Confessions of a Cat-holic (212)

15 minutes later, Amanda the HR manager came to my desk to escort me to a conference room where we sat down to have a chat, almost like I was getting fired or something. I was never approached by an HR like that at Lehman. She quickly shut the door and took out her folder and a recording machine.

Amanda looked professional. She was not blonde, not bitchy and not bimbo looking either. She was white with brown hair, and was about my height. The meanest HRs I met were with Goldman. They called me on the phone one day to invite me for interviews when I was in my yoga sweat pants shopping in Times Square. No, I shouldn't say invite. They made me attend the interviews in their office within 30 minutes. The funny thing was that I didn't apply. They had my number because all the banks shared a resume book for the summer interns. I didn't want to dampen my professional image so I had to buy a new suit in the nearby mall to show up at their office within 30 minutes sharp. In utmost honesty, I had to say that out of all the bulge bracket firms, I had never encountered such a self centered culture which treated people including their staff and candidates like total garbage. It was a squid game at Goldman. I heard they trafficked human organs to compensate their staff for bonuses. It was zero sum, driven solely by greed with no fear anyways: when someone died, others could get a bigger lottery and the pie would be bigger.

Amanda asked me what I did in my previous internship on a daily basis. I just told her like what I told Sanjay. She jotted down what I said and scrabbled on a few blank pages. She specifically asked me if I held a series 7 license and/or a type 1 and type 4 licenses with SFC. I told her I had no idea what she was talking about.

With a very strict face, she explained to me why she had to talk to me in private all of a sudden.

She said that I had violated HR compliance policies. Holy shit, what the hell had I done? I had no idea what I committed, apart from trying to make a conversation with my boss. She said that either I was lying on the resume or I was trying to execute trades without a proper license. Apparently, I was strictly forbidden to talk to clients behind a Bloomberg machine as a summer intern because I was not licensed. Yes, so she was telling me that I had been a serious white collar felony criminal by working as a summer intern at Lehman.

Then I told her David Sheng from Princeton also worked at Lehman. She asked me if I was doubting the firm's HR due diligence and that if I sat with other interns on my desk in the previous summer. I said no, I was sitting next to my boss. According to Amanda, I had no rights to raise any concerns about the other interns. Amanda said lying on the resume and/or executing trades without a license could get me in jail. She said that I had to sign a few legal documents, promising that I would never go close a Bloomberg machine before the formal procedure of obtaining relevant licenses. Also, I could no longer mention the tasks I performed at Lehman when I looked for employment opportunities elsewhere. She said that there was a very high chance that I was making up stuff and bragging myself to impress, like many other equally young and talented candidates in the workplace. She said she had seen it all and asked me to stop putting on such a show.

I told her that was really what I did at Lehman. And then she said I would have to be prepared to get in jail if what I said was true. Either way, I was committing some very serious offense, like really serious offense. Lying on the resume was not a criminal charge yet but it could make me lose my offer or get me kicked out from school. I had no idea what to do so I told her I would never say anything like that to anyone anymore. I pleaded for her forgiveness with my sincere apology. I knew I wouldn't be able to get out of this troubling situation just like that, like insisting that I was right and sued the firm for libel or slandering. I gave in. I had to say that it was a crazy afternoon.