The IT department at Goldman Sachs sent the following email to Charlie Barrow after they discovered that the trader was spending four hours a day on Facebook, which we believe seriously qualifies him for an internet addiction and psychological counseling:

It has come to our attention that you have been spending a considerable amount of time on a website known as ‘The Facebook.’ This is unacceptable since firm regulations do not permit usage of social networking sites. Moreover, your combined total usage time over the past six months has now exceeded 500 hours (the equivalent of over four hours daily), which we feel would normally be sufficiently high to render us duty-bound to inform your manager. As a gesture of goodwill, we will not forward this email on this time, but would ask that you stop utilizing this site, and in addition would advise you that this is your final warning and subsequent offenses will be treated with more severity and through the appropriate official channels.

Step number two in his adult game plan was to brazenly post the email on his facebook account:

It’s a measure of how warped I’ve become that, not only am I surprisingly proud of this, but in addition, the first thing I did was to post it here, and that losing my job worries me far less than losing facebook ever could.

Here are a few other blogs covering the news:

• Losing facebook worse than losing job
• Freaking stupid
• Goldman trader addicted to facebook
• Goldman employee to earn bonus
• About to be fired
• A little career advice from TechCrunch

You would think that an Oxford grad would know better than this, but kids these days…

5 Responses to “Charlie Barrow: Facebook & Goldman Sachs”

1. charlie morrison says:

   3/15/2007 at 9:07 am

   The email he posted on his Facebook page was actually composed by him to satirise his love of Facebook. It was purely a joke for his own and his friends’ amusement. He has pointed out to me, as I would already have guessed, that he simply leaves his Facebook page on whilst at work. This means probably that it is on for more like 10 hours per day, but in no way does it mean that he is actually using it in any way nearly as much – merely dipping in now and then. This is the same sort of thing as I and my friends do at work as well. The fact that the whole thing was nothing but a joke in the first place makes this whole story and all its accompanying palaver somewhat superfluous.

   Reply
2. tallyho43 says:

   3/22/2007 at 9:45 am

   Why do women sleep with jerks then complain that
   all men are pigs?

   Guys, there is something better than whiny females.

   Reply
3. Dustin says:

   3/24/2007 at 8:34 pm

   Charlie Barrow got sacked from Goldman Sachs over this misdemeanour. He is now unemployed.

   Reply
4. Jakubson says:

   4/1/2007 at 1:01 pm

   Here is a photo of Charlie smoking a joint, on the night he got fired: http://photos-289.ak.facebook.com/ip002/v63/203/66/222402992/n222402992_993289_5085.jpg

   The guy on the right on the other hand made $1m age 21 with a Million Dollar Homepage site.

   Reply
5. ollie says:

   4/4/2007 at 5:22 pm

   That’s not a joint, you prick. It’s a Davidoff.

   Reply