When he eventually discovered that word of his dismissal had been a mere joke, Gimp returned to his desk, trying to pretend nothing had happened. Sniffling and wiping his red-rimmed eyes, he combed through a stack of unfinished tasks. But at that moment, we all knew: Gimp had been broken. Of course, “breaking” a trainee was usually only temporary, so long as the trainee could pick up the pieces and stop crying.
Now, a decade later, I was about to be broken. But unlike Gimp’s break, mine would be permanent.
By this point, I’d stuck with my banking job for longer than I’d expected. I’d left Salomon Brothers years earlier and moved to Credit Suisse New York, where I was vice president of Foreign Exchange Sales. I’d worked overseas in Asia for a few years before returning home to Manhattan and had been informally appointed Japan specialist. If anyone on the trading floor had an obscure question about the Japanese prime minister’s history with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, or wanted to parse the definition of “independence” when it came to the Bank of Japan, I was the one to ask in the New York time zone. And after nearly ten years of banking, I’d paid off all my debts and earned enough money to feel the freedom that my parents had never been able to feel. I’d even taken part in some of those wagers that had broken my colleague, Gimp, all those years ago.
While in Singapore, to the cheers of the entire trading floor, we’d all watched a junior derivatives trader try to eat ten Big Macs in less than an hour for a bet of roughly $700. (He managed to down only three.) In London, I’d bet a spot trader $1,000 that he couldn’t chew and fully swallow a single slice of bread in less than thirty seconds. “Fully swallowing” was crucial, however, so he lost the bet on the technicality that the bread had turned gluey while he was chewing it and had stuck in the back of his throat.
Of course, I also participated in these wagers, rising to a challenge to eat a single spoonful of the second-hottest hot sauce in the world for $1,000. I won the bet but paid a hefty price for it later on that afternoon when my nose and eyes swelled during a meeting with a top European hedge fund whose business I was trying to win.
It had taken me a long time to pay off those university debts and save enough money to feel “free,” and by the time I’d done so, I’d grown so accustomed to my job that I’d actually convinced myself I enjoyed it. And I could hardly argue that I didn’t enjoy at least parts of it. There was nothing quite like the thrill of a busy market or of being the first to learn of breaking news.
But deep down, what I longed for was a career that I truly loved. And I knew what that career was; I was reminded of it every time I turned on the television to see Christiane Amanpour reporting live for CNN from Baghdad. Over the years, I’d managed to quiet that nagging, persistent voice telling me that I was meant to be doing something more with my life. After all, that meant taking a risk, and I was too afraid of losing everything I’d earned.
Besides, after all those years working in Tokyo and Singapore, my lifestyle had actually become more important than my dream. If you’re looking for a surefire way to persuade someone to forget about pursuing her passion in life, ply her with business class plane tickets, a corporate apartment in an upscale neighborhood, and those high-tech Japanese toilets that wash and dry your bottom.
And yes, there was the money. I’d begun to make good money—really good money. So good, in fact, that I wasn’t exactly sure how much I was actually making. Bankers didn’t depend on their salaries to survive, at least not back then, before the post-recession reforms went into effect. Back then, a midlevel bank vice president was earning a base salary of about $150,000, not far off from a managing director’s base. It was the year-end bonuses that counted for everything, and they were often so large that a Ferrari, or even two, could easily be purchased for cash.
Even so, I wasn’t making nearly the kind of money that my colleagues were making. Although our “numbers” were strictly confidential, everyone seemed to know what the top traders and salespeople were earning, and their payouts were many multiples of what mine were. Of course, a job that pays so handsomely doesn’t come without a price.
In fact, I’d gotten greedy. After moving back to New York, I’d bought a dream loft apartment in downtown Manhattan’s Union Square. I ate out with fellow well-heeled friends at Michelin-starred restaurants and traveled to exotic destinations like Tibet and the Maldives. I’d grown quite accustomed to this lifestyle that had won me over, and I even felt a certain sense of entitlement to it. Without anything but work to define me, I had let it do just that.
