I went to a dinner last night to celebrate the closing of a big transaction. I don’t go to these things often (East Tennessee’s not exactly M&A central), so this was a new experience for me. Frankly, I was kind of dreading it. I thought the dinner would be a fairly stiff affair, what with a bunch of lawyers, executives, accountants, and investment bankers attending. I expected to be home by 8PM, asleep by 9PM.
I was totally wrong.
This was all out revelry, Roman style. Cocktails for an hour, then a dinner that stretched on until 10:30PM with copious shouting, roasting, jokes of questionable taste, drinking, flirtation, and general over-the-top hilarity and celebration. The outwardly staid and conservative accountants turned out to be secretly subversive and incredibly funny. The executives flashed all the social intelligence and people skills that have undoubtedly helped them ascend the corporate ladder. The investment bankers (mostly women--SMART women, by the way) were the ringleaders in the partying effort, and even the lawyers joined in the fray. It got so out of control that the extremely loud people in the next room complained about all the noise our party was making. The whole thing was unexpectedly hilarious and eye-opening, and I never would have predicted it.
Don't underestimate those guys in the gray suits: THEY ARE PARTY ANIMALS.
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