Monkey Business

by John Rolfe

  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.

  The DLJ holiday party was traditionally held in the middle of the week. This was far from ideal from my standpoint, since it inevitably meant that the day following the party would degenerate from a typically wretched banking day into one made all the more evil by a pounding headache and probable bouts of dry heaves in the toilet stalls. Those responsible for the welfare of greater DLJ, however, were convinced that holding the party in the middle of the week would somehow cause the riffraff to exercise some degree of moderation in their pursuit of joyous holiday spirits. They should have known better. In practice, the midweek scheduling merely meant that the majority of the junior bankers and support staff would be taken completely out of commission for the day following the party. They’d all be hunkered down in the stalls next to me noisily heaving their own innards out in supplication to the porcelain gods.

  On the day of the party, the end of the working day for the secretaries and BAs signaled a mass migration to the women’s bathroom for the grand transformation. Most of the women brought either cocktail dresses, evening wear, or other seductive clothing—all of which had the potential to cause me and the other sex-starved young bankers to work ourselves into a hormone-soaked lather. Due to the quantity of hair spray that was applied during the preparation period in each of the women’s bathrooms, it was widely believed that the introduction of an open flame anywhere in the vicinity could prove deadly.

  DLJ’s holiday party was traditionally held at the Rainbow Room, a New York City landmark that takes up an entire floor of 30 Rockefeller Plaza and provides spectacular views of Manhattan. For one evening each year in mid-December it belonged to DLJ. The date of the holiday party was always known well in advance by everyone at the firm. In any sane profession every opportunity would have been made to clear the decks beforehand to enable everybody to attend. This was investment banking, though, and the masters of game theory were at work.

  The more naive of my first-year associate classmates worked hard that week to finish the work that they knew would be coming due later in the week. In their ignorance, they actually believed that doing so would increase their chances of being able to attend the famed holiday party. If, in fact, all the other associates had been operating under the same set of assumptions, and if, in addition, the workload distribution among the associate class had been anything close to fair, the strategy probably would have been a good one. There were smarter, more devious forces at work, however.

  The optimal work strategy leading up to the evening of the holiday party was really no different than the optimal work strategy on any other given day of the year, the stakes were just higher. The naked reality was that there was absolutely no benefit to making an effort to get work done ahead of time. There were two reasons for this.

  First, completion of work well ahead of a deadline simply gave the senior bankers that much more time in which to demand changes or additions to the work that had already been completed. These requested changes were rarely necessary, but there was a pervasive and deep-rooted belief that more analysis was necessarily better analysis. Reams of analysis had become a security blanket for many of the bankers, who had lost the ability over the years to make informed assessments of what was really necessary to get a transaction done. Instead of spending fifteen minutes to draw upon their experience and determine what the critical path for closing a deal was, their reflex was to demand analyses covering every possible contingency in a deal. Delivering work significantly in advance of a deadline, then, usually just resulted in a bout of self-doubt for the senior banker on the deal, which inevitably just resulted in requests for unnecessary additional analysis and more trips back to the word processing department.

  The second reason to avoid completion of any work ahead of time was a result of the vagaries of the staffing process. There was no monitoring of the parity of the workload among the associates. When a managing director needed to staff an associate on a deal, he would begin making the rounds to determine who had the capacity to take on additional work. It made no difference whether a given associate had done two all-nighters over the previous four days, all that mattered was what was on everybody’s plate over the coming couple of days. So, completion of work ahead of schedule exposed the ambitious offender to the likelihood of having to take on even more work. It was an insidious catch-22.

  These two realities resulted in a system in which the only way to maintain a manageable workload was to push everything off to the last possible minute. When a senior banker came looking for an associate, the only acceptable line of defense was to rattle off multiple last-minute projects that had to be completed and that would prevent the associate from working on any new assignments. The downside was a perpetual state of acute urgency that was contributing heavily to our rapid burnout.

  By the time our first holiday party rolled around, some of my associate classmates hadn’t yet figured all this out. These unfortunates were still operating under the mistaken belief that timely completion of their work was the responsible course of action, and that by working hard ahead of time they’d ensure their ability to attend the glorious holiday bacchanal. And so it was that when calls for associates went out on the afternoon of the party, these poor souls were the ones who had to answer the call of duty, while those of us hiding behind our wall of last-minute deadlines were free to pursue our anticipated evening of debauchery.