And then Goldman Sachs called. The crème de la crème of investment banks, Goldman Sachs was where all bankers claimed they wanted to work. Just getting a single telephone call from Goldman Sachs suggesting they were thinking of hiring you was enough to negotiate a bigger pay package from your current employer. And I’d gotten more than a call; I’d actually gotten an interview. Sixteen of them, in fact, which was standard vetting practice at this venerable old Wall Street firm.
So one afternoon, after lying to my boss that I’d gone to the dentist, I sat down in Goldman Sachs’ conference room, across from Bob, the head of foreign exchange sales. If Goldman Sachs bankers were supposed to look slick and exquisitely groomed, Bob didn’t quite fit the image. His gray hair was tousled, he wore a boxy suit, and his tie was cheap. But he wore expensive angular eyeglass frames, and in typical Goldman Sachs style, he got right to the point.
We began to discuss money, and Bob didn’t waste any time getting specific. Without even asking me what salary I’d be expecting in order for me to abandon Credit Suisse, he offered me nearly double what I was currently earning. I’d learned in my early days of banking how to maintain a poker face, but this time I was having trouble doing so. I was giddy with greed because Bob had just said “eight hundred fifty thousand dollars.” It wasn’t an official offer so much as it was a suggestion. But it was a starting point in our negotiations, and I was astonished that I could ever earn that much money, especially when I’d only just turned thirty.
However, I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go to work for Goldman Sachs. Long ago, I’d promised myself that I’d quit banking by the time I was thirty years old, and that time was now. I’d only interviewed with them because I was curious—and because nobody turns down an interview with Goldman Sachs. Turning them down would be like getting called up to the Major Leagues but not bothering to show up for the tryouts. Successfully applying for a job at Goldman Sachs, well, it was proof that you’d made it.
“Are you fucking stupid? Do you know what time it is?” Eric, one of my clients, growled at me down the phone line early one Thursday morning, shortly after my discussions with Goldman Sachs.
Although I’d met Eric only once, it had been memorable. Over a steak-house dinner with a Credit Suisse strategist in tow, Eric had made it clear that he hated salespeople. Throughout the entire dinner, he had addressed me only once, and that was to interrupt me. Worse, rumor had it that Eric’s wife was in the process of dumping him, and he was infamous in the market for his impatience with women. Obviously, as a woman and a salesperson, I was in an unenviable position, trying to win his business.
Eric was thin in a wiry sort of way, and each time I spoke, the veins in his sinewy neck seemed to bulge, as if revealing a hypertensive testament to his revulsion for saleswomen. In the hierarchy of the trading floor, no one reigns more supreme than a client. Even the most belligerent senior traders and managers know that the client’s word is always gospel, always final.
“It’s just past eight–thirty a.m.,” I responded quietly that Thursday morning, ignoring the rhetorical nature of the question, imagining Eric’s veins bursting, one by one, in response to my insolence. Every weekday, government agencies around the world release statistical data revealing the health of their economies. Every Thursday at eight thirty a.m., the US jobless claims report is published. A weekly snapshot of the American employment situation, it often has the power to move markets.
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�Jobless data have just been released,” Eric notified me, feigning patience after loudly sucking in a deep breath of air. “The bond market is opening, and you’re telling me about a fucking rumor?” He enunciated “fuck” and “ing” as if they were two separate words, his condescension audible.
Although Eric had a point about my timing, I had a point too. Moments earlier, a rumor had begun to circulate that the Japanese government was intervening in the market value of the yen. When a government steps into the market to buy or sell its own currency, it’s a signal to traders around the world that officials have drawn a line over or under the value of their money.
In other words, this is breaking market news, especially for someone who is long or short of the currency, which was Eric’s situation. As his salesperson, it was my responsibility to alert my client to the rumor. But it wasn’t just that. I knew, almost for certain, that the Japanese were indeed intervening in their currency. When it came to Japan, I knew what I was talking about, and I knew I had to get Eric’s attention.
“But,” I tried to explain, “there’s a rumor that—”
“No buts!” he screamed into the receiver before slamming it down.
