Well it’s Groundhog Day… again. We all look to that fuzzy, pear-shaped rodent to tell us whether there will be an early spring or instead, six more weeks of winter. But since the 1993 film named after this very day, the phrase has come to denote “the same thing over and over again,” particularly when that situation is unpleasant. As luck would have it, this annual pseudo-holiday just happened almost the same time as the City’s only pseudo-holiday: annual bonus day. But with an economy this nightmarish, this typically pleasurable day is the last kind of time warp you’d want to be stuck in.
It’s always been emotional. There’s the nervous excitement, the bubbly chatter, and the four vital emotions (as Cityboy courteously highlighted) of bonus-day etiquette we try to exhibit: calmness, righteous fury, nonchalance, and understated glee. But this year things have changed. Because no one realistically expects to get any substantial payout, instead of putting on a poker face, you find colleagues walking around with disarmingly honest pouts, convinced they’ll have to sell their Porsche. Instead of wandering around the office avoiding work, we now sit handcuffed to our desks, pretending to do work we don’t have.
They say that, “having a job is your bonus” in this environment, but I hoped that I was the exception to this rule. As I waltzed into my boss’s office, I was delighted to hear that my performance was reassuringly fine, everyone seems happy with the “value” I add to the team, and my jovial personality. No surprise there. So when I peeled open the envelope ever so slowly, trotting smugly on the “walk of shame,” I almost collapsed face-first onto the floor when I saw my bonus number: it was zero.
In normal years, this would be a not-so-subtle way of the bank letting me know I’m not welcome, and should seek employment elsewhere. In abnormal years (and I could certainly place the previous year into this category,) it could mean that they love you… the bonus funds just aren’t there. And moreover, with tens of thousands of unemployed bankers, I have absolutely no power to demand one.
As it turns out, the City of London has it’s own “Groundhog Day” - a doomsday market bust which replays to varying degrees once every several years. But perhaps we should see recessions religiously, as necessary rites of reprisal. About as often as a Catholic goes to confession, once a decade approximately, City bankers could be destined to embark on a seasonal festival of atonement for our sins of greed and excess. And I can attest, with my donut bonus, that this punishment has already started.