  Troob and I headed out to the holiday party together that evening, and as we exited
the office on our way to the Rainbow Room we popped our heads into the offices of those we were leaving behind. “Tough break,” we told them. “Too bad you’re gonna miss the blowout.” Inside we laughed, though, for their misery was our small triumph. The staffing process was a zero-sum game, and it was impossible to maintain our own sanity without sending some of our mates to the gallows.

  DLJ’s holiday party was owned by the associates and analysts. We were the ones in the middle—the only ones who knew people all the way up and down the banking hierarchy. The senior bankers lived in their own world, dealing only with other bankers, capital markets people, and company executives. The managing directors gave us our marching orders and expected us to get the work done, but most of them had not processed a deal in years. They couldn’t have found their way to the word processing department or the copy center without a map. As for the support staff, they had no idea who most of the senior bankers were either. They knew them by name, and possibly by appearance or reputation, but they didn’t have any direct dealings with them. They just knew them as the guys who made a lot of money and made life miserable for those of us in the middle.

  The junior bankers were the only ones who played both sides of the system. We knew everybody: the senior bankers, the capital markets people, the BAs, the secretaries, the copy center guys, the frolicsome thespians from the word processing department, and the mail room staff. This became obvious as Troob and I got into the line for the elevators that would take us up to the Rainbow Room. It was a textbook demonstration of the caste system, only we weren’t in India.

  The senior bankers stood in pairs talking quietly with each other. The word processing boys, for their part, chatted gaily among themselves. Half of the copy center guys stood in a group ripping maniacal rhymes with each other, while the other half cast furtive glances at the primping secretaries. Troob and I stood in the middle, directing the verbal traffic and drinking it all in. Small talk with the managing directors? Not an issue. Busting a move with the copy center guys? No problem. We were the Renaissance men, and we had visions of sugarplums dancing in our heads.

  By the time the elevators finally made it up to the Rainbow Room, the party was already in full swing. Tuxedoed waiters met us with trays of champagne as we came off the elevators. Troob and I each grabbed two, chugged them down, and headed out to survey the scene.

  There were a number of different rooms, each with its own distinct personality. Each had multiple bars, fully stocked with top-shelf liquor, and buffets laden down with an impressive collection of seafood, meats, pastries, fresh fruit, and other delicacies. The Grand Ballroom was at one end of the building and featured fifty-foot ceilings and a full orchestra playing big band music. This was where most of the managing directors and upper management were hanging out. Off one end of the Grand Ballroom was another room that ran the entire length of the building. It was filled with small cocktail tables and booths, an intimate setting in which I hoped, by the end of the night, to be engaging any number of passionate young ladies in sensual repartee.

  The main event, though, from the associates’ perspective was taking place in another large ballroom at the opposite end of the building from the Grand Ballroom. In both physical location and atmospheric demeanor, it was about as far from the Grand Ballroom as one could get. The room was filled with analysts, associates, secretaries, and BAs. Instead of big band music, there was a DJ pumping out house music. Instead of muted conversation about professional matters, there was a race to inebriation and hopeful coupling. A buffet dominated one end of the room, and immediately adjacent to it was a large dance floor. The convenience of this setup can’t be overstated. It facilitated every fool’s ability to simultaneously demonstrate his or her disco dancing skills while grabbing slices of roast beef from the buffet and slinging them airborne across the length of the room.

  When I first arrived that evening there was little dancing going on. The junior bankers, BAs, and secretaries were all focused first on getting ripped, so that their subsequent gyrations on the dance floor could be explained away afterward as the result of a drunken frenzy. I didn’t have any problem with this approach to things, as it was a strategy I had often employed myself when hunting for love. There was, however, one sticking point in its implementation. There was a monster bottleneck at the bar. Fortunately for me, I was practiced in the fine art of maximizing my alcohol intake under adverse conditions, and a long line was not an insurmountable obstacle. When my turn at the bar finally came, I ordered four mixed drinks and a couple of beers. What the bartender didn’t realize was that the entire stock was for me. If the price of inebriation was warm drinks with melted ice, so be it.

