Friday, May 12, 2006
Yesterday in the Financial Times there was a letter from a woman who works on Wall Street. Everyone in her office eats food from vending machines at their desks - that's the culture of the office. She wants to know if she'd be within her rights to pop out for half an hour and eat her lunch somewhere else.
Here are the responses she received:
"Forget about taking nice lunch breaks (at least until you become a VP and only then with clients). If you want to make it in this business, there are only three things you need to know - work, work harder and work even harder (at least until you become a managing director)."
"THIS IS A PROBLEM??This is kids' stuff. You bring good quality food with you and eat when you're hungry. You can NOT go out to lunch if you work on the Street, period. Get used to it or find a new career."
"Do what the rest of us do on the Street: get up around 4:30 and go to the gym to work off the junk food. You're working in an industry where at any minute of the day you could pick up the phone and write the ticket that makes your year, and for that matter, that pays you much better than almost any other job/career you could find. So, bottom line, suck it up and get back to work."
And finally, some sympathetic words from a "Financier, male, 46":
"Lunch isn't for wimps, it's for building client relationships. It is high time you built up your firm's client profile through a well-structured series of working lunches. If anybody looks askance, remind them this is a people business."
Are you weeping yet?
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Here are the responses she received:
"Forget about taking nice lunch breaks (at least until you become a VP and only then with clients). If you want to make it in this business, there are only three things you need to know - work, work harder and work even harder (at least until you become a managing director)."
"THIS IS A PROBLEM??This is kids' stuff. You bring good quality food with you and eat when you're hungry. You can NOT go out to lunch if you work on the Street, period. Get used to it or find a new career."
"Do what the rest of us do on the Street: get up around 4:30 and go to the gym to work off the junk food. You're working in an industry where at any minute of the day you could pick up the phone and write the ticket that makes your year, and for that matter, that pays you much better than almost any other job/career you could find. So, bottom line, suck it up and get back to work."
And finally, some sympathetic words from a "Financier, male, 46":
"Lunch isn't for wimps, it's for building client relationships. It is high time you built up your firm's client profile through a well-structured series of working lunches. If anybody looks askance, remind them this is a people business."
Are you weeping yet?
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