Most Absurd/Lazy Request from Associates?
Thought it'd be interesting share some story with lazy associates and beneficial to people who have a choice when selecting groups. (FT/Lateral)
I'll start. When I was at Citi's global industrials, after my associate sent my work to MD and he replied "associate's name, no further comments, just delete page a,b and c (from pdf)."
My associate forwarded it to me an hour later and said "can you fix it, thanks."
Go get my food from the lobby
Must have been a 1st year MBA Associate
Isn't it so that everyone, and most importantly, you have the latest version?
My DUMB and LAZY associate wanted us to HAVE a few DRINKS on a FRIDAY EVENING, but I had a LEAGUE OF LEGENDS tournament, so I DITCHED this NORMIE
SB'd. next time you should scream at him like Tyler1 does
^you should have unleashed your autistic gamer side
Heck yeah brother, my amerimutt genes and my rampant autism are only some of the reasons why I have finally reached Silver III after all these years :)
Someone seems to be perma bronze lol
At Citi. The most lazy request I got from an associate was "no comments from me. please change the name of the file to xxxxx then send back to me".
I love this
Sometimes I ask the most junior analysts to do mundane things like this so they know to do it themselves in the future
If it’s firm policy to name files a certain way and the analyst didn’t do it, I might ask him / her to change the file name to the proper formatting and send around
With all the current buzz about Citi on here I am for some reason not surprised
Glad to know I'm not the only one who has experienced this. Infuriating.
Yea pretty classic “Please can you vF and send back” 😅
My MD always, always does this. Any minor changes like (delete 1 word and resend it to me in email) come to me. I don't even find it annoying anymore. It's a bit strange but he got me used to it? I assume he keeps folders in Outlook so it's somehow easier for him to have the final version on email? He never does changes himself.
I'm not in IB yet but he's ex IB MD.
I think writing other people’s emails comes high up on the list, in particular the short ones. We were working together with another bank on a deck for a deal last year and an associate, let’s call him Greg, asked me to go through the last draft that the analyst of our joint bookrunner had sent over. Having gone through the draft I sent him an email and said that we have no further comments and that it looked good. He asked me to prepare an email that he could forward, and so I did. He forwarded it to the entire deal team at Bank B:
«Hi Greg,
Just forward this:
Hi Bank B,
We are now done reviewing the document and have no further comments. Well done!
Best regards, Greg»
Lol classic. My associate has been calling me to ask me to ask another analyst or even associate or VP in another team/bank to do something. I am like how about you just cut me from this step so we all save some time?
This is my investment banking pet peeve!
You sure he’s not an MD? Lol
.
isn't that pretty normal? i'm so used to it by now lol
Not sure if I’m getting something wrong here...but what you mentioned and what mentioned above are normal to me...I’m literally doing it all the time, e.g. rename the files, delete several pages, draft emails, send xx emails, call the counsel, call other professional parties......is it usual or just me...?
MD requested broker reports on company XYZ.
Associate forwarded me the request and asked me to delete all the disclaimers in-between reports manually.
So that my MD's mighty hands wouldn't have to flip through so many pages.
This is pretty standard.
Yup. Tedious but not unheard of.
Constantly getting asked to write emails for my VP's. Mainly 2 of them, and of those 2, mainly 1 of them. Holy fuck dude, just send it yourself. This douche would rather wait a few hours until I've taken care of higher priority items to write his emails rather than just typing them out himself.
Mid tier BB. VPs / associates in my group are the laziest people I have met. They will ask us to draft emails so that they can send, be on a chain with just them and the client and ask us to check calendars / send invites, and so much more. This is on top of the fact that they give comments that never matter / are overturned and literally have an aneurysm when they have to open up PPT or excel, and this is all while the analysts do everything and are constantly jammed. And yes, they are obviously all Post - MBA people. The A2As in my group respect the shit out of
On point with the post-MBA comment. The best is when they volunteer to do work for MDs / Directors and send “can you handle emails” - literally makes my blood boil
Thinking about this has already suffocated me...
must be Citi
i'm at Citi so i'd know haha
This is very common
I was in the middle of screen sharing during a pitch and my associate on a live deal hits me up multiple times and Skype and calls me several times about adding someone to the data room. He could've added and deleted multiple people to the dataroom during the time he spent trying to chase me down.
Dude holy shit i get this too many times. I'll be screen sharing for 3+ hours going through an operating model with another client and my VP will ping me nonstop / get upset when I don't respond. This is after telling him in the morning that I will likely be unresponsive during this review session. VPs do not listen.
can you please send an email to saying [ ]
+++
[entire email body of text]
+++
bro you could have literally done it yourself in the time it took you to write it to me
Some context may help here. I occasionally do this with the analysts that I work with because I want them to get some shine with the client/MD but there may be some nuance or detail that I know about that needs to get across to the client/MD. My MD does this to me too, which I’m completely ok with. However, usually I don’t micromanage word for word and I just say “hey, please email those materials to Client ABC and let’s just make sure to include XYZ fact/stat/info”. This changes case by case, analyst by analyst (younger associates as well), how close they are to the knowledge that the VP has passed down the line etc.