  My rude, selfish actions were a model for others. The trail I blazed would not be a lonely one. Soon, double-and triple-fisters could be seen leaving the bar with smiles on their faces. I felt warm inside, knowing that I had done my small part to lead the way and bring alcoholic happiness to those who needed it most. The evening was starting well.

  As the crowd continued to pour a river of liquor down its collective throat, the dance floor began to fill up. The spectacle that ensued was solid evidence that if there’s one thing that money can’t buy, it’s rhythm. When it comes to pure foolishness, a room full of drunk investment bankers prancing around a dance floor pushes the limits of the imagination. To this day I pray that it’s a sight the civilized world will never be forced to witness.

  The scene that was unfolding was one only a limited number of the managing directors and senior officers of the firm would ever behold. For the most part, the senior bankers knew better than to penetrate this fortress of unfettered libido in the rear ballroom. There were a few, however, who were willing to try. In general, the MDs who made their way back to our province did so because they were themselves looking to scavenge up a little bit of young love for the evening. The large-scale search for young love by decrepit managing directors was, to my understanding, a yearly occurrence at the holiday party. Unlike many of the other work-related social events on the bankers’ calendar, the holiday party was for DLJ employees only. No wives, husbands, or significant others were allowed. A licentious old managing director, then, could pursue a BA in her mid-twenties for the evening with no worry of the proverbial shit hitting the fan. The only people who would ever know would be the thousands of other DLJ employees who’d seen it happen.

  As for me, I made a few trips out to the dance floor to show off my balletic talents but spent the better part of the evening parked at a table adjacent to the dance floor, knocking back glasses of warm gin and yelling vulgarities to my boys. It was fine entertainment to watch a fifty-year-old managing director and a twenty-seven-year-old associate sandwich a busty banking assistant between them and give her the bump and grind. If nothing else, I knew it would provide me with fodder for some gossip the following day.

  There was a clear point of delineation that night before which I was a somewhat normal, functioning member of civilized society and after which some might have considered me a heathen. Physiologically, I probably crossed the bridge into chaos at some point between my eleventh and twelfth mixed drink. Mentally, though, my deliverance coincided with a spontaneous act of natural vitality, one that seemed entirely appropriate at the time.

  I was sitting in my chair just off the edge of the dance floor mired in a mild alcoholic daze when I felt the heaviness of the last few drinks settling in down below the belt. I happened to be sharing my table at the time with two managing directors, each of whom was mired in his own alcoholic stupor, and one of whom had been a class-A prick to me when we’d worked on a pitch together a couple of weeks before. Given that I was in my late twenties at the time, I’d been potty trained for nearly twenty five years. Maybe it was just that after twenty five years I was sick and tired of having to relieve myself the way that everybody else did. In a toilet, that is. More likely, after only four months on the job at DLJ I was already yearning to piss on the shoes of some of the SOBs who’d been maki
ng my life hell. Whatever the case, as the pressure below increased, I began to contemplate alternative options to trudging to the bathroom for a quick draining of the plumbing. The managing directors on either side of me were no issue. I knew that it would be a stretch for either of them to believe that the associate sitting next to them was tinkling under the table. They’d have to be looking out for it to become suspicious. The table was covered with a white linen tablecloth whose edges hung halfway to the floor—a perfect shield for my lone act of defiance, and I had just finished a bottle of beer—a fitting receptacle for my golden gift. All the pieces were falling into place. I sidled up closer to the table, slipped the empty beer bottle down below, covered my lap with the tablecloth, and relaxed….

  The first five seconds of relaxation were pure bliss. Not only was the physical relief first-rate, but I was performing an act most unbecoming of an investment banker. That made me proud. Someday, I’d be able to tell my kids about this seminal moment in my professional life and they, too, would be proud of their father. As the bottle grew warmer and heavier, I realized that I should have put a little bit more thought into my plan up front. By the feel of things, there were only about two ounces of space left in the bottle. The problem was that there were at least twelve ounces of golden delight left inside of me, and far too much momentum to turn off the spigot. I let the bottle drop to the floor and continued to tinkle unencumbered, showering both the Rainbow Room’s carpet, and the managing directors’ shoes, with my goodness. If either of the managing directors to my sides checked their wing tips upon returning home that evening, they would have noticed a unique speckled pattern covering their lovingly shined shoes. It was my personal tribute.