The Buy Side (4 page)

“I don’t smoke,” I say.

“You don’t smoke?” he asks. I shake my head. “Live in this city long enough and you will,” he says.

If he’d approached me during my first beer I would have turned my back. But after four beers, I’m feeling rounded at the edges. He looks like a Larry, I think. He has a lopsided grin and his hair sticks out on the sides of his head. He asks me where I’m from.

“Born in Cleveland, but grew up in Maine,” I say.

“Maine!” he says, rolling his eyes. I sit quietly, expecting him to tell me why my home state warrants such an animated reaction, but no explanation comes. Instead he asks me how old I am. When I tell him, he just shakes his head at the injustice of anyone being twenty-four years old. Finally, he asks what I do for work.

“I’m starting at Morgan Stanley next week,” I tell him. “It’s my first job.”

“Whoa!” he says with a whistle. “The bigtime! You must be some kind of genius or related to someone.” Larry lights another butt. “Listen to me, kid,” he says. “I used to work at a place called Sands Brothers—ever heard of them?”

“No,” I say as I take a pull on my beer. “I really don’t know much about Wall Street.”

“They’re a piece of shit, that’s what they are,” he says. “They fucked me.” Larry flicks the ash off the cigarette onto the floor and then takes a drag. “I got some advice for you, kid.” His words come on a carpet of white smoke. “There are three things you need to always remember if you’re gonna make it in this business.” Watching Larry is like viewing bad television. I really want to turn the channel, but there’s something about him that holds my attention. I nod my head ever so slightly. “First, always, and I mean always, work the day after Thanksgiving. It’s only half a day and it makes you look like a hero.” I signal the bartender for another beer. I can feel Larry’s stare boring in on me. He leans in close. “Second,” he says in a smoky whisper, “you need to get in with all the ten-five-Ws.”

“The what?” I say, afraid to ask.

“The Eskimos,” he says. I’m really confused. “Keep ’em close—they run the business. Sure, the Merrills, Morgans, and Montgomerys are all stacked with guys like you and me.” I look at him and wonder what he means by guys like me and him. I’m nothing like him. “But who do you think is in upper management, who’s pulling all the strings? It’s the ten-five-W’s.”

“Ten-five-what?” I ask.

“What’s the tenth letter in the alphabet? The fifth letter in the alphabet?” I use my fingers to count out the letters, J and E.
Jews?
I grew up in a town without any Jewish or black people. The only thing we
knew about racism was what we saw in the movies. I drink what’s left of the beer in front of me, pick up all but two bucks of my cash. As I turn to go, I feel his hand on my shoulder.

“Wait,” he says. “I didn’t tell you the third thing.” I turn back and look at him. His eyes are rheumy, his teeth are crooked and the color of a school bus. He pulls on his cigarette so hard that his cheeks sink. “Attach yourself to revenue,” he says while pointing his cigarette at me. “If you do that, then nobody can touch you.” He exhales and disappears behind the billow of smoke. “It’s that simple,” he says. I escape to the street and try to figure out which direction the movie theater is.

THERE’S ONE
empty chair. Conference room A is on the inside of the building so there are no windows. Seven women and two men, all of whom are, more or less, my age, are already seated around the sleek oval table with comfy black chairs. The women all look attractive and alert. Most have notebooks out and pens uncapped. The two other men in the room seem a little bit more relaxed. They’re dressed just like me, in bargain suits and ties. I take the empty chair and look up at Stephanie. The smile I remember from my interview is gone. She looks stern, almost angry. She allows the silence to settle in the air. It cues the two other guys to sit up a little straighter and focus on our boss. “Welcome to Private Client Services,” she says. My uncle told me PCS is as close to the trading desk as I can get. These brokers manage high-net-worth individuals’ money instead of institutions. They are retail brokers, but their client lists aren’t your mom-and-pops down the street. They only manage money for people with ten, twenty, thirty
million plus. “I know a few of you have already been at Morgan Stanley for a couple of weeks now and some of you”—she looks directly at me—“are starting today.”

