Some Nerd Humor Loki and Other Financiers May Appreciate (Part 1 of 2) (829 hits)
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Submitted by LisaCat (View user info) at 2004-02-19 15:54:16 EST
Tuesday was marked to be a good day. The morning commute was graced by the lyrical stylings Curtis Mayfield. That's right, there I was stuck in traffic, bobbing my head, tapping the steering wheel, and getting my funk on while singing along with "Superfly." Things were all gravy up until the mid-morning.
There was to be a great mingling of the minds at my office, henceforth referred to as Omnicorp, for the underwriter and actuarial department were to attend a meeting for a sort of state of the union address in front of the CFO. If you could imagine the previous sentence as a spoken dialogue, place a dank/loathing type of tone on the word 'underwriter' and maybe even add some reverb for effect.
It is well known in the business of insurance that actuaries and underwriters work together in figuring out those premiums that should be written, and those that are 'too risky.' I use the term 'too risky' because there's a lot of math behind it, and few people here would appreciate that particular diatribe.
Suffice it to say that here in Omnicorp, our cooperation is limited to as few meetings as possible and e-mail trading out the wazzo. Being the number crunching, bean-counting dorks that us actuaries are, we tend to forgo the niceties of spell checking and proper grammar in lieu of a more Mr. Horse-esque type of response - "Yes sir, I like it" or "No sir, I don't like it."
Again things are slightly more complicated in that we have to provide reasoning for our less verbose responses, but any more explanation into that would incur the previously mentioned diatribe.
Amazingly enough, the last time both our departments 'smoothed out' a problem, the Underwriters found it amusing to offer our department two thesauruses to broaden our vocabulary. The words yes and no along with all of their synonyms were covered in white out.
Even though our two departments work on the same floor, there is a border between our rival nations. This border doesn't take the form of semi-permeable plastic walls, or even the half walls of cloth laden cubicell barriers. This border is represented by a drastic change in carpeting. On the actuarial side of the floor, pristine gray carpet tenderly reflects light back up to our cheerful faces. On the underwriting side, a navy and maroon plaid pattern attacks the eyes much like the rocks found in Mordor attack the feet. Ever since my first day at Omnicorp, I clearly understood that the Underwriters have no sense of taste. Give me my subtle gray any day.
Despite the aesthetic differences, there are rivalries between workers in each department. These rivalries go all the way up to Mike (our sovereign leader) and Theodore (head chief of all underwriters). Both of these men are easily in their late 50's and have a rivalry stemming all the way back to their college years back at the University of Chicago. A deep rift was cast between two roommates turned bitter enemies by the warping and twisting of their fragile minds by collegiate professors of finance. I see the rivalry between departments as nothing more than a love-hate relationship as each of our departments are directly responsible for providing the other with work, but these two take it personally. They are constantly trying to one up each other whether it be in departmental efficiency or our annual picnic in which our aptly named softball team, "The A's," try to end our current losing streak of eight years. At least we have the CFO as a faithful fan.
Now that the 'professional relationship' between departments here at Omnicorp is better understood, you can relate to how my entire department felt this morning. Mike, our fearless and always enthusiastic king, was eagerly anticipating this meeting as it was the next chance to crush his rival and triumph in front of the big guy. We all had our Lotus Notes Calendars updated with a memo that marked 2/17 as the day "We kick ass!" signed graciously by Mike. Despite his attempts to rile up the troops, most of us were barely awake, let alone prepared to follow our king into battle. Regardless of our morale, Mike kept his 'battle plan' (presentation notes) close, and managed to get several of us riled up by promising that our optimism at this meeting could directly effect the amount of superiority our department has on the subject of written premiums and the amount of workflow/flak we're required to take from Underwriting. This managed to get many of the older folks excited, but I was still humming "Superfly."
It was our plan to get to the boardroom early to make the underwriters appear to be late, but apparently fifteen minutes was not early enough, for just as our posse of cool came strolling into the aptly named Switzerland room, we were greeted by The Nine. The chief underwriters broke out their suit and tie routine and looked quite formidable with Theodore being the only one distinguishable as he adjusted his blue bow tie.
I quickly glanced over at Mike and noticed a slightly disappointed look on his face and felt queasiness creep over me. We sat down just as John, the CFO, walked into the door with his assistant at his side. He sat down, smiled brightly, and asked, "Who wants to go first?"
User Reviews
Submitted by hamilton (user info) at 2004-05-07 23:28:57 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Where did you go?
Submitted by Nicole3 (user info) at 2004-02-19 19:47:02 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
anticipating part 2
Submitted by Quartermain (user info) at 2004-02-19 19:29:14 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
It's my last semester of college and I'm having to take a staggeringly boring class called 'The History of Population.' Its all demographics and statistics and way more math than anyone should have to face at 8:15 am.
The first day the professor is talking about life tables and what-not(you can tell I was paying attention)and then he says 'But the real work is out in the field. If all you ever did was mess around with tables and numbers then you'd just be an actuary, and they're such boring people.'
Thats the blackest pot I've ever seen.
Submitted by loki (user info) at 2004-02-19 16:15:17 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
How long did it take to negotiate the height of the conference room table?
I am "on stand-by" right now. My boss is in a meeting giving a presentation that I prepared. This one: http://www.ubersite.com/m/25773
The guy who normally does it retired a week or so ago and so it was dumped on me. The whole thing is basically an annual report of the pension plan by fund benchmarked by other funds and blah blah blah I have precious little idea what it all means. I did not major in finance. I have learned more about the markets and various funds in the past week than I did in all of business school. I've been asked ok told to stay by my phone with the internet at the ready in case anyone asks him any questions. He's probably getting killed up there.
Submitted by Phinch (user info) at 2004-02-19 16:14:27 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
*teddy.
*sexist remark removed.
Submitted by potatomanjack (user info) at 2004-02-19 16:09:58 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Mr. Horse-esque type of response - "Yes sir, I like it" or "No sir, I don't like it."
+2 for that...
But I have to say that so far I'm not laughing, and I can be pretty amused by nerdy finance humor working in a bank and all.
Submitted by xLisaCatx (user info) at 2004-02-19 15:56:40 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
event*
GAH I'M LATE NOW!!!
Submitted by xLisaCatx (user info) at 2004-02-19 15:56:14 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Part one of two because I gotta run off to one of the numerous 'aftermath' meetings this particular even spawned.
Sorry it's short, and no I can't photoshop.