The Newest Game on the Street: Rock Your Capacity

An internal Bank of America e-mail asking some BofA analysts to estimate their current workload capacities recently made its rounds on the Web. The e-mail included the below "definition" of capacity, and analysts were told they could also "use percentages in between":

0% - completely swamped and expect to be here until at least 3 am for next several days.

25% - pretty swamped and getting home after midnight for next several days.

50% - staying fairly busy but still getting home between 10pm and midnight.

75% - going home before 10pm.

If you're not familiar with the hours in investment banking, here's another e-mail message I found that might provide a little more light on the subject of capactiy to an investment banking analyst. The below e-mail defining capacity was circulated by an unnamed widget manufacturing and marketing company to all of its employees:

0% - completely swamped and expect to work just about every minute of my eight-hour day, as well as through all of my one-hour lunch break, and might even have to stay a few minutes past 6 p.m.

25% - pretty swamped and only able to check my personal e-mail five times a day and surf the Internet for about an hour but still out of here at 6

50% - staying fairly busy but taking an extra half hour at lunch and tracking e-bay bids all day and e-mailing friends every half hour before counting down the seconds to 6

75% - probably clocking in an hour or two of work, at most, and leaving whenever, always making it on the dot for the start of happy hour!