Bond Girl. Erin Duffy
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the perimeter. I could hear screams on the trading floor from the elevator vestibule and felt my hands begin to sweat. It seemed like total chaos. People—nine out of ten of them men—raced through the hall, their loafers crushing the once-plush carpet fibers flat and thin, talking, laughing, cursing. Some wore ties and jackets. Most wore khakis and their moods tattooed on their foreheads. We wove in and out of people as we approached the small staircase that led down to the floor, and for the first time I could see huge banners hanging from the ceiling marking the accolades the division had earned over the years, the way the championship banners hung in Madison Square Garden. The room was enormous. A girl could get lost in there and need the dog teams from the New York City Police Department to be found. I felt my legs begin to tremble.
Chick spoke insanely fast, like his lungs didn’t need oxygen at the same rate as a normal person’s. His smile was friendly and his demeanor was welcoming, but at the same time I had the sense that if I screwed up he would make sure I spent the rest of my Cromwell career stuffing FedEx envelopes in the mailroom. We made a left before we hit the small staircase that led to the floor and walked down a hallway lined with glass-enclosed offices. Small plaques mounted next to the doors displayed the occupants’ name, a small sign of stature that differentiated the office-endowed from their peers. Only very senior managers received offices, because they were a scarce commodity on the floor. The majority of employees only had a seat on “the desk” on the trading floor; no hope of privacy, no direct-dial phone numbers, no chance of having two minutes of solitude during the day unless they locked themselves in the bathroom. Chick wasn’t one of the majority.
We walked past his secretary, who Chick quickly introduced as Nancy, and pushed open a heavy glass door into his office. I found myself staring through floor-to-ceiling windows on the opposite wall that afforded an uninterrupted view of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Photographers could have used Chick’s office to shoot postcards to sell in Times Square—I wasn’t entirely convinced they didn’t. If I had this view, I’d sit in here all day, but it didn’t seem like Chick spent much time in his office at all. His shiny lacquered desk and aerodynamic chair were squarely in the middle of the room, and there were two leather-backed chairs facing his desk. The walls that abutted the adjacent offices were completely bare, although with the view I guess he figured artwork was unnecessary. I scanned his desk, which held a monitor with two keyboards, and a phone, and was covered with disorganized stacks of papers and books. A mini basketball hoop was attached to the rim of an empty wastebasket on the wall on the right, next to a large fish tank containing three tropical fish. That was about it.
He sat down behind his desk, with his back to the view of the water. I found it kind of funny that the people who occupied these offices sat with their backs to one of the most iconic New York landmarks, but I guess Cromwell figured the view was meant to impress guests, not employees. “Take a seat,” Chick commanded from his chair as he motioned to the empty chairs facing him.
I did as I was told and placed my hands on my knees to keep them from shaking. This guy terrified me.
“Okay, Alex,” he said as he put his hands behind his head and his feet up on his desk, so that I was staring at the soles of his brown Gucci loafers. He leaned back in his chair and talked to me while he stared straight up at the ceiling. It was very disconcerting having a conversation with someone when the only way you knew for sure he was actually talking to you was because you were the only other person in the room. “I run my group pretty openly. There aren’t a lot of rules you need to know, but I’ll go over the basics. You’re smart, I know, because if you weren’t, you wouldn’t be here. I promise you, though, that you aren’t the smartest person in this building. What that means is that I expect you to work hard; I expect you to be the first person here in the morning and the last person to leave at night. Unless, of course, you think that you know more than some of the guys who have been busting their asses for twenty years. Do you think that, Alex?”
I wasn’t really sure if the question was rhetorical. It was difficult to tell when he still hadn’t taken his eyes off the ceiling.
“No, Mr. Ciccone. I don’t think that.” There was a piece of pink gum stuck in the tread of his left shoe.
“Good. I’m here by 6:30 every morning, so you do the math and get in before me. That’s rule number one. Rule number two is don’t call me Mr. Ciccone. I’m not your high school math teacher and we’re all adults here. Call me Chick like everyone else. You will not ask for anything. The way I see it, you don’t deserve anything. No one knows you, you haven’t done one productive thing to help this group make money, and until you do, you should just thank God every day that you’re able to clear the turnstiles in the lobby. Your job, until I tell you otherwise, is to learn as much as you can by observing the rest of the team and asking questions without annoying them to the point where they punch you in the face. Help out when they ask you to. If that means you pick up someone’s laundry and drop it off at his apartment, or buy a birthday present for his wife, then you do it and you do it with a smile. It might not be in the job description, but you can take comfort in knowing that you will at least be the highest-paid delivery girl on the planet. I personally interviewed more than eighty applicants for the one spot in this department this year, so I know for a fact that there are hundreds of kids out there who want this job. If you have a problem with any of this, turn in your name tag downstairs and walk right out the front door. I’ll have you replaced by lunchtime with someone who will wipe my ass for me if I ask him to.”
Lovely visual.
He continued very matter-of-factly, “You will get coffee, pick up lunch, mail packages, and enter numbers into spreadsheets until you go blind if that’s what we ask you to do. I don’t have time for tears. There aren’t a lot of women on the floor. There are two or three on most of the desks”—my quick math put that number somewhere around thirty—“and before you ask, no, it’s not because we have a problem with women at the firm. We always try to hire smart females, but most of them realize they’re not cut out for the Business and quit, or they get married and quit. I have milk in my fridge that has lasted longer than some of the girls we have hired over the years. I’d put the aggregate number in fixed income around forty or fifty, not including the administrative assistants who mostly keep to themselves. You’re one of two women in my group, and if that dynamic is a problem for you, then take the train to Midtown and see if the broads at Condé Nast have a job for you, because I won’t. You’re not to answer phones. Under no circumstances are you allowed to execute trades of any kind, and you are prohibited from talking to clients unless someone introduces you directly. You’re also required to pass the Series 7, 63, and 3 exams by October fifteenth at the absolute latest.” Christ. I had less than three months.
He pushed three huge binders toward me. I felt my stomach churn in fear. A passing grade on the exams he’d named was required by the Securities and Exchange Commission if your job necessitated speaking to clients. The tests covered industry rules, regulations, ethics, fraud, and market basics. They were notoriously hard, and a lot of people failed because there was so much material to memorize and so many different ways to make mistakes. From what I’d heard, if you failed them, it basically advertised to everyone you worked with that you were an idiot, and the humiliation alone was enough of a reason to quit. I flipped open the binder for the Series 3 exam, which covered futures and options, and read one of the practice questions: “What would a farmer in Iowa do to hedge himself if he was worried about the effect rising grain prices would have on pork belly futures?”
Pork belly futures? I thought I was working on the Treasury bond desk. What do pigs have to do with anything?
“I don’t know what’s going on lately with some firms allowing their analysts to fail the tests and still keep their jobs while they study for a second try, but that’s not how we do things here. You pass all of them on the first try in October or you’re fired.”
Great.
“As you know, we are business casual here. I trust that you’ll dress appropriately. If you wear a tight skirt and someone smacks your ass, don’t come running to me or to HR about it. This is a place of business. Not a nightclub. The team is fantastic, one of the best in the Business. They work hard, play hard, and are