Thursday 18 October 2007

James the Hunter

James has turned out to be more ambitious than I realised.

He has found a hundred different ways of asking me how to find new clients. How to be a hunter. I have, in my own small way, something of a hunter's reputation within the bank and James is keen to learn. He has already confessed, charmingly and blushingly, a certain scorn for the farmers amongst my colleagues. Ironic, given his choice of tertiary education, but when I alluded to this James rather determinedly missed the point. He does not want to be known as a farmer. He wants to go out and hunt. End of story.

I think I have already been a disappointment to him. He probably imagined I would be spending our days together leafing through Debrett's, or the Rich List, or perhaps the Monaco phone directory, and then pouncing with debonair telephonic eloquence on unsuspecting heiresses. Instead he has had to assist with an impossibly tedious client satisfaction survey (tedious to the clients that is; mortifying to me) and listen to endless phone calls I've needed to make to track down a payment that had gone astray.

This afternoon, he said, "I suppose, in your day one could just, like, go and have lunch with people, but there are so many private bankers now. No one with any serious wealth will even take my call once they find out I've only just started. I wouldn't take my call. I honestly can see myself actually with no clients, even in, like, a year's time."

Mildly irritated by the "in your day", I told him to stop moaning and go out and hunt if that's what he really wanted to do. "Go to Pangaea or Boujis, or wherever it is Prince Harry hangs out these days, and start signing up clients. Now. Tonight. Go right away."

It was a bit of a cruel thing to do. He went all bright-eyed and inspired on me. I nearly told him to forget it, but then I decided he probably needed a good night out, even if it does end in humiliation and banishment from a couple of fashionable nightspots. So off went little James to play with the Princes, his pinstripe suit laden with business cards. I can't help thinking of one of those fairy story children who goes off to fight giants armed only with a wooden spoon.

I shall start to feel guilty only if he doesn't turn up to work in the morning.

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