• 17 Jun 2008 at 5:15 PM

Putting Your Interns To Work

By

It gives me no pleasure to inform you that at 8 am this morning, Anthony G, the Hungry Barbarian, completed his Hamptons Challenge (one week in his Hamptons backyard during which he could not buy or be given food, and was only allowed to ingest what he caught with his own two hands). I’m upset about this because 1. I lost $20 and 2. He didn’t eat anything “weird,” like an armadillo or a domesticated cat or a low flying egret. Nevertheless, congratulations, Tony. To the rest of you–let’s start stepping things up. The oysters and the vending machine contest were good but we’ve got a whole summer ahead of us and, gainfully employed or not, loads of time on all of our hands. I want you all to start submitting ideas now. Quants–you’re weird and out of the box thinkers. Get creative. Traders–you’re dumb and known for vulgar habits. Base your challenges on sheer volume alone.

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    Comments (7)

    1. 1
      Posted by a dead horse | June 17, 2008 at 5:37 PM

      You really should promote teamwork with these.
      The Team Vending Machine Challenge
      You and your group (your desk if you’re a trader, your deal team if you’re in M&A, your fellow janitors if you’re a consultant) must finish the contents of a vending machine. This is not about eating one of everything – this is eating EVERYTHING.
      The machine must be filled up before you begin your contest (no waiting for the fat risk analyst to load up before you start). You must make a good-faith effort to stop anyone else from eating from the machine, including using signs, yellow tape and a gay pimp (unless you work with gANALyst, in which case please use a straight pimp) as deterrents.
      Good luck

    2. 2
      Posted by mrpink | June 17, 2008 at 6:02 PM

      LOL!!

    3. 3
      Posted by Joseph di Jersey City | June 17, 2008 at 7:44 PM

      My intern/1st year is already hard at work in his role as “canary in a coal mine”. He has proven useless for any other work related task (including making copies) but as long as he’s around, the rest of us are employed. Nevertheless, giving him tasks that are nominally work related but will bring no reputational damage to the firm is very interesting. I’m thinking of having him ride the elevator up and down and time how long it takes to our floor from the lobby (our boss always complains about this) but I hope other DB readers/sadists can come up with better. Bring it on…

    4. 4
      Posted by FUNdamental | June 17, 2008 at 8:32 PM

      the intern bar triathalon – for lunch an intern must eat one of every appetizer from dorians, mad river and moe’s. (Mcfaddens was considered but for ease of travel it was excluded.
      Or first person to bring bess a live bird that can pass as an egret, or the elsuive red-chested nutscratcher mentioned earlier.

    5. 5
      Posted by guest | June 18, 2008 at 8:07 AM

      We may laugh, we may cry, but we never say die!

    6. 6
      Posted by guest | June 18, 2008 at 9:31 AM

      Ha if the past year taught us anything the quants are not outside-the-box thinkers, which is why they all had the same strategies that blew up for the same reasons. Pretty linear.

    7. 7
      Posted by ArtVandelay | June 18, 2008 at 9:31 AM

      The intern SBUX run time trials. Throw in a couple obstacles i.e. 10 coffees using 2 trays or 6 coffees using no trays add a dash of no elevator usage and we may have a nice little dish here. Be warned the East German judge is still notorious for giving low scores due to loss of coffee…

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