There’s a game played among young Wall Street analysts, usually late at night after everyone but the janitors have gone home. It goes by various names, but the one I’ve heard most often is “Misery Poker.” The rules are simple: If your workload is worse than your colleagues’, you win. So “I’m staffed on two deals, and I haven’t left before midnight in a week” might prompt a raise of “Oh, yeah? Well, I’m staffed on three deals, and I stayed past 2 a.m. six nights out of the last eight.”
Usually Misery Poker is played with a wink to its ridiculousness. These are 22-year-old investment bankers, after all, not battlefield medics or single moms working three jobs. All of them are being well compensated for the pain they endure. But last weekend, when a London-based Bank of America intern dropped dead, reportedly after pulling three all-nighters in a row, we learned what happens when a game of Misery Poker goes high-stakes.
Dispatches From The Front 