Story 259

My wife and I are both in the business. She showed me story 257 because she knew it would make me laugh. I moved to Citi from BofA after the financial crisis and can only describe it as landing on Mars—stripped naked, with a single bottle of water, staring at a sign that says: “Good luck.”

Nothing makes sense. There are zero referral sources for bankers, FAs, or investment professionals. No training, no process, no national sales team, no functioning CRM. The only people who get any help from assistants are MDs, and they’re far too self-absorbed to share.

I came over with a team, and within four weeks we knew we’d made the worst decision of our careers. Fortunately, everything was so chaotic that nobody noticed we spent most of our time at a local restaurant, drinking margaritas bitching about how badly we’d screwed up. Unfortunately, every Monday we’d get on a call where [REDACTED] would scream at us to sell structured notes whether clients needed them or not. None of us lasted more than two years.

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