Story 321

What does not surprise me is that it’s Citi. What does surprise me is that it’s Citi US.

I started my career at Citi in India, in a back-office team supporting global investment banking operations. Interestingly, I wasn’t even aware it was a back-office role because that was never mentioned in the job description.

The first red flag appeared during my interview. The HR representative made me wait in the lobby for 20 minutes, then came to get me rather abruptly. Once I entered her office, she shut the door, dialed into a conference call, and spent the next 45 minutes completely ignoring me. I was a naive 25-year-old at the time and sat there patiently waiting. Looking back, that should have been my clue.

I cleared the interviews and joined the team. That’s when the real nightmare began.

Working 18–20 hours a day was considered normal. We were told that if we ever wanted a chance to move into investment banking front-office roles, this was the price we had to pay. Weekends disappeared. Vacations were out of the question, no sick leaves. Reporting time was fixed at 10 a.m., but leaving could mean anything from 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. the next morning.

Because it was my first job, I accepted it. I assumed this was how the industry worked.

The culture was deeply toxic. Senior employees regularly shouted at and humiliated junior staff. But what ultimately broke me was something far worse.

A manager began making inappropriate comments and sexual advances toward me. When I asked him a work-related question, his response was: “Want more work? Then give me what I like.”

Late at night, he would come to my cubicle, touch himself, and attempt to touch me. After enduring this for a week, I reported him to the director and submitted my resignation.

The response from the company was performative at best. They acted as though they were taking the matter seriously and involved the then Asia-Pacific HR head. Instead of support, I was threatened. I was told that if I ever spoke publicly about what had happened, they would ensure I would not survive in the finance industry.

By then, I was exhausted, burnt out, and emotionally shattered.

For my final month, I was assigned administrative work until I left. The experience left me with severe trauma, and I was unable to work for eight months afterward because of PTSD.

What happened next confirmed that this wasn’t an isolated incident. Within a week of my departure, every woman on the team resigned—even though none of them had another job lined up. The same manager had made advances toward them as well.

Yet he remained employed at Citi for another decade.