Depth charge

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Continuing our theme of submarine warfare, another rare but, among the cognoscenti highly-prized, technique is the depth charge. Rare because you will only see this when an all-hands conference call has taken a decided turn for the worse, and most experienced conference call convenors can easily avoid that outcome by avoiding controversial or even substantial topics in the first place. As any fule kno, a conference call is no place to raise anything of moment to which you don't already know the answer.

Anyway, a depth charge: That critical deal approval call has turned into a shit-show. The presenter — a junior on the deal team, hoping unrealistically for promotion — is unprepared, transparently does not understand his deal and to boot has committed that mortal error of not warming up the controller group who are due to hear his application. Further, the cantankerous guy from Treasury legal got out the wrong side of bed this morning and is of a mood to make an example out of young sir in front of his boss.

The call proceeds, limply descending into a chaos of stuttering, patent fabrications and awkward pauses. A distant voice is picked up an a call microphone — whose, we cannot say — quietly but clearly — and sounding as if has come from a mouth turned away from the microphone, such that it might be serendipitous trading-floor chatter, but might also be a controller addressing a colleague in confidence, says “Man this deal is a piece of shit.”