Bar Excel

On a sweltering August evening, a young consultant found his life incredibly boring. He had just moved to Brick City and did not know anyone outside of work. Tired of making up bullshit like "thought leadership" and tired of turning plough horses into cash cows, he was determined to find friends in this new city. The young man set out to explore his new surroundings in hopes of striking up some intellectually stimulating conversation and meeting fellow non-Brown Ivy League graduates. While walking down Main St., he found himself looking for an interesting spot to camp out for friends. On this particular street, there were the usual low-level joints like Barnes & Noble and Borders where "cool" people went to be seen browsing this month's best seller. There was also a wide array of pornographic images on this street such as the golden arches, sandwich shops pretending to be underground rail transportation systems, as well fake bistro signs. Sicken by the sight of $5 foot-longs of garbage and stringy-ass French onion soup, this young urban profession was quite confident that he would not enjoy his evening so he started to walk home.

Suddenly, the Yuppie spotted his Shangri-La; a whiskey bar with an iced-out AC unit. He could tell it was cold in there because the bartender was wearing a merino wool sweater and shaking up Manhattans with thinsulate gloves; real classy. The Yuppie did not want to spoil his pastel blue Brooks Brothers non-iron shirt any further in the unbearable August heat, so he quickly walked into the bar and descended into the most interesting evening of his young life.

The Yuppie grew up in a pretty typical Asian American household (we will know refer to this Yuppie as a Yappie – Young Asian Urban Professional). Since Yappie's childhood, he was taught by his parents to work hard in school, respect elders, and treat people in the service industry like Filipino slaves. So remembering his life lessons from Saturday morning Chinese School, he waved the bartender over with a few curls from his index finger and demanded in a biting yet smooth tone, "Nei ge nei ge nei ge… Macallan 18 on the rocks," and avoiding eye-contact at all times.

While waiting for his drink, Yappie began scanning his frigid surroundings for potential non-Brown company. On his left was a LEH banker that probably lost his job securitizing Staten Island mortgages; strike one for friendship. On his right side was a person wearing an UAW shirt; massive layoffs and collective bargaining as conversation topics?! Strike two for friendship. Then suddenly, the Yappie saw an attractive slim lady in the corner eating alone. He observed her closely and found that she was wearing a biz cas outfit with a key card at her waist. Could it be?! He couldn't really make out what the key card said but he thinks he saw a three-key emblem; a UBS tax-evasion banker chick with the same non-iron shirt?! Let's hope! Finally, what brought the Yappie over the edge with excitement was the newspaper that was on her table; it had dot pictures of Wall & Broad's most villainous foes, it must be a WSJ! He was never happier to see a Rupert Murdoch product than at that moment.

The Yappie then Chinese School-called the bartender over to buy this young lady a drink. As the bartender was making his way over, the Yappie began thinking for the worst. What if his girl was a fraud? What if this girl wasn't a private banker? What if she was an admin assistant or even worse, oh what if she was from HR?! HR girls are known for filing sexual harassment suits and asking "fit" questions like "Name your three greatest qualities." The Yappie knew if he hooked up with a girl from HR, his pedigree would be dipping like Bear Stearns '07. But this lady's actual human resources were so fine that he had to give it a shot. So he quickly devised a clever way to get technical with her. He wrote out on a napkin:

=if("You understand this", "Buy you a drink", "Have fun with campus recruiting, Bitch")

The bartender sent over his napkin note and the Yappie observed the face of the lady. She initially looked confused and then figured out the simple function. She looked over at the Yuppie, smiled and ordered herself a Maker's & Coke on Yappie's tab. Before Yappie could get too excited, she replied with a message of her own:

Arial or Times New Roman?

Unsure how to answer that question, Yappie took a big risk and wrote "Arial is for amateurs, Brown grads and poor people working in advertising. Times New Roman mothafucka!" He sent the message back to her and saw her nod in approval. She then looked up and gave him the "Come here" look. The Yappie was incredibly excited; he slid across the room as swiftly as a Ctrl + Shift + ↓and ended up sitting at her table. After chatting with this bona fide keeper with fine assets, the Yappie felt he met his match. He was eager to take this to committee and close the deal:

You AND Me: Merge Cells 39661 AND possibly 39662?

She looked down and did not understand the message. What was 39661 and 39662? He hinted a clue, " 'Alt + e + s + t' the two numbers in Date format". Unsure if she would get this basic hint, he again started to get nervous. Doubt crept in slowly and he began thinking that this chick might simply be HR after all. He didn't want to let a public business school graduate refer to him as "Superior Human Capital" or any other bullshit term. Just as he was about to throw back his Scotch and triple jump his way out of there like Carl Lewis, she got it!

"OOO!!!! Let's ride." Closing dinner time.

That evening, the lady and the Yappie merged cells furiously throughout the night as if they were working on a KKR prospectus due the morning of 39662. That night, neither of them really thought of the consequences and thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Then at 39662.25 when the Yappie usually wakes up, he realized that he made a huge mistake. HUGE. Only amateurs and Penn A&S grads merged cells! He could have easily "Ctrl + 1 + Merge Across Selection". This gave him the option to "Ctrl + a + delete" to preserve a clean worksheet. Now, things were sticky; he had to go through each merged cell and manually unmerge them! Realizing his mistake, the Yappie began stressing. While racking his brain for possible hidden short-keys or thinking of ways to write a macro, the Yappie observed closely and saw that the UBS banker chick had a student ID and was actually just an intern! Haha! He woke her up, made her get a mocha almond double-shot latte with soy from Starbucks (just to mess with her. Soy?! Are you kidding me?) and told her she wouldn't get an offer in this market if she didn't help him unmerge all those cells. Being a naïve intern, the young lady began in earnest. She finally finished at 39662.50 and had time to go back to work. Once she left, the Yappie chuckled to himself and determined to create more complex tests for someone's Excel abilities. Maybe he will have them create triple nested conditional functions or maybe he will ask how to import 3M LIBOR. At the very least, he chuckled to himself:

=if("This happens more often", "This city is not so bad", "I'll be some HR chick's human capital").

This story is totally fictional. Enjoy your summer.