From: The Washington Post
Thick Skin, and more of it
The Washington Post:
New on my firm’s trading floor, I was glad to know at least one person. Derek had been a year ahead of me in college and was now a junior T-Bill trader. One day, I walked up behind Derek’s desk to ask a question. His head was turning from side to side checking the multiple screens in front of him. Suddenly, he shouted an expletive. They continued to erupt for the next several seconds. Derek’s boss walked up, less worried about the money being lost than something else. “Derek, don’t talk like that in front of a lady,” he said. The boss was 30. I was stunned.
On trading floors, like navy ships, colorful speech is standard. I was accustomed to bad language: it was a vice I suffered too. Letting off steam with a few foul words came quite naturally to me and seemed harmless. Derek’s boss didn’t know that I, for good or ill, shared more with Rahm Emanuel than Scarlett O’Hara when it came to cursing. “It’s an honest mistake,” I heard myself saying, “but I am NOT a lady!”
Read the whole story: The Washington Post
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