Last Analyst Standing is Paradise

It’s Friday morning at 9:37 AM. Your alarm goes off. You can’t believe you have to hit the snooze button again - Apple has really fallen off since its heyday. You sleep for another 20 minutes until you’re woken by a text from your associate.

“Did you take PTO today?”

The nerve of some people. She should know by now that you weren’t even home until 3:30 AM last night.

You respond, “Nah I’ll be on in a sec." Thank god it’s a work from home day.

You stumble out of bed, still hungover from the night before, and make your way to your laptop. It takes a couple tries to log in and see that flashing yellow Outlook symbol. It hurts your eyes.

You scroll past 17 useless emails until you open one that actually matters. A bidder just sent a LOI and now, as the last analyst that hasn’t quit, it’s your job to update the bid comparison. Fucking great.

You chug liquid IV and get to work when all of a sudden your phone rings. It’s your associate. She isn’t pissed, she’s just confused. This isn’t typical behavior from you. At least it wasn't when you first started.

You pick up the phone and she immediately spits out, “I guess staying up all night taking shots and doing blow is more important to you than closing this deal?”

You take a moment to ponder her statement. When you started the job you would’ve never let anything get in the way of a deal. Now on your 4th sell-side rep, the extra 10 grand at the end of the year means nothing. The firm is practically paying you to job hunt.

You respond. “Yeah haha, I guess so." What are they gonna do. Fire you?

Taken aback by your sudden boldness, your associate hangs up and sits in solemn silence while she ponders if going A2A was a mistake. Maybe she should have left for the buyside after all.

You go through the motions until the updated bid comparison is ready. At this point, 2 hours of half-baked work from you is worth more than 2 days of sweat-inducing focus from an MBA associate. You look over your work with proud indifference before you click send. 

As you switch to another staffing, you notice your former analyst group chat is popping off with weekend plans.

“Bachelor party in Miami.”

“Baseball game tickets paid for by the company.”

“Round of golf with the girlfriend’s family.”

You grin and imagine what it’s like to have all that free time. You can't wait until that's you. You're only a few interviews away from landing a 40-hours/week LMM PE job, and then only 20 years away from your imaginary carry full vesting. 

You put on an episode of Trailer Park Boys and start eating lunch when your phone buzzes again. It’s your VP. You wonder if you’re going to get chewed out for today's low-effort yet adequate work product.

“Hey Monkey - just checking in to say you’re doing a great job. Keep it up. The group has big plans for you.”

His kind words remind you that you need to prep for your 3 buy-side interviews next week. You open up the practice LBO you started last night before going out.

It feels good to be the last analyst standing. It feels good to be in Paradise.