Bank Of America Employees Now Spending A Substantial Portion Of Their Time Doctoring Client Meeting Logs To Comply With Management's Face Time Demands
Bloomberg reports that in response to a new decree by BofA's recently promoted head of global equities distribution that salespeople must "attend at least 30 meetings a month with clients," lest they be punished come payday, some frustrated worker-bees-- who would just like to have one lunch or dinner or goddamn second alone and not in the company of a client who'd rather talk over the phone anyway, Jesus fuck-- have resorted to broadening their definition of what constitutes a meal or meeting with a customer.*
The new order...works out to 1.5 gatherings each business day, which riled the staff and spurred some to exaggerate their meeting logs to avoid missing goals ahead of bonus season, said two people with direct knowledge of the matter. They asked for anonymity because the new policy isn’t public. Some workers regard Zuberi’s targets as unreasonably high, the people said. [...] “What he’s doing is pointing out that personal relationships bring in revenue,” said Brad Hintz, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. “He’s set a bar that is probably a little too high; this is saying you’re having client lunches five days a week and dinner about three days a week. Still, that has value, it forces sales guys to get out there.”
The 30-meeting quota is for equities sales staff members, including those who handle specialty lines such as derivatives and prime-brokerage. Their job is to pitch investment ideas and deliver research to analysts and managers at institutions including BlackRock Inc. (BLK) and SAC Capital Management LLC. Zuberi also told workers assigned to traders at hedge funds and mutual funds to tally 20 meetings each month, the people said. That’s onerous to some employees because they don’t often leave their desks during trading hours, said one of the people. The statistics will be internally listed so equities employees can see where they stand, Zuberi told them in his August e-mail, the people said. Those who fail to make the quotas can expect managers to address the shortfalls at year-end meetings, the people said. Workers use Bank of America’s customer-tracking system to log meetings, the people said.
BofA Client-Meeting Quota Said to Vex Investment Bankers [Bloomberg]
*"Lunch with Bob from BlackRock at the Porcelain Pony" = ate a sandwich in the handicapped bathroom on the 9th floor; "Dinner with 5 SAC guys at The Palm" = drank myself into a stupor and potentially irreparably damaged relationship with dog walker, who was on the receiving end of several highly inappropriate and increasingly antagonistic emails.
