If you see an army of people wearing bright blue T-shirts in Robert Venable or Breukelen Park today, just look straight ahead, and slowly walk away. An army of Barclays summer interns are fixing playgrounds, planting flowers, weeding and painting away in attempts to brighten the future of more than a few lonely associates pretending to be college interns at firm drink-ups. At least the kids are outside, and we hear several of them have irises that are ready to love again, or adjust to sunlight.
Barclays, the ever-so-modest advocate of community service, doesn’t want you to know about the park effort, aside from the loud blue shirts that say “Banking on a Brighter Future” the bank is forcing everyone to wear. When reached for comment, a Barclays rep acted as if we were trying to confirm that the CFO has feline AIDS.
DB: Are there a bunch of Barclays employees running around fixing the city’s parks and doing other good works?
Barclays Rep: Where did you hear that? Who told you? WHO TOLD YOU!!! You can’t tell anyone, in fact, even having this conversation with you is putting us all in danger…no, no…no, I didn’t mean to…NO…you have a choice Keith…there was so much love in this house…but you’re going to have to run again…RUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNN :::silence:::
The interns should get their community service out of the way, because when they become full-fledged bankers the serviceable community gets a lot smaller. We’ll never forget the recruiting event we went to in college (we won’t give away the bank…cough…UBS…cough) when the banker leading the discussion was asked if the bank supports active community service (like you know, on those crazy things called nights and weekends) and the guy literally made a face as if he had mistaken a hornet’s nest for a prophylactic and responded, “No. No way. You’re not going to have time for that.”