She begins to walk around the room. “It’s my job to train and develop you into the best sales assistants on the planet.” She stops for a moment and begins to laugh. “It’s also my job to make sure you don’t cry.” I look around to see if anyone else is laughing but no one is. She’s serious again—it’s like she has an on-off laugh switch. She continues her slow circle around us.

“Do you know how long I’ve worked at this firm?” she asks. She’s looking directly at one of the other guys. “Twenty years. Wanna know why I’ve worked here for twenty years? I’ll tell you why … because there’s Morgan Stanley and then everybody else.” It’s as though she’s channeling the voice of Henry Morgan or Harry Stanley: “You only get to leave Morgan Stanley once.”

She takes a moment to let her words soak in. I notice a couple of the women are writing this down in their notebooks. I don’t think I belong here. I want to be on the trading floor, where it seems like a bunch of guys having a good time. This is serious. She starts to walk again. I feel like I’m in some kind of sinister game of duck, duck, goose. “Most of you are going to be floaters,” she says. She is now standing right behind me. “Last year’s MBA training program was our largest yet, and they’ll be looking for sales assistants soon. Some of you will find positions and the rest of you will find the door.” I feel like she might tap me on the head at any moment. “So when you’re floating, you have to prove your worth to these brokers. They’ll be the ones deciding whether they want you as their assistant or not.”

For the next five minutes, Stephanie explains that we need to pass two tests, the Series 7 and the Series 63, learn how to use the phones and computers, read research, and also introduce ourselves to the people in
the mail room and back office. I try to absorb everything she’s saying, but I don’t feel like a sponge. I look over at the two other guys and they seem confident, even arrogant. They don’t look anything like I feel. The seed that maybe I’m not cut out for this starts to grow roots.

It’s our turn to introduce ourselves. And as each of my new coworkers does, the group starts to sound like a
Who’s Who
of the talented and gifted and their alma maters like a
Princeton Review
top ten colleges list. Duke, Stanford, and Harvard all get mentioned. I’ve never felt embarrassed by where I went to school. I love Ohio University. I think it’s the greatest college in the world. But when I say, “I’m Turney Duff, from Kennebunk, Maine, and I attended Ohio University,” the guy on the end, from the University of Virginia, yells out, “Buckeyes!”

“Ohio University, not Ohio State,” I say.

“It’s Miami of Ohio,” someone else interjects, but they’re wrong too.

“In Athens,” I say. “Bobcats? Green and white?”

Everyone is looking at me with a perplexed expression. My moment in the spotlight now feels like a police flashlight shining in my eyes. I hope to salvage it in part two of “getting to know each other,” which involves offering an interesting comment about ourselves. “I like to write,” I say. I think the group will find that nugget at least as interesting as the compost volunteered by my peers: high school yearbook superlatives, favorite pets, and the kiss-ass from Virginia telling Stephanie he likes to trade stocks in his own account. But instead my comment sits there, a non sequitur, like a meatball on an ice cream sundae. I can feel the perspiration gathering on my forehead. Stephanie smiles, but I can’t tell if it’s out of compassion or if she’s enjoying my discomfort.

“Come on, everybody,” she says as she turns to lead us out the door. “Let me show you where the cafeteria is.” I fall in toward the back of the group close to the girl from Duke.

“What’s a floater?” I whisper to her.

The office is as wide as a city block and the length of a football field. All of the brokers and assistants sit out in the open. The desks are arranged in clusters of six, and they line the whole floor. Every desk looks the same, with a computer screen, a phone, an inbox and outbox mail holder, and a keyboard, along with family photos, cute sayings, and memorabilia. At any one time, there are two to three hundred people on the floor. For the most part it’s men in their thirties and forties, and women in their twenties. Offices, occupied by men in their fifties with very serious looks on their faces, ring the floor.

