In a tell-all book due to hit stores October 22nd, Greg Smith a former employee of the banking and securities firm, accuses employers of regular humiliation and abuse. Smith also claims personnel would refer to their clients as ‘muppets’ and abuse their positions of power to get all the money possible out of their ‘cash cows’.
They were interrogated before dawn, forced to carry folding stools all day long and berated by bosses if they messed up lunch orders.
Such was the life of a “newbie” at Goldman Sachs writes Greg Smith, a defector who has written a tell-all book about his days at the Wall Street behemoth.
“You came to work at 5:45 or 6:00 or 6:30 in the morning,” and if any intern was late for the twice-weekly “Open Meetings,” the whole group was punished, Smith writes in “Why I Left Goldman Sachs.”
“A partner would stand at the front of the room with a list of names and call on people at will with questions on the firm’s storied culture, its history, on the stock market,” he writes. “Depending on the personal style of the people in charge, the meetings could be brutal. They were always intense.”
Wrong answers were met with derision and public scorn, Smith writes. But that was just a warm-up for other humiliations.
