Free Twenty Something by Iain Hollingshead Page B

great thing about the listed sector: you can dump your holdings overnight if you need to. Leave the last ten per cent to the next man — that’s what I say.’
    Buddy: ‘Haw, haw.’
    It’s official. I work with absolute arseholes.
Friday 18th March
    Perhaps I should qualify my last entry: only ninety-eight per cent of the people I work with are arseholes. Leila ‘spokesperson for the rights of student chocoholics’ Sidebottom has just permanently established herself in the two percent minority with the invention of a new game at work: business-card Top Trumps.
    It works like normal Top Trumps, except that you play with the various business cards of contacts you’ve made during your career — a bit like a sane version of
American Psycho.
The choice of category is completely up to you: longest email address, most embossed text, job title seniority, number of colours, most judicious use of fonts, widest variety of contact details, etc.
    I established an early lead with Rupert’s (bald) use of Helvetica 12 embossed in cyan. Leila struck back with an Andrew Billington from BNP Paribas who gave three mobile numbers, two faxes, two emails and a PO box for his secretary (everything, in fact, apart from a carrier pigeon number). I countered with <
[email protected]
>(easily beat her <
[email protected]
)>
    But then she had me: Sheikh Abdul Al-Rahman, most expansive use of Arabic on a business card. I was stumped.
    Top Trumps; top girl. What is she doing in a place like this?
Sunday 20th March
    Only a week until my foursome. My balls are the size of melons.
Tuesday 22nd March
    I am starting to really hate my job. And I don’t mean the vague, unsubstantiated way in which everyone dislikes what they do for a living. I really, really, hate my job.
    It was exciting in the early days when I suddenly found myself unspeakably rich after university. The suit, the Blackberry, the free taxis, the Christmas bonuses, the corporate entertainment — it was a heady mix. And even when this wore off, it was still bearable when I had Lucy to look forward to in the evenings. I enjoyed taking her out and buying her expensive presents. She worked in PR. I was the flash city boy. We felt like the perfect London couple. I could have been someone; I could have been a contender.
    But now that I’m not with Lucy any more, I realise how fake those little baubles were. I hate the lifestyle I’ve grown to accept as normal. I hate the fact that I can go out and spend
£
20 on a Caesar salad at lunchtime and think nothing of it. I hate the fact that girls perk up when they realise how much money I earn.
    And the work itself? Well, it’s beyond useless. I don’t even understand what I’m doing. I’ve got absolutely no idea how I’ve benefited anyone in any way. The words on my tombstone will be, ‘He never failed to maximise shareholder value’. I remember my father’s retirement party and the hoards of happy teachers and former pupils who would never forget the impact he had made on their lives. And then I compare it to my situation. Even if I could, I wouldn’t want to go to the top. I remember reading an interview last week about a marketing guru who was coming up to retirement. And I just thought,
Well done, you’ve sold lots of shampoo really well.
    We spent the entire time at school and university being told that we could do anything we liked. We played sport, joined societies, learned instruments and travelled and then we totted up all our experiences into CV points so that we could get a job in a bank. I got drunk at a careers fair and scribbled on the wrong dotted line. It’s completely nonsensical. We are a spineless generation that signs up to graduate schemes and pension plans in our early twenties. We treat blue chips like well-paid dating agencies to meet the right kind of person.
    Well, I’ve met Leila,