Instead of drinking yourself into oblivion every night and waking up at the crack of 2 a.m. to chug water and vitamin supplements, you stay home and try to read a book or watch a movie but end up falling asleep by about 9:30. What has become of your life? Your mind can no longer function on most normal levels due to the immense shock of having to wake every morning at 6:30 and work until 5. No, sir, this is certainly a change.
The summer of internships is officially underway, and there are no consolation prizes for the working class. Instead of cold beer and cheap women, we get coffee and Bloomberg screens. I traded in my VIP card at the local strip club and filled out a W-4; it was time to get my life on schedule and join in with the rest of the world working every day, not sleeping through classes.
I interviewed in January and sealed the deal for a job when I finished exams this past semester. After making the drive from Charlottesville to Memphis (with a pit-stop at Nashville's Steeplechase), I walked in the office Monday, May 17 to start my summer job. Unfortunately, I was under the assumption that most fixed-income investment firms were now under a casual dress code, so I was immediately sent home to put on a tie and return when I was properly attired. Upon my tie-clad return, I filled out my paperwork and was afterward instructed to "get a hair cut and come back tomorrow when you look presentable." I had not thought that my hair was particularly long, but as I have now realized, college makes you extremely laid back -- I was no longer cognizant of dress codes and appearance policies that were enforced not three years ago at my high school. And what a first day -- a very nice impression. Get sent home twice for grooming and dress. I'm a real winner.
I am currently working on the trading floor of a Memphis-based bond firm. The people around me are constantly making phone calls to their clients or probables to buy and sell huge blocks of securities. They are making money. I am doing their busy-work and hopefully getting a good recommendation at the summer's close.
There are a few attractive ladies around, but mainly the bond salesmen themselves provide non-stop entertainment. They are either hard-working and talking on the phone in their "bondspeak," which is an extremely complex tongue, or they are playing practical jokes on each other and picking on me, the intern. Before indulging, I must explain the dichotomy of the trading floor. It is segregated, not by any real line, but by the invisible characteristic of experience. The men (BSDs) are separated from the rookies. Most "rookies" sit on the same side of the floor in clear view from the manager's office. One particular rookie had been having trouble with his phone for a few weeks: All of his customers complained they could barely hear him, and he nearly had to yell in the phone to get his message across. After a few weeks of this, he realized that the mouthpiece of his phone had clear Scotch tape over it: One of the older salesmen had been laughing at him for the past several weeks. But the next morning, the prankster himself answered his ringing phone to get an earful of toothpaste, and immediately afterwards he started chasing the rookie around the floor right as the manager walked in to show the office to some clients.
Being on the boss's bad side is never a good thing. The pranking salesmen merely got a slight reprimand and sent on their way (by slight I mean yelled at for about 10 minutes straight). But try asking for a vacation. I put in a notice during my first week for the vacation my family is taking this summer. About five minutes after I had turned in the form, I heard my name yelled across the floor, and following the voice my eyes fell upon the red, shaking face of the floor manager. "Get in my office!" he said. After yelling at me for about five minutes, I walked back onto the floor where everyone had been watching and laughing. So, after all that, I laid my summer dreams aside and started working full force -- a complete shift from the lifestyle I had been living for the past few years at U.Va.
I sold my Bonnaroo ticket to a friend, and had to live vicariously through his rendition of the weekend. But even Bonnaroo this year seems to be different. The deaths of two people, one 20, the other 22, grabbed everyone's attention as if some spirit or force swept through our entire generation and asked, "What the hell are you doing?" The change is coming. You can look around the office and see the "rookies" a few years out of college working day in and day out. Their social lives have diminished to going downtown two nights a week and trying to pick up what used to be girls but now prefer the title women to go along with their own business suits and work ethics.
So I sit, do my little tasks, try to learn from the salesmen who have enough patience to answer my questions, occasionally space out and stare blankly at the floor, look up random things on the Internet and spend all my money buying completely unnecessary items that I find in random Internet stores. I have joined in line with the masses, wading around in the B.S. trying not to smell and keeping my chin up at all times. Counting the hours till 5 p.m. and the days until Friday, or just wanting to drink a glass of Scotch during my lunch break -- some things never change.
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