Taking a deep breath of my own, I gritted my teeth and bit my lip until it bled, focusing all my effort on not crying. Obviously, on a trading floor everyone gets yelled at and sworn at. It’s part of the job. That wasn’t my problem.
My problem was that Eric’s account was too big for me. Although I’d carved a niche for myself by understanding the intricacies of Asian current affairs, I was in over my head when it came to the mathematics behind large derivatives deals.
The currency market trades in tiny decimals: one one-hundredth of a yen, one ten-thousandth of a euro, and so on. Currency prices can fluctuate wildly within the space of a single second, so the minutiae of a change in the yen’s value by just one one-hundredth can drastically impact the price of a derivative. The larger the derivative, the greater the risk. Eric often dealt in half billions.
Unfortunately, telling my boss that I couldn’t handle Eric’s business was simply not possible. On a trading floor, you keep quiet about your shortcomings until you overcome them. So I spent sleepless nights going over and over option math in my head. When I did sleep, I dreamed about making terrible mistakes—career-ending, newspaper-headline-type mistakes. This was all normal for a midlevel banker like me; I was simply facing a hurdle in my development. It was my job to overcome it, and if I did so, I’d have a shot at really succeeding in banking.
But that was just the point. I didn’t want to succeed in banking. I wanted to follow my dream before it was too late. That nagging, persistent voice was only getting louder.
“Where is Japanese yen trading?” salesmen were shouting at traders, moments after Eric had hung up on me.
“Who is your client!” traders suspiciously demanded of the salespeople before delivering the yen quotes.
“05-08! 08-12! 15 bid! 30 bid!”
Something was happening in the currency markets. Whether or not the Japanese were actually intervening in the yen, the market was behaving as if the rumor were fact. But I wasn’t about to call Eric to tell him so. I was about to break, just as Gimp had done, all those years earlier.
In a last-ditch effort to avoid crumbling, I concentrated hard on the activity around me, noting with only a hint of smug satisfaction that I’d been right to urgently call Eric earlier that morning about the yen. But then, a single tear fell, and several more quickly followed. I just had to get off the trading floor and dash to the ladies’ room. There were only two paths to it, and both of them required me to walk past all my colleagues. With my chin buried in my chest, I slunk off.
Once inside, I locked myself in a stall and sobbed. It was a long time before I stopped. And when I did, I was able to see myself for who I’d become—someone who’d settled. With all the money I’d earned over the years, I had the privilege of choice—theoretically, anyway. But in the end, it was choice itself that I’d squandered. I’d wasted my time, depositing one paycheck after another, staying each and every year for “just one more bonus,” ignoring the persistent call of my dream. This wasn’t what I wanted to do with my life, so how had I gotten so caught up with money and lifestyle?
Trouble is, if you spend enough time in a place where everyone tells you you’re lucky to be there, you convince yourself you’re lucky to be there too. You’re playing house with your dreams; you’re only fantasizing about them. And then one day, you wake up and realize that your time came—and it went.
Mulling over all this, I sat in the bathroom stall, in one of those hang-your-head-in-your-hands moments, knees wet with tears, elastic strings of snot inching their way toward the tiled floor. Is it too late? I wondered as I returned to my desk.
“So what’s with the waterworks?” Valerie asked, hovering over me. A senior saleswoman, Valerie was one of the few female managers on the trading floor. I didn’t answer her, so she did for me.
“Come with me,” Valerie ordered. “We are going for a cup of tea.”
I wasn’t looking forward to this cup of tea. Years earlier, Val had wanted to work in the fashion industry, or so I’d heard, anyway; she never would have told me that. Val certainly dressed the part, wearing perfectly tailored navy pantsuits paired with simple jewelry, even once appearing in the New York Times Style section. She’d had a difficult start in banking but had worked hard to make it. Back then, no one had thought she could hack it on a trading floor, and here she was now, a managing director and one of the most powerful women at Credit Suisse. I’d have to work hard to follow in her footsteps. Only thing was, that’s just what I didn’t want to do.
