Typical Day
Greg Billings wakes up at 7:30AM and stumbles out of bed, nearly tripping over the large yellow bungee jumping rig he failed to put back on the garage shelf the night before. Greg has a lot of hobbies that might be considered a bit reckless, probably because he spends all day assessing financial risk and doesn't want to bring his work home with him.
His shower is ice cold. Greg dances and shakes beneath the water, as if it'll provide some defense against the freezing temperature. Of course, he could just turn the handle to warm, but the jarring feeling of the freezing water is what he needs to really wake up and stay alert.
Greg jumps into his car, a mint-toothpaste-colored 1975 Gremlin. It's been overheating lately, and this morning is no different. The temperature gauge is flickering all the way to the right, bouncing over a bright red triangle that, to any other person, would scream, "Turn off the engine right now, you dope." To Greg, it says, "How far do you think we can get before the engine blows?"
Pretty far, as it turns out. Greg arrives in the parking lot of Simon, Gats, and Mulligan without issue, though he's pretty sure he caught a few white plumes of something floating up from beneath the hood of his car as he pulled into the lot. Smoke? Steam? Oil burning off the engine core? He lazily wonders which one as he makes his way inside the building.
He's not two steps beyond the entry door when Larry and Carol beset him. Larry's the first to speak.
"I know, I know, I know you said Mint Tires is a bad bet, but I've been looking over the charts, and I think—"
"No way, Larry."
Carol chimes in. "I think what Larry's trying to say is—"
"That we stand to gain a whole lot more than we lose. Am I right?"
"Well...yes."
Greg stops walking, and turns to face the pair of junior analysts.
"We can 'stand to gain' anything. If we don't actually gain it, then best-case scenario is we break even. A worse, and more likely, scenario is the big potential gain turns out to be a big actual loss."
"But if it hits—"
"Take it up with the credit manager."
"But Sarah always just agrees with you," Larry whines.
"And why do you think that is?" Greg asks. "Because I'm the most risk averse analyst on payroll here—have been for five years—and the company has never done better."
"Sometimes I wonder if you've ever taken a risk in your life," Larry says.
Greg chuckles under his breath, then continues to his desk.
Greg spends the first part of his day cleaning up reports he completed earlier in the week. He'll need to present them to management later on, so prioritizing them first presents the least risk to his schedule.
Once he's finished doing a triple-check on the accuracy of his calculations, he calls one of the communications interns to print and bind the report packets. It's not exactly "communications" work, but the interns usually light up at the chance to do just about anything beyond fetching coffee.
Greg leaves for lunch at 12:30PM and heads out to the train tracks, where he eats right on the rails. He keeps a corner of his eye trained on the northern route; nothing today. Rats. Sometimes he gets lucky and his lunch coincides with a large engine speeding around the curve just beyond where he eats.
It's not enough time for the conductor to stop, so it's up to Greg to perform a last minute dodge out of harm's way. It's a real rush, but sadly not one he'll experience today.
As if that wasn't disappointing enough, on the short drive back to the office, his car's temperature gauge is back to normal. It's a boring, quiet drive back to Simon, Gats, and Mulligan.
The second part of Greg's day involves researching current applications. His company only handles large business clients, so the three applications waiting for his analysis actually represent a large amount of simultaneous work.
He sets two of them aside and begins his slow and methodical work on the other. He's sure he'll get at least a few phone calls about speeding up to get through the pile, but he'll tell them the same thing he always tells them: it's just not worth the risk.
Greg's first application is from Snoots, a large restaurant chain looking for a loan to expand its business into two new locations. Snoots has been successful in four of its six existing locations, but the other two have turned in horrendous numbers. In fact, those two locations are so bad that Snoots is planning on closing them.
Because the menu and service were almost identical at the successful and failed locations, the owners at Snoots are convinced the problems stemmed from location—hence the loan application for rebuilding in better areas.
It's a tricky problem, because while the problem with the two failed restaurants could stem from location, there's always the chance that other factors were involved. Greg needs to research Snoot's finances to determine whether or not he agrees with the managers' assessment of location woes, then research these new proposed locations to look for compelling evidence of potential profit in the places they're looking to expand to. His gut tells him that this loan will be too risky, but he's resigned to researching it properly before deciding for sure.
Greg works on Snoots until 5:00PM, at which point he gathers up his belongings quickly and gets ready to go home. He signed up for an amateur alligator wrestling competition at 7:00PM, and he needs time to change into his spandex luchador outfit.
Soon, he arrives in the parking lot to find his car has finally succumbed to the overheating. It won't start.
Larry, whose car is nearby, offers to give Greg a ride home.
"No thanks," Greg says. "I'll hitchhike." Getting into a car with the first random person who offers a ride? Greg doesn't mind the risk.