Hilarious Barclays Goodbye Email
Received this floating around last week. Apparently it was written by a Barclays kid that just left. For those of you who have bosses who love to use business metaphors and figures of speech, you're gonna love this.
The email is lengthy, but if you can relate to its contents, you will find the comedic value.
"All,
Now that I’m the client, I have a new assignment for you.
I have a feeling someone might be doing some weekend work on this, so before we start this process, let’s make sure not to put all of our eggs in one basket – if there are too many roosters in the henhouse and too many cooks in the kitchen, we will be letting the wolf into the chicken coop and this will be a hard nut to crack. At the end of the day - looking at the product from 15,000 feet – it’s just a blackbox resting on a slippery slope. But from a bottom-up perspective – we’re pretty smart guys and doing this from soup to nuts will leave us with bird in hand and create some serious value-added.
Provided we row downstream and don’t spin our wheels – there’s no need to be caught with our pants down.
Let’s take a top-down approach - focus on core competencies, think outside the box, keep it apples to apples and bake in your assumptions, and spread, dig into, play with, juice, goose, vet, run, flesh out, go through with a fine tooth comb, sanity check, scrub and flush the noise out of those numbers. I need you, right now, to sharpen your pencils, get cranking, take the lead, turn these comments, not tread water, bang this out, push it through, get it across the finish line and drop it on my chair. And before you send this to me, make sure to take a step back, get your arms around it, not miss the forest for the trees, and check under the hood – it better hold water. I’m not religious about this, but net-net I would guess there will be some layered switches, hockey sticks, sensitivities, color-coded sheets and zero gridlines. I know you want a rubberstamp – but there is a definite possibility that the Director will want to get his hands dirty – I want us to stay on top of the ball, keep our coach’s whistle on, stay behind the wheel and keep ownership of the work.
After the heavy lifting, we just need to get the deliverables out the door and keep everything else under the kitchen sink – we’ll figure out its highest and best use later. Keep in mind I am in no way wed to this analysis, but this is a two-horse race, and we can’t afford to have our heads in the tent. There is no need to recreate the wheel here, but this will be a great learning experience. Let’s discuss when you get in.
Basically, you’re preaching to the choir here. To get a little more granular here before we press the print button, let’s touch base now. (I’ll be out of pocket later, so swing by while I’m on the ground.)
First of all, this is a good chance for you to step up. Right now, the two companies are feeling less than romantic, but remember, all girls talk. I think they’ll eventually give up more than a girl on prom night – our job is to get them across the finish line. I want us to manage the process and keep the ball in our court. I appreciate that this may be a bit of a lick in the armpit, but I want us to work smart, not hard, and I don’t want to recreate the wheel – this doesn’t need to be gold-plated. Let’s divide and conquer. You do the blocking and tackling and I’ll socialize it with the board. I want us to run this to ground before we lob the missile over to the other side. My fear is that our client will land on a grenade or try to catch a falling piano. We don’t want to open up the kimono too soon, or we may bleed to death by a 1000 cuts. Just so we’re crystal, let’s get on the same page – I don’t want us to trip a mine. I’ll focus on the care and feeding of the board and you bottom this out. For ease-of-motion and because all the moving parts, I will appoint you scribe. Just blackberry me if you need more guidance. I need to be on a plane now.
Before you sign off, let’s not lose sight of the big picture. What’s driving all of this is that we could put all the buyers in a Civic and still have spare seats. But, at the end of the day, it is what it is. We may have to kiss a lot of frogs to get there, but I think the other side has been leaving some breadcrumbs on the trail. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Just to be sure were not drinking our own kool-aid, let’s stress-test this, just for our own back-pocket. I want 100% of your bandwidth. If someone calls, put them on the box and I’ll talk to them. With this kind of thing, the devil’s in the details. In the mean-time, you keep your head down and I’ll keep my ears to the ground. I don’t want us to get all hot and heavy yet. Let us bat this around internally and send it over to our scientists in the lab. We need to kick the tires, or else we may find ourselves sitting in neutral. I want to be efficient with the team’s time and not spin our wheels – after all, we’re all wearing several hats here. The companies are doing the lover’s dance but we need to focus on putting this to bed. The industrial logic of this deal is sound, but the issue is the CFO is sitting in the CEO’s lap, talking his book. We need some air cover here and if we don’t get it, we’re going to have to run an audible. For now, we should keep our cards close to our chest.
