What's your craziest "hardo" story?

True story but I told someone during application season that, 'Pierce & Pierce' had opened Summer Analyst positions - this person looked it up and came back to me with a link saying, 'where is the application portal?'

I sort of got tag-teamed by a recruit hardo and a couple of HR hardos.

Bank recruiting session at school. MD is giving a presentation. Q&A time. Hardo gets up and says "to what do you owe your incredible success?".  And yes, he emphasized the word incredible like that.  And yes, I think this exact thing appened in Liar's Poker too, all the more reason why hardo boy should've known better.

So I turn to my seat neighbor and quietly (I thought quietly) mumble "oh my god" and roll my eyes. Next thing I know, I see the 3 recruiting girls all staring at me from across the room with their pens out, contorting their necks at various angles like they're trying to see my nametag. I sort of position myself so they can't see it, while trying to convince myself that this isn't happening. But sure enough when I leave the room, one of the recruiting girls stares right at my chest and writes my name down with zero subtlety whatsoever. I did not make the invite list.

Best part, the bank was Credit Suisse.  Lasted longer in the industry than they did. 

I got hit head on by a speeding Chevy Silverado truck traveling on the wrong side of the road while on my bike and (luckily) flew onto the sidewalk with some injuries.  Took the next day off and then went back to work. 

Taking red eye flights from Honolulu to see my dad back to SF, and then taking a taxi from SFO straight to the office in the morning.  Hands shaking because I was so tired, turning on my computer, and banging out an IC memo before the 9am PST deadline. 

Every summer analyst class has one intern everyone remembers. Ours was a kid who had just come over from Beijing. Brilliant technically and unbelievably hardworking, but he wasn't exactly familiar with American business norms.

About a week after training, he got staffed on a live sell-side process for an AI financial services company. Since we were in San Francisco, many of the potential buyers had offices within a few miles of ours. Without telling anyone, he decided he wanted to be the intern hero who increases the chances of closing the deal in a way he saw fit. So he made himself a project.

He built a spreadsheet of every buyer with an office within roughly a 5-mile radius. Before each management presentation or buyer call, he'd print the meeting materials, package them up neatly, include a handwritten note wishing them a productive meeting, sometimes even snacks then spend his own time traveling to the buyer's office to hand-deliver everything the morning of. He'd quietly deliver the materials, come back to the office, and then join the buyer meeting over Zoom like everyone else as if nothing had happened.

Nobody at the bank had asked him to do any of this. In fact, nobody even knew he was doing it.

The whole thing went unnoticed until one buyer casually opened a Zoom meeting by thanking us for the thoughtful delivery of the printed materials and snacks that had shown up at their office that morning. The MD looked completely caught off guard but awkwardly thanked them and moved on. The second the call ended, everyone started trying to figure out who had sent them. They checked with assistants, HR, etc… and nobody had any idea what the buyer was talking about.

That afternoon, the intern approached the MD’s office and proudly confessed it was him and explained that he'd been personally delivering materials to every potential buyer in SF they’ve been in discussions with because he thought it would make a stronger impression and help get the deal across the finish line. HR had to explain why showing up uninvited as an intern to companies offices and leaving handwritten notes and confidential materials was an incredibly bad idea. He was removed from client-facing work for the rest of the summer and didn't receive a return offer.