The 2004 Blackberry - An Investment Banking Relic

Posted on July 17, 2008
Filed Under Chief Health Officer (the CEO)

so i’ve kept the blackberry i used as an investment banker to this day - a sentimental relic of the road not less traveled. but the day has come for me to beat the shit out of this thing as an effigy of sorts. it’s like tossing the final picture into the fire. it’s a rite of passage into true entrepreneurship.

http://twitpic.com/4h6i

yep, that’s it, gleaming on my desk this afternoon in all of its faded glory. little does it know that it’s going to get beat with a 9 iron. i swear that blackberrys - especially those with a history behind them - are living, breathing organisms. they just won’t die. they’re like cockroaches. you look into their eyes/screens and see a life of memories you’d rather forget, memories involving mind-numbing valuations and fwd’d finance jokes that aren’t actually funny.

since I can’t show the beating, i’ve included a small passage from my book (Intelligent Design: Wall Street’s Secret Program to Clone Humans) which describes how and why i left the Street to start a healthy vending machine company (before I got cloned, of course). In this particular episode, I’d just woken up on the floor of my hotel bathroom and realized I had to be at a Board meeting in 30 minutes across town in Bangkok. The blackberry pictured above is the replacement I was given after I broke my original company-issued blackberry in the Conrad hotel that morning.

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………

I made my way to my feet, slipping and sliding in bodily fluids. I nearly lost my balance, but I had a steady grip on the counter with one hand; my other hand was clutching my vibrating Blackberry. It was my only link to reality.

The first thing I did when I steadied myself against the counter was check the time on the screen.

FRIDAY, APRIL 14TH, 7:30 A.M.

A deep hatred toward the Blackberry began to swirl inside me. It represented everything that was wrong in my life at that moment. It told me the time, it gave people access to me whenever they wanted and it saddled me with responsibility. It represented structure , and it represented work. It was evil.

In that instant, standing in the bathroom, I was a warrior. I represented all Blackberry users who had been prostituted and exploited. I was a martyr; I was a crusader. With the light on my Blackberry blinking feverishly to signal new emails, I wound up and hurled the device against the wall as hard as I could. It shattered into hundreds of lifeless pieces of plastic.

For a moment, there was peace and quiet in the world. I found it cathartic, even sobering. In this one selfless act, I had liberated all junior financial analysts from a life of responsibility.

As I made my way out of the bathroom, I swear I saw the reflection of a red light blinking on the floor behind me…