Getting Drunk in First Class

“The Managing Partner would like to see you now.” Ah, you think to yourself, I have to relegate myself up to the 95th floor to pay a visit to the managing partner. I wonder exactly what he wants or why he wants to see me. Reminds me of a scene from Intolerable Cruelty where Goerge Clooney gets ‘paged’ to go down to the Managing Partner’s office at the law firm where he works. Not exactly the same guy we’re talking about here but arguably close.

Even a TD partner has to occasionally ‘pay up’ and put his tail between his legs when he is in the presence of the ominous and overpowering Managing Partner. This is the guy that greases the engine of the very firm that is spewing its millions into the coffers of your investment accounts. You piss him off and the spout closes shut. Walking into a Managing Partner’s office is like being transported back in time and into a world of elegance and powerful businessman’s (and definitely a complete dickhead) haven.

Upon closer examination of this sheltered inner sanctum, the Managing Partner will sit in his armchair warrior seat behind an ornately decorated mahagony desk, a sure sign that he will have your balls in his hands the moment you step foot on his old-man-ish English rug. For those truly stressing times, this Managing Partner happens to have a requisite bottle of bourbon on a side desk. In paying tribute to American capitalism there is a nice portrait of James Madison (or whomever the fuck it is) behind our Managing Partner’s highchair. The overhead chandelier only adds to the exuberance of this shapely office.

Of course, we see such elegance and power exhibited by the Managing PArtner but what exactly is it that a dickhead Managing Partner does all day? I would say this eyewitness photo of a Managing Partner in action sums it up nicely.

That’s right, he looks for fucking dollar bills all god damned day. The mother fucker just sucks in cash from the poor bank accounts of the firm’s helpless clients. Just another day’s work for an Ultimate Dickhead(tm).

In reality, of course, the firm does well overall. The cash cows are being milked shamelessly and the coffers are being stuffed with big bills. What exactly happens when the firm starts doing poorly and the consultants are having trouble duping new clients into ‘value added’ work? Well, you guessed, the shit hits the fan and the Managing Partner goes berserk, if not into orbit completely. He’s pissed… he wants his buku bucks and he’s going to kick and flail until he does.

Here we have a Managing Partner that has just lost it. A bad fiscal year has created a pointedly angry and hostile presence in the Managing Partner’s attitude. Come near him and you’re gonna get ripped a new asshole.

So someone needs to keep the Managing Partner happy. He can’t simply do it himself… I mean, it’s not like masturbation you see. Someone else has to tickle his nuts. So who does that? The other partners? You bet and usually it is the ‘elite’ team of dickhead ‘rainmakers.’ These guys are the ex-industry bigwigs who have moved on into consulting and have taken their senior executive relationships with them into the target firm. As an elite corps of masterminded industry veterans, these are the hopeful partners that rain in the cash and keep the Managing Partner breathing nominally and his heart pumping which of course means the cash keeps coming. Pretty cool system, eh?

Above, we have an elite ‘trio’ of rainmaking partners that bring in all the green goodness into the firm looking out into the distance of the empire that they are building. These are the dickhead consultants who charge up exhorbitant expense accounts playing endless rounds of golf at country clubs and hosting lavish ski trips wooing their victims into signing mega consulting deals that result in a long line of vampire bloodsucking consultants eating flesh away… which, by the way, these ex-industry folks once worked for. You could say it is a bittersweet revenge. Ah, the life of a total dickhead.