Simple Simon,
Are you in Investment Banking? I respect that you may not want to respond concerning your private life
Sally
No, but I was quite senior and worked at RBS for very many years until I retired. It was a great bank in the nineties under Dr George Mathewson but got above itself with the acquisition of NatWest. George was a man you could argue with - though you'd better be right. Nobody argued with Fred, he just fired them. George was tight-fisted and cautious while Fred splurged on cars, jets and that bloody stupid HQ building
Fred was being toured round a call centre one day with his usual retinue. Fred hated seeing paper and saw a bunch of people working on paper files in a corner of the centre so he asked the manager what was going on. Manager said he had no idea and wandered over to find out: came back with an unconvincing answer. Further round he saw something similar, and the same routine was followed. Fred went tight-lipped: he'd been cautioned against abusing junior staff after one threatened him with a tribunal. Tour over Fred mullahs the manager's boss and instructs that the guy be fired immediately. Turned out that he'd already been refused early retirement and used Fred to get himself far better terms.
