What's it all About?

I welcome you the reader to what is a real life view of what it’s like to be working as a ‘City B*tch’. You may or may not have read Geraint Andersons book or blog City Boy where he speaks of how he became overwhelmed with City Life and stories of hedge fund managers, private jets, cocaine, Porsches, strip clubs and 7 figure bonuses.

Well, I am not going to dispel those stories as it all does exist in the city, but for the large majority of us we’re not City Boys but City B*tches. We shovel the coal in the engine room of the worlds largest organisations but don’t get paid overly well or receive thanks or notice. Instead we work long hours, get ignored, receive abuse and spend the majority of time counting down the hours to the end of the week as I’m doing right now.

Despite the name ‘City B*tch’ I am male but I feel the name sums up the derogatory view that the ‘City Boys’ look upon us with. In writing this Blog I hope to achieve three main goals;

1.To educate those of you who are maybe thinking about taking a job in 'The City', which isn’t client facing, highly analytical or generating money for the bank in some form, to not bother!

2.I want to make you feel good about yourselves. There is no hiding the fact that people’s successes often belittle others and an individual’s shortcomings will usually put a smile on someones face. Envy is unavoidable but it can always be remedied with a heavy distribution of pity. You can always turn to yourself and say "hey, things ain’t so bad; at least I’m not him" and in the lead role as ‘him’ is me.

3. If the concept of the City and financial services is foreign to you as it was once to me and unfortunately kind of still is, then I want to counteract the bad press that circulates the City. We’re not all money hungry, Ferrari driving, reckless playboys with no moral core, in fact that is the minority in the Square Mile.

So…now you know about the blog I should formally introduce myself. I am City B*tch, I work for a large Multinational Investment Bank for their wholesale division within the Operations team. For anyone reading this who also works in operations in a big bank will know it is the most boring, tedious and unrewarding job that anyone could do. I’ve heard it referred to before as ‘elaborate admin’ and that definition isn’t far off if you minus the elaborate and replace it with Awful.

I’ve been doing it for a few years now after graduating from University and am now working for my second bank, which would lead some old fat pin stripe wearing toff, to make the comment, ‘what are you moaning about boy? You’re barely wet behind the ears’. This is the sort of comment that would really rub me up the wrong way. In my line of work boredom and frustration are defined by ones capacity to cope with the task that they have been assigned, for some people it’s 40 years for me it was about 6 hours and I’ve been gritting my teeth ever since.

I’m in my mid 20’s still live at home, haven’t paid off my student loan, don’t have a girlfriend, drive a banged up car, I have a receding hairline and a slightly swelled belly and based on my smoking habit, the amount I eat and drink probably a couple of decades away from some major heart problems, but hey if you can’t do it when your young when can you.

I don’t want this to come across as a big moan because amongst all the trials and tribulations of what I’ll tell you about over the forthcoming months, there are things which are good in it all. There are lessons to be learnt and some great characters. The intention is to write the blogs with the past and present so I’ll keep you in the loop of my day to day goings on. Nothing left to say apart from enjoy reading the life of the City B*tch.