Thx,
Jon"
Mod Note (Andy): Best of 2016, this post ranks #16 for the past year
Jesus Christ, I got an aneurysm reading this
I had way too many flash backs to instances where my VP used these metaphors...
I suspect that the majority of his colleagues stopped reading after the first eight lines. I did, too
The email is too long, but other than that it's golden and brings back terrible memories.
I agree, I definitely think the guy over did it. But I assume that was his intention, in order to demonstrate the overuse of these bull shit phrases.
Yeah he really boiled the ocean.
Pls, no one types that much in an email.
If this kid thinks he's heard enough jargon in banking, wait until he's in PE and starts talking with middle market CEOs...
That's a virtuous cycle...
I think the best part of this e-mail is the finishing touch. "Thx"
Agree
I hate that response. It really took too long to type "thanks"? 3 freaking more letters
you kidding, right?
What's the circumstances around this person leaving? The beginning of the email says, "Now that I'm the client..."
that's pretty self-explanatory, no?
No.
I'd reply "Can you send me the tl;dr version?"
Was wondering when this would hit WSO.
The only one he missed was "turnkey."
tldr
Some 7 years ago, a similar email circulated. This one's a ripoff
Forgot the usual football metaphors too: "The guy who's quarterbacking this," etc.
He snuck the "audible" metaphor in there at the end shudder
No need for MBA programs anymore. That just about covers it.
This is a full-faced crash course guide to synergistic consulting efficiency verbiages.
I've never been more motivated to get work done.
Also, very surprised I didn't see "nose to the grindstone" once.
I blacked out for a whole paragraph there. This is offensive.
i am running a project now and I am going to copy 99% of this and send to my team and wait and see how long before their brain short circuits and see if one of them has the balls to come to me and ask me "how many fucking mushrooms did you take before writing this?" probably give them a raise and promote them...
brilliant..reading this feels like my interview and first week in the industry. had no clue what my boss was talking about
I read every word of this, and I must say I am very disappointed in the number of repetitions. He could have easily made this about three paragraphs longer with out a single repeat and still not touched 75% of the nonsense jargon that is said, emailed, or plastered in pitch books. Hell I've seen a few pitch books in my day that had more jargon in them than this email did.
Well I can tell you why he didn't get promoted. He forgot to use 'don't look a gift horse in the mouth' or 'don't cut off your nose to spite your face.' I hate to be the one to say it but hey, there is your canary in the crate.
Jesus christ, this is one of the most hateful things I have ever read.
http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/bankeriffic-a-must-read
Well ain't that some shit? Actually gave the kid credit for being witty...
Reminds me of this lol:
He forgot to request some "color" on the numbers!
Was probably jammed up on some other work.
He forgot to call a spade a spade, but it's water under the fridge
Where's the "pls circle back next 2hrs thx
sent from my Blackberry 10"
This is excellent.
"we could put all the buyers in a Civic and still have spare seats" Didn't know this one yet. Thanks for sharing!
This was like an arrow in an arrow in a bulls eye. Totally overkill, completely accurate.
This was like an arrow in an arrow in a bulls eye. Totally overkill, completely accurate.
no paradigm shifts for greater synergies?
He probably got let go for keeping a joke going long after it stopped being funny.
This was beautiful
LOL
LOL, I've started to say things like this back in 2009. When I was at a company, leading for the first time. It seemed ridiculous at first, but then I refined it to "a better way of saying" of the same bullshit.
Years later, I opened a company and put somone else to do the management job. I didn't bothered with any of the shit I've heard of the managers in charge since then. It gets in an ear and flees at the other...I couldn't care less, and my business is doing better than never...
I Wonder if shit like that ever gets to be really useful for a leader. Looks more like things you do when you're teaching any-ape-else, to do an irrational work he's never done before look anything rational.
Also, for this matter I think that most of the employees should naturally be treated more respectfully and transparently. No bullshit will make people do better for your office than when they actually like/respect you. And no bullshit will ever make them hate you less when they leave you.
Anyway, loved to read this email. Even though I would fear to sent things like this fearing any type of retaliation.
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