British and animals

I had my first case interview today. Four of us (3 exchange students and one LBS MBA grad) sat together and tried giving each other cases. It’s an excellent learning experience. Had I gone in for a case interview without this preparation, I’d have flunked.

Our class on Financial Analysis was good fun — and an exposure to yet another illustration of internationalism. Prof. Higson (in his perfect British accent) mentioned that he was part of a programme on TV for some society of animals. (Not as a caged animal that looked sorry, he assured us. He was talking about stocks — no idea why.) We were discussing the ‘Body Shop’ company (the one that sells natural cosmetics), and apparantly this company was blacklisted by the programme, for failing to be ‘animal-friendly’. Prof. Higson was mentioning that one of the reasons for Body Shop’s success was the British obsession with being kind to animals. He suggested that, therefore, Body Shop may not have been as successful elsewhere.

That was a leading question, naturally, and someone disagreed. So Prof. Higson quietly murmurs, “Perhaps there’s someone from France in this class?”

Prompt comes the response from the back row. “Yeah. And we don’t give a f*** about animals.”

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *