Funniest

I was on a conference call with my associate and various other coverage teams, there were around 20 people on the line at the time and we were waiting for a few more people to join before starting. My associate, not wanting to miss out on the call, put on his headset and left the desk. I assumed he was going to get a coffee or something as it was due to be a fairly long call.

About a minute later someone was making distinct grunting noises and you could hear splashes of water. I looked across at my associate's headset port and saw he wasn't on mute, and realised that around 20 of us were listening to him take a shit. Another associate on the line quickly asked if everything was ok, and I think with most of us realising what was going on, began laughing. I muted his mic and luckily no one, except for me, knew it was him.

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NA123:
I was on a conference call with my associate and various other coverage teams, there were around 20 people on the line at the time and we were waiting for a few more people to join before starting. My associate, not wanting to miss out on the call, put on his headset and left the desk. I assumed he was going to get a coffee or something as it was due to be a fairly long call.

Pretty much same thing happened at my Bank..

About a minute later someone was making distinct grunting noises and you could hear splashes of water. I looked across at my associate's headset port and saw he wasn't on mute, and that around 20 of us were listening to him take a shit. Another associate on the line quickly asked if everything ok, and I think with most of us realising what was going on, began laughing. I muted his mic and luckily no one, except for me, knew it was him.

Pretty much had the same thing happen at my Bank with one small difference....

We were on a department wide call, there must've been AT LEAST 100+ people on the call. Someone called in from their cell and went to the bathroom, forgot to hit mute and flushed the toilet... everyone heard it lol.

Post-call, the entire talk of the office was "did you hear someone flush the toilet on the call" haha

 

The MD for the sell-side advisor in a $1+ billion transaction kept calling us by the name of another PE firm which was also competing for the buy. No one on his team said anything and it took over 10 minutes for him to casually switch to our real name.

 

Not a conference call, but an earnings call for a S&P 500 company. The CEO had just announced a 'positive' development that the street looked pretty poorly on. (The stock dropped >5% on the announcement) The first analyst asked his question, and the CEO gave a vague answer dancing around the question. As soon as the second analyst's phone was unmuted for his question everyone could hear "bullshit answer" over the phone. I'm not sure how the analyst felt, but the CEO clearly had egg on his face, and we were rolling in the isles laughing.

The only difference between Asset Management and Investment Research is assets. I generally see somebody I know on TV on Bloomberg/CNBC etc. once or twice a week. This sounds cool, until I remind myself that I see somebody I know on ESPN five days a week.
 

I used to call into these conference calls maybe once a month where there would be our entire group on the phone. So a few hundred up to a thousand people. They used to have an old school conference call setup where you didn't need special access to 'talk' on the phone. So the people who constantly forgot to hit mute would be doing odd stuff in their house as we were largely a remote community, or you'd hear dogs barking or something.

But, one day, I just remember this real funny exchange of this dude on the call with his wife. It was like a scene out of 'the break up' (Jennifer Anniston / Vince Vaughn). Dogs are barking already and the call leader who was a Partner (dude made $800K - $1.5M) in my group trying to crack the whip. He's all like:

partner, nicely: 'who has their phone off mute? please mute we can hear your dogs barking'

then barking continues to the point where you hear someone has arrived home. Its his wife. We are hearing everything on this call and for some reason the dude isn't listening to the partner trying to tell him to mute it.

so dogs elevate barking and you hear someone walk through the door. He was like 'hey Linda' or something and then was doing something else and she was like unpacking groceries ...

--- I like never pay attention to conference calls at all unless I'm presenting numbers or something - but this was intriguing to me. Meanwhile people are presenting slides and shit and you can just hear this activity brewing in this dude's kitchen.

this guy must have seen what she got from the store and was all like

'is that all you got from the store?'

She was like 'yeah, you didn't tell me to get anything'. He was like 'but I talked to you when you were in the store and said I was hungry'. He said - 'you implied you were going to pick some stuff up and cook tonight like you usually do.' At this point the partner on the call has given up trying to stop this so it just kept going ... PPT presentation and this kitchen scene.

She's all like 'Bill, I never said I was going to cook tonight and you can make something for yourself.' Then this guy starts saying he's had a long day too at the office and shit while he is on the fucking call. hahaha what the fuck....

I wasn't even paying attention to the presenter and slides at all, I was totally into this dude going off about random shit in the kitchen and they couldn't mute him for some reason and for the whole hour this presentation was basically 80% content from the presenter and 20% pitter patter random hilarious married couple shit going on that literally hundreds of people were listening to.

They finally fixed the phone system to have a moderator and special request to 'talk' during concrete times in these group calls with 500 people or something for more control.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

Company was shit-talking us in a foreign language.

I happen to know said foreign language.

They apologized profusely and offered to take me out to dinner.

I declined.

Currently: future neurologist, current psychotherapist Previously: investor relations (top consulting firm), M&A consulting (Big 4), M&A banking (MM)
 

Not as spicy as the rest of these stories, but conference calls can sometimes really drag on and it's easy for you to zone out and miss important bits.

I was once on a project call where we were the debt adviser to a consortium on a university student accommodation deal This call lasted 3h and they were discussing various legal points in the big contract between the consortium and the University. In short, not the most exciting discussion in the world going on for 3h.

Then suddenly I was asked to say something about the debt side of things. As you may imagine, I was practically comatose from the preceding conversation so all my responses were "I'll have to look into that and get back to you". Got a recording of the call later and did my work off that.

 

damn yo this thread is disappointing. you finance folks have a very low bar for what's outrageous. i was hoping for some sex drugs rock & roll shit oh well back to listening to martin shkreli make fun of college kids

heister: Look at all these wannabe richies hating on an expensive salad. https://arthuxtable.com/
 

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