When Violette came to interview in New York, I arranged meetings with six managing directors to evaluate her. I delivered her résumé materials to the interviewers myself, telling each of them this was a woman we should hire:
Me: “Here’s the résumé of a woman from Wharton. We’re really interested in hiring her.”
He: “What does she look like?”
Me: “She spent four years in commercial real estate before going back to business school. She knows how to close a deal.”
He: “Single?”
Me: “She aced her accounting classes.”
He: “Smart and tough. I like that in a girl.”
Me: “I believe she’s a fully grown woman and she’ll be here at eleven a.m.”
Days later, while leading Violette around the trading room, I felt the sweep of eyeballs follow our every move, and when she finished her final interview, I picked up her reviews from the last man to meet with her.
“I’d do her if I had to,” a capital markets partner had written as the title of his review. I let my eyes travel from his notes to his bulging, middle-aged, sweaty face to his bald head and back again, hoping to tell him with my eyes that I was sure Violette was hoping for charitable sex from him.
“Your mom would be proud to read this,” I said as I walked away.
Violette tells the table, “It was later, after I took the job, that I saw in my file one guy had actually drawn pictures of my breasts on the top of my résumé. It was only then that I confronted Belle.”
“You don’t know they were your breasts,” I cut in. “Maybe they were just random Botero sketches—”
Violette interrupts me. “Enough of the bullshit,” she says, running a hand through her curly dark hair and focusing her almond eyes directly on mine. “I asked for the truth and you lied to me.”
“I believe I told you,” I swallowed, “that it’s tougher at Feagin than most places, but that I went from vice president to managing director in four years and that you wouldn’t accomplish that in any other business nor at any other bank. You just have to be able to ignore environmental noise. And do you remember what you told me when I told you that?”
“I told you that I knew how to do that,” she answered.
“And I said, ‘You’re hired.’?”
“But I put in more hours than any of you. I work every weekend ’cause I have no social life. I haven’t been on a date in two years, and still my accounts suck.”
Amy came to my defense. “Violette, we know you research stocks with rabid energy, and turn the dog meat accounts you are given into formidable sources of income. But you aren’t succeeding because you mouth off too much. Flipping birds back at management is costly. We all need to work within this culture to change this culture.”
Violette leans her curly head conspiratorially to the table and says to the group, “I get that some of you have figured out how to get promoted: have a filter, hold your thoughts, and don’t speak up, but Belle actually lies to please management.”
“We have all sold out in some way,” Amy, who’s wearing bangle bracelets, says. Each time she motions with her hands to make a point, a jangling noise underscores it. “That’s why we’re meeting, to learn how to no longer do that while still maintaining our jobs.”
“Belle is a good salesperson, but a lousy friend,” says Violette with finality.
Six sharp haircuts turn to look at me, and I realize my name has probably come up before. I never knew I was so disliked and I don’t even try to defend myself.
“My job includes recruiting good people, and that’s what I do, don’t I? I mean, I recruited most of you and you’re the best there is.”
Lily Jay jumps in to change the conversation and take the limelight off me. “Do you know I still have T. Rowe Price as a client but don’t get paid on their business anymore?” she says.
Lily goes on to describe how a man on our desk, Brian Butler, a guy famous for reading research to his clients directly from a morning handout, never adding any personal commentary or original thoughts of his own, took over the account.
“He’s expecting triplets. Guess management thought he needed income,” Violette snarked.
“Your income?”
“Well, he’s supposed to be their FD contact, but at the opening bell he’s just sitting and stirring packets of Sweet’N Low into his coffee, methodically testing the result, getting it just right. Then he reads aloud that day’s investment ideas, word for word. I mean, people at T. Rowe are perfectly capable of reading the same document themselves. Guess they didn’t want to be treated like five-year-olds so they don’t take his calls. They call me.”
“Wait, but doesn’t Fletch Buckfire have half that account too?” Amy jangles.
Lily covered this massive account with a man named Fletch, an old-school sales guy stuck in some permanent stage of adolescence. Lily did all the work while Fletch was the relationship guy, the person who took everyone to the strip bar or hunt club.
“He did, but then he killed his client’s dog.”