, 2007 at 11:34 am
Getting AIDS > working at Carlyle
October 11th, 2007 at 8:07 pm
Whenever I?m in a bad mood I read some of your postings and they brighten up my day. I hope you?re serious about putting out a book, and that if you are, you put your heart into it. A website can display your writing but a book can immortalize it.
October 31st, 2007 at 7:04 am
you guys are all tools. that track ends in divorce, jail, stroke or suicide. go fuck yourselves.
November 7th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
men?s warehouse: yea, i?m broke.
December 7th, 2007 at 4:24 am
define a dead day in office ??.reading a frigging three month old blog (good stuff btw)??.reading every single comment that follows said blog (border line stupid)?..rating every single comment I read (aaaaarrrrrggggg I have slipped into retardhood)
December 8th, 2007 at 11:17 am
define a dead weekend/life? reading a frigging three month old LSO on the weekend! Damn I am a pathetic loser, and I am going to go shoot myself right now (ok, maybe tomorrow after the Hatten-Mayweather fight tonite? hope Pretty Boy gets his pretty teeth kicked in)
May 29th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Wow! you are so full of shit! The fact that you worked at Goldman and Carlyle only matters for those suckers who didn?t get a job in either place. You are one of those ”New Yorkers” who just moved to NY a few years ago and would really like to hide their deep suburban roots. You are a little piece of shit and neither your job nor your move to NY will ever make you anything else.
June 5th, 2008 at 7:55 am
Anon. You my friend are what make this site awesome. The guy who can?t read satire. Thank you dipshit.. for making my day.
July 30th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
‘will have completely exhausted my phonebook of elementary school teaching sluts that try ferociously to reel me in with their expertise in homemaking. Poor suburbanites.” Holy crap I thought I was the only one, hilarious!!
August 13th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
‘ I was so jacked up on testosterone. I almost picked a fight with the dude in front of me, but instead of absolutely destroying the 85 year old, handicapped Asian man, I went home and stood in front of my full-length mirror and watched myself rapidly change from my street clothes into my Banker clothes.” that?s the funniest shit i?e read all day?but the rest of the post was straight up wack sauce.
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:16 am
‘The Optimus Mother Fucking Prime of Banking, baby.” Was awesome!
October 30th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Beautiful post. I love this site.