Biggest Hardo Stories

I know most of you grinded through college to get that SA gig and then worked very hard from there to get an FT offer. But you probably came across that one guy who stayed till 3:00 am every day even if he didn't have to just to show face or try to prove he was the most committed of your class. 

So, who were the biggest hardos you came across in your years in banking? 

 

Knew a guy from my SA in London. He would regularly use the entire meal stipend to load up on personal groceries for the office (mainly power bars and caffeinated drinks), and would pop adderral consistently. For the first week he tried taking over people's work ("I'll do that model for ya!"), and even slept in the bathroom stall ("10 minute commute home, bruv? No thanks!"). The staffer even recognized his antics and told him to get some proper rest, though that didn't quite stop him. Eventually he passed away from "natural causes" in the men's stall. 

 

Not sure if this classifies as “hardo” but thought I’d share since it’s entertaining af. Had a friend complete an internship in college, and during his time he managed to:

- burn down his kitchen 

- got kicked out/ banned from one of NYC’s best clubs for fighting a dude for staring at the models he brought to his table (and then fighting the bouncer)

- spent his entire $40k-50k in internship earnings on miscellaneous things, which the CFO caught wind of and he became known as “the kid who spent all his money”

He’s a smart dude who will do well in life, but definitely a stereotypical old-school style banking hardo imo

 

Not banking but undergrad. I went to a lower tier state school, a place where a lot of kids are grinders, first generation to go to college, etc. This one kid in our macroeconomics class would wear a full suit and carry a briefcase to class every day. Someone in class finally asks him one day where he works. Kid just responds: "School is my job". Absolute hardo.

Few players recall big pots they have won, strange as it seems, but every player can remember with remarkable accuracy the outstanding tough beats of his career.
 

If you looked up the word "Hardo" in the dictionary this man's picture would be next to the definition

 

Damn that's kinda a dick move, dude's not even a hardo, just wanted to enjoy some ac LOL

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.
 

We were once working on an analysis of potential merger targets for a client. The potential target had way higher CapEx relative to its closest public comp, which was an identical business in pretty much everyway. The difference was pretty substantial (CapEx as % of Revenue consistently 20%+ vs. 5-10% for the comp). He wanted to know how the research/investor community thought about the differences in capital intensity. We told him that equity research analysts never brought it up. He didn't believe us and didn't think the client would believe us either. So he made us pull (purchase) every single research report by a major wall street brokerage from the last 10 years that (1) was about the target company or (2) was about the competitor but mentioned the target by name in the report. He made us open every single report (thousands and thousands of reports) and control f for "CapEx", "Capital Expenditure" and a few other variations of the word to confirm that no research analyst talked about the target's capital intensity and then made us put together an excel list of every research report we went through as back-pocket support just in case the client pressed us on this.

As a follow-up: (1) the client never asked us about this and (2) the difference had to do with a difference in accounting policies related to capitalizing software development costs and not anything fundamentally different with the businesses.

The guy is an absolute lunatic    

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