Worst mistake / worst experience getting yelled at

In PE I had a principal who went as far as slamming his keyboard so hard that some of the keys popped out when he was reviewing a revenue build I did. Even after I had marked the questionable SKUs by country in highlights and red text, he still came at me for being "fucking wrong" when I was specifically looking for his guidance. He proceeded to abuse his keyboard and then verbally assault me for not being resourceful and generally not being bright in his eyes. I always consider to this day what would've happened if I really clapped back on him verbally but more so physically by stomping him out.... I also understand being yelled at in times of heat but I can't be okay with real disrespect as OP is. So close to going apeshit on my part...

When I interned at Citi (don’t recommend), I joined a new desk and sent a morning newsflash email like I did on my previous team (the previous team thought it was great). Suddenly a VP on the team screamed my name (loud enough to be heard across the floor). Then proceeded to rip me up, calling me a total idiot, etc, etc. He was also physically shaking the whole time. Weird experience

I've never been yelled at or cursed at thank god. But, getting emails, texts, and calls telling me what what I submitted is nothing close to what they wanted me feel like absolute shit and rightfully so I think. I don't like wasting peoples time and I feel like I lost alot of trust when I submit something wrong. 

This one was 100% my fault, but I massively fucked my Director over when I was a Senior Analyst. He was going on a big vacation with his wife and had just had a newborn so it was like his one chance to unwind for a week that year between work and taking care of the kid. He wanted a CIM done well before he left so he could basically unplug for the week. My dumbass prioritized a few other things ahead of it and didn't get started making real progress on the CIM until the weekend before he was leaving. Dude was fucking ballistic and hazed the shit out of me by marking up and heavily criticizing absolutely everything I did for the next 12 months. Eventually lateraled for other reasons but there's no way the guy doesn't still hate me until this day and he made my life hell for months after that. 

In my defense, the other MDs I was doing work for told me to prioritize other things because they weren't as concerned with preserving the Director's vacation as he was. I shoulda just stayed super late and got his CIM done in the wee morning hours the week before regardless though. Sucks when you have to work until 5AM to accommodate somebody else having an uninterrupted week vacation, but that's not a fight you win as an IB analyst. 

I've never gotten chewed out in person, but I've gotten some fairly aggro emails and messages over the past year (mostly over dumb things, not over any major screwups). It just makes me wonder whether these people are too afraid to expose themselves in front of everyone else on the floor and don't wanna look like an asshole, so they have to hide behind their screens like a coward and send bitchy messages. 

Sometimes you have to stand up for yourself as a man. Not in banking, but I got chewed out on the floor during an internship. I stood right up at my desk and looked him in his eyes. All that BS went quiet then. Too many people in business settings forget that you are an adult male and these interactions can turn violent at any time. Nice to subtly remind them of that

Never been yelled at. Also never been even talked down to except once by an MD that I hung up on.

Set a precedent in the way you speak with people that you're not a pushover and that you bleed how they bleed. Some associates+ came up with analysts that ate more shit than you might be willing to eat, so they think they can play the same game with you, but I've found if you set an early precedent and give the vibe that you won't sacrifice dignity simply to appease corporate structure, people tend to pick on easier prey. Also, keep in mind that the more work you take on and thus shit you eat by overloading yourself, the more people think you're there to serve them rather than cut an equal deal with the team you're on, and the easier of a target you seem for bullies (if you smile each time you get another shit staffing vs. pushing back when you need to despite the team knowing you're dying under the workload, why wouldn't some people think you've got a higher threshold for being fucked with and assume they can press you with no pushback?).

Especially if you generally do good work, are highly responsive and / or have someone championing you come review time, and even if not, you'll be okay. Don't puss out.

As far as swinging on someone, bait their swing first. Then it's open season.

Got publicly yelled at for first time today happy Friday 

Have been verbatim been asked “what Fucking retard made this slide”

Also was once told “you’re the biggest weakness on every team you’re a part of” which was pretty bad I guess. Both comments were from the same douche. Dude was kind of an outlier. Rest of the team was pretty cool

As an intern, I got bitched at heavily by an associate that accused me of overriding a pitch deck even though she was the last one to save. I told her that I can try to redo the slides that weren’t saved but she told me to get out of the deck and not touch anything. One of the main reasons why I didn’t return to the group lol.

Wow obviously selection bias here but is this shit just normal? Is this a Wall Street thing I feel like other industries wouldn’t tolerate this?

I was an unpaid intern at a relatively prestigious capital structure arbitrage fund. I got the gig through my business school because the fund manager is an alum and he regularly recruits from my program. From day 1, it was absolutely obvious that I did not belong there and added zero value (I was told as much on day 1). I somehow got the idea to create automated tear-sheet templates that would highlight relevant credit metrics through the Bloomberg Excel plug-in. I was obsessed with fine-tuning this template.

One day, the fund manager had an actual task for me: he wanted me to plot a yield curve. It seemed simple enough. Unfortunately, I inverted the axes of the curve (had term on y-axis and yield on x-axis). The fund manager was very agitated and demanded that I correct the error. Rather than simply agreeing to do it, I told him that I was too busy working on my template. His response was something like, "I've never had an urge to fire an unpaid intern until now."

