Talkin State Street Blues

Talkin’ State Street Blues
By Brendan Walton

I just took a voluntary layoff from State Street Bank. I was in the wrong line of work, and I hated it. It was boring, monotonous, and full of nitwits suffering from diarrhea of the mouth. State Street planned to lay off 1800 employees, and presumably offered the severance package to soften the public relations damage typically incurred in a downsizing.

Three thousand one hundred employees signed up for the voluntary layoff, which should tell you something about the joys of working there. The higher-ups claim that they never expected that many people to take the package. This means they never bothered to take a short stroll around one of their offices. Sneaker, t-shirts and all-around slobbishness have worked their way into the SSB employee's definition of "business casual." Some of the dumbest people you would ever not want to talk to said some of the dumbest things that you would ever not want to hear. All day long, at very high volumes.. 90% of SSB’s employees would openly tell you that they were suckers who hated every second of it, living an office life of quiet desperation. Anybody, except, apparently, for SSB executives, could have plainly seen that there would be a stampede for the severance.

State Street decided to involuntarily lay another 150 people off anyway, which was awfully nice of them. And if that's not enough, SSB isn't even just moving forward with the streamlined workforce, which they easily could (they'd be fine with a staff comprised entirely of lower monkeys running Excel macros), they're hiring to replace the laid off workers at a cheaper salary.
Making a statement that says nothing, the always creepily smiling State Street CEO David Spina said, “We acted decisively to position State Street for improved profitability.”

On a more enlightening and enjoyable note (for me, at least), an analyst told the Boston Globe, “They misgauged the sentiment of their employees, number one, and they probably made the severance package too generous, number two, and, three, do you really want to train 800 new employees?"

“It doesn't make sense,” he said.

Meanwhile, the company's doing fine; it's just the difference between a gigantic pile of money and an even more gigantic pile of money for Spina to roll around naked in. Incidentally, he made 34 million dollars last year, according to the Boston Herald.

Two little things convinced me that the company pretty much had to be making money in spite of itself. The rank and file chain of management has a uniquely ass-backwards way of doing things. Two spectacularly, unbelievably, mind-bendingly dumb sequences of events that almost gave me an aneurysm:

1. Two days before Opening Day at Fenway, we get a mass email from a higher-up. We can wear Sox gear and jeans the day of the game, and there'll be peanuts. Hot damn, right?

The next day, we get another email from the same guy saying that the aforementioned best-party-ever was cancelled, due to State Street's recent poor performance. The higher-up adds that he doesn't want to appear to be rewarding us in this particular climate. Mind you, this is the first time we actually heard anything from anyone about poor performance, but I have to say, dangling that kick-ass peanut party and then yanking it away inspired me to work harder. Good work, management.

2. When I went out to lunch the other day, I passed a friend of mine who was waiting in the lobby for an interview. After lunch I had to grab something off of a printer and noticed a prospective employee evaluation form that a manager had filled out after an interview and had left hanging around. In the experience box, this manager wrote, "The candidate has had previous numberical experience."

Slow down now, and really think about the gravity of that statement.

Numberical! A full grown adult with a college education, who presumably can read, who works at a BANK, and who was promoted multiple times by that bank, used the word “numberical” and was dead serious about it. Worse, this manager had the power to hire whoever the candidate was or not, and they used “numberical” in the mental process to do so.

I thought of my friend in the lobby, probably being interviewed by some dingbat who might possibly use the word numberical in his evaluation and just decided it was best not to think about it too much, because if I did I might try to put my head through the wall.

In a way I’m angry that they’re pulling this whole severance/layoff/rehire racket with a straight face. But in another, more truthful way, most of the people there drove me nuts anyway and I couldn’t wait to get the hell out. From the idiots who don't shut up all day, the likely rampant use of the word numberical, and the anesthetized, Smiley Spina's 34 million, State Street is loaded top to bottom with nonsense. So obviously, they're #2 on this year's Boston Globe 100 and the stock price is rising on rumors of a buyout by Citigroup.

Quoth the analyst, “It doesn't make sense.”