So this Bloomberg story on suicidal coke addicts across the pond? Kind of a downer. And while it didn’t really illuminate much re: the similarities between trading and having a drug problem that we didn’t already know, or do anything but depress us, we have found ourselves a teachable moment.
At least one cocaine user at a financial firm was brazen enough to deal the drug from his desk. David Frith, a 28-year- old banker who worked at Barclays Plc’s office in Basingstoke, England, was convicted in 2007 of selling drugs from his desk and received a jail sentence of seven and a half years.
Police listened to Frith’s phone calls, which had been routinely recorded by the bank, and tracked his drug runners, according to a police spokesman. Barclays declined to comment on the incident. Frith’s Basingstoke-based solicitors, Talbot Walker LLP, declined to comment.
Barclays employees seriously considering making up the slack with a little biz on the side, you have been warned!
are hormone drugs okay?
-inquiring minds
guys at ubs deal drugs from their desk all the time. it’s no big deal.
@2 gotta get paid somehow. Not everyone there gets to be in on the diamond smuggling gig
dont do drugs or you’ll end up working on a chicken farm.
–Neill Junor
Great idea really. You have infrastructure (email, phone, interoffice mail) and clients (crack head frat boy finance types) all built in. All you gotta do is get the hook up and you’re set.
@2 – I wonder why that is…does anyone know why this happens at UBS?
P.S. The only reason these idiots are unemployed is because they heard there were lines at the unemployment office!
…I’ll see my way out.
#5, Never get high on your own supply.
-Brooklyn IB
“The only reason these idiots are unemployed is because they heard there were lines at the unemployment office!”
huh?
Ayo for yayo
Walk around with yayo, all in my nasal
I must have been craze yo
That’s some good coke
Joke Briefer, where art thou?
@10
He’s probably waiting for a joke.
I putz the money in da hole…and BOOM…a little baggie of nose candy comes back out, who’d a know it was a Barclays employee on da other side.
-CG
guess he wasn’t very good at his job.
@TaxChick — 8. He didn’t get it.
It bothers me that they continually refer to London as ‘the City’
@15:
They don’t. “The city” refers to the financial district in London.
@14
I hope 8 was joking. Cl @ 5′s joke was a pun. It’s my understanding the Joke Briefer makes few appearances in regards to puns, but I could be wrong. The Joke Briefer is a bit like a skittish creature who must be coaxed and baited out with more than a bad pun.
-Head of JB Fan Club
I object!
-LK
that article made me depressed too. for my druggie days. fuckin nostalgia.
-big lar
I say, “Bollocks to you, sir!”
Nigel Cocktosin
Basingstoke is to London as Scranton is to NYC. Coked up traders make the story but this guy was more like a coked up Asst Branch Manager.
Huh, Bess was right with the “not feel good story of the year”…made me so sad I had to do a line of a assistance ass.
Man, no wonder Nate’s been blowing me off.
I’d kill for some blow right about now.
-KL
@22 same
I would kill Dennis Kneale right now for an 8 ball and 3fingers of JW Blue.
Was that wrong? Should I not have done that? I tell you, I gotta plead ignorence on this thing, because if anyone had said anything to me at all when I first started here that that sort of thing is frowned upon . . . you know, cause I’ve worked in a lot of offices, and I tell you, people do that all the time.
@17 – In all your puntificating you missed an opun opportunity….all you had to do was spell ‘coaxed’ like ‘cokes’d’.
Joke Briefer here: I have just returned from a fine lunch where I had to stand in line for a bit and now I see that someone has called the Joke Line for assistance from the “JB”.
After the talented Ms. Levin brought the thread to our attention in hope of quick wit and snappy patter from the “commentariat”, a word your JB is fond of, it looks like Covered Long @6 started the mystery of humor here with the comment, “P.S. The only reason these idiots are unemployed is because they heard there were lines at the unemployment office!” Which caused a snort in some circles but @8 missed the volley and restated, ” “The only reason these idiots are unemployed is because they heard there were lines at the unemployment office!” and then asked the interrogarory, “Huh?” in a way that Mr. Imus would if someone told him he was “live”.
@8′s plaintive call brings now forth some erudition on the humorous intent of @6 who used the classic “misinterpretative intent of a word (line)” to elicit brain chemical reactions that would result in a “snort, spit, chuckle, guffaw, squeal or knowing smile” as a result of the joke being defined in our brains as absurd and thus the humorous reaction is personally received by the reader. To wit:
“Lines” refers to, of course, the razored, furrowed derivatives of a small mound of cocaine, or “blow”, “coke”, “yayo”, “charlie”, “nose candy”, “jack-up” , “white”, “jelly beans” as well as the popular “tit lint”.
The humor being that because “lines” were at the unemployment office, @6′s bon mot revolved around the defamatory implications of youthful confusion of the meaning of “lines” (employment and coke) and the possibility that 28 year old bankers wouldn’t know the difference. In restrospect, @6′s humor is better in reflection if one rubs the gums of the humorous attempt for effect.
Sincerely,
The Joke Briefer
huh?
@8
I prefer the phrase “Bolivian Marching Powder.”
LarKud
Joke Briefer,
You are the best.
-Joke Briefer fan.
Bravo JB!
Joak Briefer,
I don’t get it.
@8
@29 I just made a teepee
-Cotton Briefer
Looks like Frith got his lines crossed.
When questioned by the po po Frith had no choice….he was line through his teeth.
Though I give him credit, he was as brave as a line.
Then he was just dead, line on his back.
- Toodles
Jeepers…Queefers…where dya get those Briefers…
@29 – I just extended my trial.
-Legal Briefer
First, one must wash the taint.
-Blanuswalla Briefer
Queef Brief
That’s nasty.
@39 – Actually I have to do my job first.
-The Debriefer
@29 FTMFW!
Were these principal or agency transactions?
AIRPLANE GLUE, MICHELE LEE’S PANTY LINERS AND TWIZZLERS.
LD
@43, yeah that’s one thing about Bloomberg reporting.
ay chico, get the yayo
@24, I got rifed from BofA today and laughed my ass off at that.
jokebriefer- too long. didn’t read.
@21 nailed it. In 2007, Barclays didn’t have Investment Banking or even Equities for that matter. It was just Fixed Income so any “bankers” there would have been the true retail branch types or cash management clowns that pitched loans, FX and bond deals and pretended to their moms and fat pitch book monkeys that they were bankers in the true sense. Not shocking that the Bloomberg reporter either misunderstood the idiot’s actual responsibilites or embellished them beyond recognition. To a journalism major that has never worked in the business, everyone is either an investment banker or a trader when in fact most in the business are neither.
Oh and nice work as usual by the Joke Briefer.
- Fixed Income
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