Sad to say it but I've gotten yelled at many times. I don't recall any turning particularly personal, but have certainly gotten harsh commentary. Some ones from the top of my head:

"What the fuck do you want from me?" -- a screwup I made 6 months into my job knowing nothing, this one rattled me

"I'm tearing out what little hair I have left reading what you sent me" -- 3 months into my job. This one felt a bit unfair because of the dozens of things I checked, he caught the 1 thing that while I checked, I didn't appreciate was important to flag (lack of knowledge vs. laziness)

"I can fire you right now and find a replacement in a month. I don't need you" -- angrily said after I asked about the state of my promotion which my boss had soft-promised. I asked whether he'd spoken with senior folks to make it happen (he hadn't after 6 months) and he blew up at me to cover the fact that he reneged on it. Out of everything, this one pissed me off the most 

Anyway, I put up with it my first 2yrs (super stressful) because I was also learning a ton and overall he was willing to teach so it was an acceptable tradeoff. These days, I'm 4yrs into my career and I'm not willing to put up with it. My 1st year he blew up at me maybe 1x every week / 2nd year about 1-2x a month / 3rd year - 1x every two months / 4th year - 1x a quarter. Regardless by this point even though it happens less, I'm very competent at my job (have been promoted once already) and each time he does it usually pisses me off. At this point, it's not that I'm not doing this right, it's just I'm not doing things in a way that he himself likes. He's allowed to have his preferences, but I'm realizing I've learned >90% of what he knows / has to teach and the rest I can do on my own.

Working to pass L3 and get my CFA charter. After that going to aggressively polish up my interview skills, put together some pitches and reach out to every headhunter I know to try & lateral out of here into an analyst position. If not, I could always try to make it here but I'm realizing I'm not happy working for this guy. Sadly analyst jobs are scarce, I have a specific city I'm trying to lateral to (more of a T2 finance city for AM -- i.e. not NYC / Boston / LA), and we're headed into a downturn -- so the stars really need to align. 

Not the point of this post but man -- I miss high school & college where things were way simpler. Anyone reading this who is in those stages of life, treasure them. There is so much BS that comes into your life after you start working. I never appreciated this as much in those days (had a wonderful time in both as I recall). Hope you all do

Del.

Going to bring up an old trauma that made me resign from my previous firm,

The bad thing about the this experience is that the fact i still to this day did not know if i did the right thing or not. A little background, my former MD was a banking lawyer for 12 years at one of the "Golden Circle" firms, so take that as you may...

--- start

1. The Tale of the Missing Document

We were working on a RX deal and we are just preparing to submit a chapter 11 equivalent of docs to the district court some 400 miles away from our firm. My MD decide to leave town early and handed all of the docs responsibility to me. Mind you that this is my first actual RX case that has been gone to district court, i usually only handle debt restructuring proposals to lenders/bondholders and never went to court over this.

I told my MD that i am unfamiliar with this process and has asked for guidance on what should i prepare. He then proceeded to tell me to "figure it out", so i ask our in house counsel what should i do. Long story short, there was a difference in opinion on what documents should be submitted to the courts and i went with the in house counsel way of doing things which was foregoing a letter basically saying that we have a sponsor willing to support our client through this restructuring/bankruptcy process.

The day of submission arrived, and my MD went ballistic via call and email. He was unapologetic to say the least and proceeded to told me to "Do whatever the fuck you can to send me this x document by tomorrow". I searched hard and long for same day mailing services to no avail (mind you, this was at the height of covid in my country). I felt so guilty and i was volunteering to drive ~400+ miles to hand-deliver the document myself. But senses came back to me and i just send them via "express" mail. Which would take approx. 3 days to arrive.

The document was never needed, and the courts didn't care if we submit those letter or not..

 2. "I will kill you if you made a mistake with..."

We we're working on an acquisition deal of 4 companies (which we would merge into 1 single entity). And the deal requires an exotic (at least to me) transaction structure involving offshore accounts, orphan SPV and trust structure. I was completely overwhelmed with the complexity of the transaction and documents that came with this deal. As per usual my MD (and even my VP) told me to use my brain to figure it out. My so-called "mistake" was actually pretty simple and still to this day i think was harmless (though please CMIIW). I misunderstood one of the potential agents/service providers proposal regarding an incorporation of an offshore SPV, i thought the fees already included a legal team they procure in-house, but apparently it didn't. I compiled the list of proposal submitted by the agents/service providers and blast them to my MD and my MD's boss (my firm designate this as SEVP), and the team.

He quickly replied asking if this services and fees already includes the legal fees of the local law firm. I naively replied with "Based on what i read, yes. But please let me know if this wasn't the case." Then all hell broke loose...

He replied all (ccing some several high level management that was interested with this deal) with "I didn't know that you still could not do a simple task such as reading a proposal. The proposal CLEARLY did not includes the legal fees i asked earlier you idiot. Note this, i will kill you if you made a mistake with money as this is someone's livelihood we are talking about!"