“Crying,” she began coldly, as soon as we’d sat down in the tea salon, “is completely unacceptable on a trading floor. Certainly for a woman.”
Valerie was blunt, and that was just what I needed, especially from someone who’d given short shrift to her own dreams. I had nothing to say because I knew she was right, so I stared down at my hands and kept quiet.
“But I can help you,” Valerie offered, this time more kindly. “You’ll need to start by expanding your client base.”
While she continued talking, I began fantasizing. What if I finally did it? What if I went as far away as possible to pursue that old dream to become a foreign correspondent?
“By this time next year, you can even aim for another promotion.” Val smiled encouragingly.
And if I went, where would I go? I returned to my thoughts, tuning in and out of what she was saying. But was it crazy to leave behind a job this good after all I’d done to get where I was now? And just as I was being offered the helping hand of one of the most senior women bankers at the company?
Suddenly, I knew with absolute certainty that this was it, that my chance was now to pursue my dream. Tired of all these years trying to imagine what would happen if, I was finally ready for when.
Valerie paid for our tea, and together we walked back to the office. While she strategized about my career, I did my best to pay lip service to her plans for me. But my mind was elsewhere, imagining the possibilities if I flung myself as far my dreams let me.
Back at my desk, I logged on to the Internet. On Google’s Web site, I typed three words in the dialogue search box: “journalism,” “internship,” and “Asia.” And a moment later, there on my screen, was my answer.
Mongolia.
CHAPTER 2
Taking the Leap
Finance Minister Bayartsaikhan added that the burden of reducing expenditures should be shifted from the public sector to the private sector, which would lend more clarity to the government in how to effectively reduce expenses.
—MM Today interview
“Broadcast journalism internships available in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia,” the ad read, and I was sold. I knew almost nothing about a career in journalism, and even less about Mongolia, but right then, the only thing that mattered to me was finally taking a leap of faith. I’d bee
n standing on the edge of my own cliff for years, peering down into what could be my future, but always turning back to the safety of the known. This time, I promised myself, would be different.
Right away, and with a sense of inevitability that was more wary than excited, I applied directly to the station for the internship. But I never heard back. Of course, like any form of unrequited interest, the station’s indifference left me absolutely certain that I wanted the job, even if I wasn’t exactly sure what the job was all about.
Tinkering with my Google search to find another way in, I ended up on the Web site of a British volunteer organization located in the country. For a fee, the organization would find me a job. So that’s what I did—I applied for the internship and begged for an undefined journalism role, for which I was not at all qualified. And then, I handed over my credit card details.
A few days later, while I was delivering a currency quote to a client, I got a response. The e-mail said, “Welcome” and “Mongolia,” and it took me awhile to read the rest, which informed me that I’d been accepted for an internship at Mongolia National Broadcaster, a state-owned TV and radio station in Ulaanbaatar. Of course, it was unpaid, but why else had I worked all these years in a job that paid well, if not to spend the money I’d earned on a future I was actually passionate about?
For a long time, all I could do was stare at my screen in disbelief that I was on my way, that in the end this was all it took—firing off an e-mail, buying a plane ticket, and taking that leap.
So theoretically, I was all set. But still I hadn’t resigned from my job. And I’d been playing it cool with Goldman Sachs. And worst of all, right now I was sitting next to Jamie, my boss and the head of foreign exchange sales at Credit Suisse. Jamie was jolly and Canadian and had a knack for making everything all right. But everything wasn’t all right. I wanted to—I needed to—pursue this dream. It was now or never.
Naturally, I got cold feet about leaving. For the next few weeks, I created one Excel spreadsheet after another, concocting budget scenario after budget scenario, trying in vain to forecast every conceivable outcome. Thirty years old and single, I was in a much easier position than most to disappear from ordinary life. But that didn’t change the fact that, like everyone else, I had obligations: a mortgage on my apartment, bills, parents who were getting older. What if something went wrong? What if everything went wrong? What if I got sick? What if my parents got sick? What if I never got another job and I ended up back in Ohio?
Live From Mongolia Page 2
