* Yes, the title is from a Kelly Clarkson song. I’m not ashamed.
During the summer before my senior year of college, I did an internship at a large investment bank in New York. To get the job, I professed my love for DCF models and calculating betas. I made myself sound like the most interesting person in the world: “I enjoy reading Reuters.com, making data tables in Excel, and taking nonlinear walks along the beach. I don’t always drink beer, but when I do, I prefer A&W. That company’s got quite the cash flow.”
I suppose it worked. I accepted an offer from a prestigious bank in midtown Manhattan, working in equity research for the summer of 2006.
I thought I would need a few weeks to determine whether I’d find my calling in finance. But after just a few days, I already hated it. I hated the dress code, the formality, the hierarchy, and the Big Brother-ness of it all. I hated the work, which teetered between mundane and soul-sucking. Most days, I just felt like a highly-paid supermarket cashier, plugging in numbers and being rude. I quickly learned that there were three tenets of business: 1) Jerkiness is a coveted personality trait… 2) “Fuck” can be used as a noun, verb, adjective, adverb, insult, directive, and occasionally, term of endearment… 3) Lastly, in order to fit in, you have to be strongly opinionated about HR, women leaders, and taxes. (The opinion must also be negative, although you can “support them in concept.”)
Throughout the summer, I felt like I was part of a giant sociological experiment, where you throw fifty impressionable college kids into (what I would consider) the worst job in the world (except, maybe, dairy farming) and record their reaction. The people who loved it also seemed to hate it as well, but they had all accepted that hatefulness was part of the job, and therefore it was palatable. And for a summer at least, it was palatable, especially given the fact that we were well-paid, well-fed, and living in New York with an unlimited reign over the four-letter word dictionary.
Nearing the end of my two-month stint, I had to meet with HR (ugh) to discuss full-time opportunities. The bank was well-known for only hiring first-years from its summer intern class. Even though I knew, deep down, that I didn’t want to do this for two full years, I still wanted to get an offer. I still wanted to have a job lined up, even though I swore I wouldn’t take it. I wouldn’t. Even though it was a prestigious firm. I wouldn’t. Even though I’d built up a strong network. I wouldn’t. Even though I’d get to live comfortably in New York City. I wouldn’t. Or would I?
During my session with HR, I was bombarded with a barrage of questions that I hadn’t prepared for: “What are your three biggest weaknesses? What would you title your autobiography? Which historical figure do you identify with most?” To the last question, I blurted out “Abraham Lincoln,” after a long, awkward silence in which I contemplated whether Chairman Mao had any redeeming qualities. (For some reason, he’s the first “historical figure” that pops into my head.) After trying to justify to HR that Abe was a perfectly legitimate answer (“I see myself in him through his honesty…his passion for humanity…his log cabin roots”), I realized that I would always be better at BS-ing about Lincoln than modeling cash flows.
So when I got my full-time offer, I turned it down. I took another job, still in finance, but at a media company where I could learn to hone my creative talents. And now, two years later, as I’m coming to the end of my term, I have to make another decision — whether to stay in my backup plan, or to go ahead and do something crazy, like compare myself to Abraham Lincoln. Like eschew a stable finance career for the peripatetic life of a starving writer. I’m leaning towards the latter, because I’m young, hungry, and ready to give it a real shot. And as they say, it will work itself out in the end…
After all, the full-time offer I turned down, in the winter of 2006, was from Lehman Brothers.
My co-worker shrugs. “Maybe they won’t let people outside because they’re afraid they’ll jump.” The building is owned by a financial company, of course.
The friends’ mailing list is sacred: within its archives, you will find serious discussions, biting arguments, soliloquies, confessions, rambles, insults, and of course, gossip. On my mailing list, some recent topics of conversation included: Halloween costumes, celebrity baby names, spelling, becoming fat because your friends are fat, thoughts on academic freedom/torture, and Miley Cyrus. Naturally.
21 of the 25 ads were taken out by women looking for men (only 1 was for a man looking for a woman… the 3 others were dating service ads)
Someone told me that the costume could be offensive. But, it’s just Halloween… This is the night where ninjas, pirates, and sexy nurses come out in droves. This is the night where 12-year olds can turn into their favorite promiscuous pop star. So, I don’t think that dressing up as The Biggest Loser is offensive… just reflective of American society. I won’t even give any lectures on Type 2 diabetes or the spread of childhood obesity. All I plan to do is pass out candy from inside my belly.
As interns, we would only be at the company for ten weeks… but apparently, we all needed a lengthy lecture about appropriateness in the workplace. The sexual harassment talk is akin to the private parts talk that mothers give to their five-year olds: “If someone tries to hug you, run away… No one should ever touch you there, except for the doctor… If someone does try to touch you, tell the ombudsman immediately!” We listened to the woman outline the company’s sexual harassment policies, then went off to happy hour next to a strip club for drinks with our new managers.
So, given my extensive immersion in the rules of sexual harassment, I figured that other places would have similar policies. Like CBS. Or, ESPN. Or… the White House. Then again, who can say no to 
Clearly, sexual harassment education isn’t working. We’re still seeing predatory white-haired males hit on chubby young females. We’re still dealing with desperate, ladder-climbing women trying to leapfrog from cubicle to front office.
On my way to work, I pass by a disturbing billboard in Times Square. Of course, there are hundreds of billboards in Times Square, usually featuring Hawaiian Tropic girls and Calvin Klein models in their underwear. This one, however, has a magnified picture of a bed bug. It appears that bed bugs have become such a big problem that they warrant their own Times Square billboard. I love New York.
Is it cruel to wish bad things onto other people? …Probably. But, what if that other person is Alex Rodriguez? I have an animated discussion with a co-worker about misfortunes that could befall A-Rod: A-Rod breaks his leg. A-Rod gets hit by a taxi. A-Rod gets a shard of glass in his eye after an aggressive mirror kiss… We’re not bad people. But we’d just rather cheer for the Taliban than for the Yankees.
Of course, wannabe celebrities take it even further: 
a gentleman jogging in a thong onesie
feces of all kinds, including, but not limited to: pigeon, dog, rat, human, and hybrid combinations of all four
solicitors in the subway
Every bad show has a breaking point, where it turns into an abusive, sick-inducing pile of garbage. The O.C. went downhill once Marissa became a lesbian. Grey’s Anatomy kicked the bucket once Izzy started sleeping with the ghost of her dead husband. And The Hills was always terrible, although it became even more unbearable once Kristin showed up. 
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