Floaters, I find out, come to work every day and get placed with any group missing an assistant or a group that might be looking for an assistant. We report to Stephanie’s office first thing and she finds a place or a need for our services that day. It’s just a little better than being a temp. The idea is, after moving around for a while, eventually a broker or a team of brokers will like you and ask you to join their group.

On my second day, I’m asked to send an eighteen-page fax of bond prices to a broker’s client, which I do. But the client calls the broker and tells him he didn’t receive it. I resend it. This time the client calls and says he has thirty-six blank fax pages—I’d put them all in upside down. The broker doesn’t talk to me for the rest of the day. A few days later they have me answering phones for another group. The system works like this: The phone rings and I pick it up. Then I write down the information that’s coming from the trading floor, then stand up and yell it to the two brokers and three assistants sitting behind me. It’s only a little more advanced than two soup cans and a string, but this is 1994 and that’s how it’s done. The first time the phone rings I pick it up and the voice on the other end begins to rattle something off. I try to scribble it down as fast as I can. Before I know it, they’ve
hung up. I look down at the piece of paper I’ve written on. It says:
Fred Governor rhetoric is dubbish
. What am I supposed to do with this? I feel ill. The brokers and assistants are all looking at me; I pretend to still be writing so I don’t have to look back at them. But I know I have to face them sooner or later, so I stand and hold the paper like I’m about to recite a poem. “Fred Governor,” I say with as much courage as I can muster. “Rhetoric is dubbish.” There is a collective pause. Then the group busts into a roar. I try to laugh with them, but my face feels hot and I know it’s as red as a stop sign. Finally, the head assistant walks up to my desk.

“I think they might have said, ‘The Fed governor is dovish,’ ” she says, trying to keep a straight face. “But I could be wrong.”

My days, weeks, then months as a floater become one of those montages in romantic comedies, the ones where you see the protagonist go on bad date after bad date: there’s the crazy broker who randomly shouts profanities at nobody; the team of brokers who want a hot chick as their assistant and not a dude; the Latin American brokers whose clients don’t speak English; the female broker who hates me and anyone with a penis; the broker who is getting a divorce and cries all day (he wants me to go to dinner with him after work to talk about his ex-wife); the broker who doesn’t talk to me and whispers things into the phone because he thinks I might be a Russian spy trying to steal secrets; the broker I’d love to work for, but who already has two assistants. All I want to do is find a team, but as the days go by, it seems like I never will.

My work life would be easier to deal with if the rest of my life was manageable. But it’s not. New York City is an even bigger mystery to me. Like, West Broadway isn’t the part of Broadway that goes west. There’s nothing express about the subway that takes you to the Bronx. Mysteriously, cabdrivers and food delivery guys never have change
when all I have is a twenty. The guy without legs outside my subway stop must have used the money I gave him to buy a pair, because he plays basketball down the block. The umbrellas that sell for two bucks when the sun’s shining go for ten when it’s raining. Nursery schools can be prestigious. You’re supposed to say “Happy Holidays,” not “Merry Christmas.” Doormen don’t appreciate candy canes for their year-end tip. Channel 35 has some very interesting late-night programming. Girls in the Meatpacking District who ask me if I want a “date” might not be girls. Bus drivers don’t care if you’re on the wrong bus. Bars stay open until four a.m. Twenty-Third Street is not downtown.

It takes some time, but by December 1994, things finally start to break my way. First, Stephanie calls me into the conference room. I’m not in trouble, but I still have anxiety. Everybody has anxiety around bonus time. Whether you’re in a white shoe firm or a here-today-gone-tomorrow mutual fund, the same scene is replayed countless times on the Street. Your name is called and everybody in the office watches as you march to hear your fate. The walk is like a cross between a bride heading down the aisle and an overmatched challenger heading into the ring—expectation and fear course through your bloodstream. In an otherwise empty conference room, your boss or bosses sit stone-faced. They’ve worn their best bonus-day outfits, ones that are always somber and conservative. Though it’s Christmastime—I mean holiday time—they pretend there’s nothing festive in what’s about to happen.