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2/3/09

Been There, Done That...


QUOTATION OF THE DAY


"Oh, you’re one of them."

IRIS CHAU, recounting an acquaintance’s reaction when she said she worked at a banking company.

NYTimes Tuesday, February 3, 2009

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As we were walking out the door
a few years ago, voluntarily leaving employment by the largest bank in America, a good work friend repeated what she had often said during the time we worked for the bank:

"Once you go near the fire and get burned, you don't go back."

In the years we had been working at the bank, we had learned to operate in primarily one mode..."cya" coupled with "don't probe too deep." When dealing with our employer on bank policy issues, which was a large part of our job responsibility, you just never knew if and when you were going to get burned. The enigmatic process at which a bank policy question was derived and answered, could work for you or against you, depending on the answer you could get. You had no control and you always expected the unexpected.

It's like the TARP money Kool-Aid they've been drinking, it went down a gullet, to be swallowed up in some dark digestive process to be processed out in who-knows-what form.

This video was released to bank employees internally first and we knew immediately it was going to get "outside" and cause us some grief. It didn't take 8 hours for that to happen, we were One of them...

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Bank of America sings U2's "One"