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Bad News for Middle America
NEW YORK CITY, OCTOBER 28, 2013. Yesterday Goldman Sachs announced plans to encourage their investment banking analysts to stop working on weekends. Can you believe this? The fat cats in charge have no respect for the working man in America. Everyone knows that the only reason students want to become bankers is to masochistically kill themselves through 120-hour weeks and no time off. How sick do you have to be to deprive someone of this unique pleasure?
You often hear stories about analysts pushed to the point of insanity. Like the guy who pulled three all-nighters in a row and started beating his head against his desk screaming gibberish until he had to be dragged off to the hospital. Or better yet, what about the guy who just dropped dead after working for 100 hours straight!? These are the stories that arouse us prospective bankers. Who is going to want to become a banker now when the most exciting story is about working past 12 one night and getting a little sleepy?
And don’t even mention the pay cut. Analysts have it tough as it is. $140,000 per year for a recent college graduate is chump change in The City. When you think about rent, taxes, a new car, new clothes, a model girlfriend (or two), and a coke habit, it’s surprising we don’t see bankers on food stamps. This isn’t even accounting for those plebeians whose parents were too poor to pay for their $250,000 Ivy League education and who had to take out loans.
After this past recession everyone is feeling the heat. Some analysts on the street have been quoted as saying that with a $40,000 instead of a $60,000 bonus they might not be able to get that place in the Hamptons for the summer. This is America—we’re entitled to what our parents said we could have. I propose that we have a minimum living wage for bankers so that atrocities such as this won’t happen again.
As the prophet Gordon Gekko in the movie Wall Street said, “Greed is good.” I firmly believe that we are losing sight of our core values these days. With this new policy, bankers might want to get into the business because of some pansy-ass reason like “a good work-life balance,” or “a nice work environment,” and not for the reasons which have made our country so strong—like selling subprime collateralized debt obligations.
The big-shot executives just never look out for the working man, and it’s evident in this effort to lower banker’s hours.
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