I went back and see if i miss anything within the proposal, and not long he replied again stating i was benched for another team member (who also was an ex-banking lawyer) in front all of the teams involved with this deal. All of these for missing out on legal fees (which eventually we received) of around ~10k EUR......

Let me remind you that this deal is still on deep due diligence stage and not even close to submission of bidding offer. The deal was scrapped because my MD got cocky with the bid and the targetco management was so offended that the decided to went the IPO route...

--- end

There are a lot more horror stories i could tell, but it would take a whole thread. Ended up leaving the firm abruptly after i received an offer, even without the minimum mandated 1-month notice. Since i left, the team morale was an all time low and all them plan to resign the minute their bonus deposited. 

Delete

where do you draw the line from being yelled at and disrespect?  Athletes with high egos especially later in their career can't seem to distinguish and take any little piece of criticism as disrespect.

Also played D1 football and can feel your pain on this one. I just internalized it and started working harder. I will one day buy out his firm and turn it into a mcdonalds due to his comment. Stay strong man and just go to work. Godspeed brother. 

Chad called his dad and had this MD fired. Best route imo

During my first ever banking internship a few years ago at a MM, I had a project that all interns were meant to complete by the end of the summer with help from your analysts and other team members up to VPs and MDs.

My specific bank had zero diversity and given that I was the only visible minority on the team, I could tell from the first day I was not welcome by a lot of the analysts and associates but the VPs and above seemed pretty chill though, they weren't hostile, just completely ignored me. 

I was pretty much abandoned during the process while other interns were handheld by their teams and even other industry groups within IB. As the summer progressed I saved my analysts ass one night when he completely forgot to do some tasks I just happened to be working on in free time, he warmed up after and decided to help me on my project which was how it was meant to be anyway. 

As he was looking over my project the associate on my team walks past and asked what were doing, we explained we were walking on the project and without saying a word she whips out her phone and calls my MD and says something to the effect of:

"Can you please let HR know that the interns work is not his own, I asked him to take his time and solve it on his own so I'm shocked he is asking the analyst for answers" then walks off without saying a word to me.

At this point I hadn't even met my MD in person yet. But I remember feeling a strong sense of shame and resentment towards her after that, the analyst still helped though and a sizeable amount of the interns couldn't answer questions when they were doing the final presentation, I think because it was handed to them they did not understand the ins and outs of what they were presenting to the senior staff. I got the offer but didn't return, I only wanna work for larger banks and companies from now on, i can't deal with that much hostility in my workplace especially when it isn't a large multinational with checks and balances. 

As horrible as it is, it can be somehow of cathartic to have a dick of a boss that you can turn off emotions and just hate. Have had a few at my old firm. Nowadays, all my coworkers are generally nice / friendly (won't yell or get visibly angry), but will fuck you sideways with work so you don't even really know whether you like them or hate them...

Alright, I still to this day don't view it as a mistake but boy was I screamed at and also threatened multiple times to be fired. It put me on a BS Performance Improvement Plan.

I was a VP at a MM Secondaries shop. My principal recently left so there was a gap between VPs and MDs.

One MD, who happens to be the founding partner was working on this deal with me. This MD was notorious for throwing staff under the bus and was more a figure head/relationship guy than real investor.

The entire deal was a nightmare - the seller we were buying from kept changing terms and just going back on their word, legally, commercially, everything. The seller went as far as to literally tell me to F off via email (notoriously aggressive group) and I wasn't tolerating that so I told him by email that his language was inappropriate and unacceptable and that I don't want to be spoken to like that - that's all I said. The seller decides to go above me to my MD and my MD freaks out on me (not the seller).

The amount of swearing and BS abuse I tolerated internally and externally was not worth it. My mistake was signing the performance imrpovement plan - I need a job due to mortgage etc and didn't have enough time to lateral. For 1 year I heard nothing but constant shit from this MD about this deal (which happened to go through just fine).

It got physical once for me. My MD and I got along really well, he was definitely a mentor to me. Sounds corny but think of Harvey/Mike from Suits.

At that time, he was still a Director and was meant to be promoted after having not made the cut the previous year. We were working on a live bond deal that was pretty important, the client wanted to come into our office when we were pricing the transaction. I went to a separate room to set up the conference dial-ins, the CFO was already there. We started chatting about how the deal was going, nothing controversial. 

My boss walks in, comes from behind and punches me in the back of my shoulder. Wasn't a hard punch, but wasn't a soft peg either. I was pretty shocked by this and just walked out. It didn't really hurt, I'm not frail but I was extremely disappointed in him and was genuinely sad that I thought less of him now. But I was also pretty pissed at that level of disrespect.

He later came back to our desks and told me I was out of line to talk about the deal because I didn't have all the details. That was kind of BS, I was a relatively senior Associate and I don't really talk out of my ass to begin with. I went to him, punched him in the shoulder (same way and place) and said something along the lines of "...just because you're more senior doesn't give you the right to treat people like shit...". We talked it out later that day and he apologized, but it was never the same again.