preface....

I work in a typical Midtown office. With a telescope or a good pair of binoculars, I could peer into thousands of other offices just like mine jutting up from the streets around Central Park South. There is a cast of thirty to forty some-odd characters in my office, which occupies one and a half floors of my thirty three story building. Ninety four percent of them suck ass.

There is a ‘type’ in finance. There is a type in any industry, but while I have met many, many individuals who work in finance and are not ‘the type’, I now work predominantly in a ‘type’ type place. It fucking sucks. I’ll get to the suckiness later, but I feel I need to address the definition of ‘type’ in this instance.

Finance people are the go-getters of the world. They are not the only go-getters mind you, but whether or not you intended to work in finance, once you walk in the door, shit is expected of you. You need to be there, at the top of your game, performing. If you don’t perform, you’re gone. You do whatever it is that you want with your free time, but when you show up on Monday morning, you are expected to perform. Went out way too late and drank too much? TFB. You had better be at your desk and getting shit done. The frequent trips to throw up in the bathroom will be ignored (except for the ribbings and the pekid dog emails), because your ass was in your seat on time.

It is, for the most part, a strict meritocracy as far as talent and production go, and the rewards for performance are large and quite tangible. Add to that, the environment you are in happens to be where people make money. A lot of it. So making money and securing your spot on the escalator of life, investing well and wisely and continuously going for more is pretty much a given. Spending that well-invested and hard earned money is also noted and is almost treated like a pissing contest with who can go to more exotic locations, who drinks the more expensive health craze juice, who wears Louboutin’s more days of the week and who has the more enviable summer home location. And they are keeping score….the type, that is.

Mind you, there are droves of finance professionals who do the normal day of long hours and short lunches and then go about their business in a fairly inconspicuous manner. Those who make a lot of money, but don’t make a big show of spending it lavishly or stupidly, and who don’t treat others - such as those who make less or those from whom they procure goods and services - as if they are the help. But the type….ah, they are some seriously annoying fuckers, let me tell you.

The type come from all different backgrounds in life, meaning the type is not restricted to those from a particular ethnic, religious, or previous socioeconomic background. The type are a creation of the insular world of current and former nerds who made the right moves one way or another and came out on the back of the cash cow. They are kinda skinny for the most part, mostly unathletic, laugh at their own (questionably funny) jokes and whether overtly or covertly, they look down their nose at the rest of the world and are unimpressed by anything. Their former days of un-coolness have made them haughty and pissy and chafingly irritating. They are also looking for anyone else who can possibly do things for them. Anything things. Ie: I need a piece of paper printed out. So rather than hit the quick-print button at the top of the document that I have open, which would then deliver said document to the printer directly behind my chair, I will write you an email and attach the doc and ask you to print it out and then walk over to my desk – interrupting whatever you were doing at the moment – to hand it to me. Or, I will stand 5 feet away from the kitchen and email you from my blackberry to ask for a cup of coffee, even though you are on the complete opposite side of the floor, doing actual work.

Shit like this happens every. single. day. There was a time when I did not deal with these sorts of requests. A time - not long ago - when I was involved in the minutia of firm business and contributed to many different areas of operations. However, due to a catastrophic error I made in taking a risk on an unstable situation, I voluntarily ended my employment at said firm and was out of work for way too long until a ray of light shined on me when I came into my very well-respected firm under the auspice of continuing on the path that I had forged at my previous firm.

Little did I know I was plunging into a pool of ‘types’ and effectively entered an existence where I deal with a seemingly insurmountable amount of ancillary bullshit. I am getting dumber by the day. I get paid more than I did at the first place too, which somehow makes it just a little more weird for me.

So that’s the setup. These are the types I work and deal with everyday now and as this is the lot, the best course of action is, of course, to clandestinely rip it all to shreds for sake of amusement and my sanity. More to come…..