#MenBehavingBadly #financiers #WallStreet
The book, “Straight to Hell,” by John LeFevre, describes the drunkenness and debauchery of financiers working in Citigroup’s Hong Kong office.
Regardless of what you think about those who work on Wall Street, and whether you believe that personal behavior may not affect professional behavior, this book might give you pause.
It was reviewed by Philip Delves Broughton in the July 21, 2015, edition of The Wall Street Journal.
It describes leud play and solicitation of prostitutes by those to whom we may entrust our wealth. Hopefully, they are not spending the money their clients entrust with them for their fun and games, but they probably make enough to afford such entertainment. It appears, from Delves Broughton’s review, that these guys’ maturity did not correspond with their wealth.
The deeper question Delves Broughton poses about the culture of financiers working away from home is whether deviant personal behavior and professional behavior are connected, and whether men behaving badly matters. Broughton says his hunch is that bankers are not so different from other male business tribes when on maneuvers. “They simply have the cash to do more of the nasty stuff,” writes Delves Broughton, author, most recently, of “The Art of the Sale: Learning From the Masters About the Business of Life.”
Let’s forget, for a moment, the nasty specifics of what these guys were doing. Let’s instead extrapolate the behavior(s) of your employer(s) toward you.
Let’s presume, too, that your employer is not getting too personal with you, i.e. sexual harassment. There are ways to deal with that that may be too complicated to address here.
Let’s take an example of your employer heading home for the evening, leaving you alone with tons of work on your desk, and knowing you won’t be able to go home at a reasonable hour.
Let’s also consider the example of your employer telling you that you cannot have the vacation time you want, or need, because you are too badly needed at that time. Yet, he never loses out on the vacation he wants.
Your employer is enjoying the gobs more money he’s making than you, while you are forced to put your life on hold for him.
Certainly, in this day and age, if you have a job that you need, you are fortunate. But how long can it go on? Will you one day walk in and be told your job is gone, after all the sacrifices you have made?
How would you feel if you worked for one of the men described in LeFevre’s book, and he came to you one day and told you, you were being laid off, despite your good behavior?
If you are feeling as if your current situation is not giving you the life you want, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. There, you may see the pure happiness, joy and prosperity to be found, simply by helping others succeed – a whole different milieu from the one LeFevre’s book describes.
Delves Broughton’s speculation about how businessmen behave when no one, but them and their friends, is looking, perhaps is true. But there are certainly good, kind, ethical and very professional business people out there, who would be a pleasure to work for.
They would never make you stay late when they weren’t, or deprive you of a vacation while they took theirs. But even good situations don’t always last. It might be best to plan now for the day when the goodness, or necessary evil, of a job disappears. You may even get to exit on your own terms.
Peter