To some of the comments above, I’ve never had an analyst type out an email just for me to send it I don’t think, that’s dumb or I’m missing something that other associates know. If an analyst types the email, they send it. If they’ve done 90% of the work, they get the credit. We obviously try to coordinate some correspondence so clients aren’t getting bombarded by too many people, but that’s easily handled without having someone type a 3 minute email for you.
Haha yeah that sometimes happen. But agree with the reply that sometimes people want you to get the credit, or train you to sending emails at the beginning, which is not bad. Not time efficient though.
yeah the context is i was just trying to be funny lol
in fact i've actually thought about this, wondering why he's asking us to do that and one of the reasons was like you said for some visibility, but also i think it's a kind of training/practice on how to write good emails etc. not unhappy about it at all
Worst ones are:
MD sends an outline to assoc -> assoc forwards to me without reading it, saying can you take first crack thx
Reading all of these comments makes my blood boil, and I’m getting awful flashbacks from my S&T and IB days. You guys work with a bunch of lazy assholes. Though I’m curious if there’s still as much screaming and emotional abuse nowadays.
Some of my faves from my BB M&A days. Some of these aren't lazy, but are instead overly asinine:
"Can you pls print and bind the attached call notes for me? Thx" - Second Year Ass.(hole) | Is that really necessary...? Printed and bound call notes for you to read on your Uber home from IT and accounting diligence calls...? The printer is also literally right next to your desk bud, you could have printed and grabbed them yourself in the time it took you to send the email... And bound? Sorry but I'm not wasting mine or print services time to bind fucking call notes of all things for you
"Can you pls rename the files in this drive according to x structure? I know only you will be looking at them but want to be organized a certain way in case I need to get in there. Thx" - Different Second Year Ass.(hole) | Ooook... let me take time out of my day from the actual live deal work I have to appease your OCD and neuroticism for the 0.0001% probability you decide to open a file yourself.
"Can you pls print this draft and Uber it to my apartment for me to mark up? Home printer is out of ink. Single sided. Thx" - Boomer Managing Douchebag allergic to digital iPad mark-ups | It's midnight my man. This is for a pitch that is over a week away. I won't turn your comments until the morning anyway, when you will be back in the office already, so do I really need to make this trip to the UES that is in the complete opposite direction of my apartment? I guess I'll do it...
"Can you pls start sensitizing the dataroom?" - Freshly minted Managing Douchebag | Literally what even is this request? Yes, this was an actual request, word for word, that I received from a real BB M&A MD. I just look at him dumbfounded. Oh, not to mention there were no actual financial files in the dataroom yet at that point, mostly employee contracts/legal info, etc. Want to put some thought into what you want chief?
"Can you compile the latitude/longitude coordinates of every one of TargetCo's gas stations in this state? Need coordinates down to minutes and seconds. Take screenshots of each station as well and compile into well-formatted deck. Pls have asap, thx" - Micromanaging Director | Bruh. I get why we are doing this, but this is the extreme of tedium. Target has too many to count, this is going to be an all-day task and monumentally fuck me on all of my other workstreams. Now I will have other deal teams pissed at me I can't work on their stuff.
"Can we change the border and number formats from x to y? Also, can you make those column widths exactly 12.5? Can you use RGB: 12/33/57 instead of 11/32/56?" - Vice Pussboi, circa 330am, standing over my shoulder giving me formatting comments in a model (NOT an output, the actual model itself) that is internal use only while delaying me from creating the actual outputs for a deck that needs to go to the client by 7am | Do I even need to comment on how fucking dumb this is?
Bruh, I would just say no in his face and risk being fired rather than do this shit. Besides, what is he going to do, fire me in a live deal? Pussyass MD can´t catch this brotha.
For the gas station request, do you not have MAKS (IB support team in India)? This is something I would give to them and they'd have it in the morning, I'd just clean up formatting.
We did but they were horribly unreliable, always had to check and fix their work, etc. Was often faster to just do it ourselves. This was also an asap request, was actually originally from the client. If I recall correctly, the goal was to see where there was overlap to see how many stations they could potentially close. Honestly, this was probably the most "normal" request I listed, but does go to show how mundane and monotonous some of the requests you have to field as an IB analyst are.
Call them to let them know something is done and in their inbox. Literally cannot even take the time to glimpse at their phone when the email alert comes through.
Honestly, these stories aren't that bad. I've never had a superior tell me stuff like this. The worst is when you have to assign work to subordinates that blow. They fuck everything up and send you back Excel models that look like ass and don't work and not only do you have to fix the model, but you have to educate their mistakes. I think WSO just has a bunch of rockstars that are better than the general population.
if a junior messes smth up and you have to help them out, that is part of your job duty. if they do not learn from you and continually make the same mistakes then fair enough I guess
In addition to the above which I was absolutely a victim of as analyst, one of the worst one was an associate who refused to dial into calls and forced me to "patch her in" every single time. Doesn't sound that bad but imagine every call you have to dial in and then receive that condescending text saying "patch me in" because he didn't want to physically dial in.
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