The Buy Side Read Online Free PDF Page A

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 inthe 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