“I requested that the most senior women of the firm be gathered so we can talk about issues of concern to women,” he says. “I see some memos running around here that I don’t like and I thought a good place to start would be by discussing the glass ceiling.” I blush and then hate that I’m blushing.
“However,” he continues, “since you’re all sitting here, it’s obvious there is no glass ceiling at Feagin or you’d all be taking steno downstairs.” He guffaws at his own humor and I scan the room thinking someone here must be too young to even know what steno is, but no, I at almost thirty-seven am close to the youngest. “So let me now throw the podium your way and let anyone discuss anything she’d like.”
An uncomfortable pause follows, which he uses to pick up his cigar and inhale the contents deeply. His fingers roll it around with absentminded affection while we wait.
“I’d just like to say,” pipes up the woman from corporate communications, “that Feagin has been such a wonderful experience for me and I’d like to tell other women how great it is here.”
I take a hard look at this woman, whose job includes spinning everything and who doesn’t work for a profit center of the bank. Her sprawling Upper East Side apartment is dependent on smooth relations everywhere and she will be of no help to me today and I start to wonder if she’s been invited here for that very reason.
“And the meritocracy here,” boasts a British banker. “I’d have never gotten this far had I stayed at my other bank.”
I can’t believe this. I’ve been dropped into the bleachers of a pep rally. I have to speak up. “Let’s talk about why it’s so difficult to attract female college recruits,” I blurt out, shutting down the women trying to outpraise one another, women bowing to the purveyor of their golden ticket.
Blythe is ready. “We’ve been looking into this and think that our policy of a two-year program for investment banking is too short. When we have great prospects we’ll keep them on longer and not force them to leave to get an MBA.”
“So you think they don’t take these jobs because our program is only two years long? All top investment banks offer only a two-year training program to an undergraduate, but many of ours don’t even make it through the two years. They feel abused here. They don’t see any women on the executive board so they don’t see much future here for themselves.”
“Nonsense.” Gruss looks up from the cigar. With that single dismissive word he gets up and uses a phone on the sideboard to connect with someone presumably more interesting than us. The table conversation continues while I listen to him on the telephone, marveling at his rudeness. He seems to be trying to land some deal.
“Sweeten the bid by five hundred thousand,” he says.
“Huh?” he retorts, looking like he’s going to crush the cigar.
“Okay, okay, seven hundred thousand it is or they can shop their shitty deal downtown.” He slams down the phone and turns back to the table.
“Where were we?” he interjects. “Someone has raised the issue of the ‘girls down in the front of the building.’ The women hired from the modeling agency to act as escorts. That’s old news and that was a mistake according to some,” he says. “Next.”
Weird. None of us raised any issue about the downstairs girls. I wonder if he had to rehearse his answers before this and lost track of the questions in real life.
“Maybe we could form some version of a guidance team to help new women recruits find their way around here?” I suggest weakly.
“This is a meritocracy, as you’ve just heard,” he storms. “You didn’t have a pen pal when you came here and you survived.”
“Yes, but women can be a little sensitive to the mosh pit downstairs,” I say. “They get repulsed by the behavior around them. What if someone was to mentor her, tell her she could sue the firm if a guy told her to put Band-Aids on her breasts when she gets cold so he doesn’t have to look at her nipples? Maybe then women would stick around longer if they felt they had support. Instead they quit and feel as though they did something wrong.”
I’m trying to shock him. He must know how lucky Feagin is to not have our own class action suit to contend with. I’m threatening him in a subliminal way and he doesn’t like it.
“But women like you don’t quit,” Gruss guffaws. “That’s the sort of girl McPherson and I like around here. That’s the sort of person we need. Let the quitters go home.”
Someone comes to my rescue. It’s Kathryn. The world’s most perfect bond trader climbs out on this limb with me. “I’m uncomfortable having a partner who will only entertain our mutual clients at titty bars,” she says quickly. Titty bar is not terminology I’d expect from Kathryn’s mouth.
“Why does that make you uncomfortable?” Gruss asks.
“Because I don’t want to go to topless bars, even though the partner on my accounts does. It’s just more teamlike to entertain together. We should only entertain in ways suitable to a professional business.”
I see a vein rising in her neck though she doesn’t redden. Not one bit. I hadn’t known she was assigned a partner. I wonder why she didn’t tell me, until I remember that she doesn’t tell anybody anything.
“That sounds to me like this is your issue,” Gruss says. “Why are you uncomfortable? Whatever the client wants to do, that’s what you should be doing. Yes, that’s definitely your own problem.”
A tiny grimace, like she’s just tasted something surprising, creeps across the legal lady’s face. Her ironed-on smile has an involuntary twitch to it.
“Maybe Feagin could at least take the higher road, and not reimburse expense accounts for entertaining at strip clubs?” I suggest, in a professional voice.
BG is ready. “People are going to go whether we reimburse or not. It’s where men want to go to have a good time and it’s mostly men who run these accounts. They don’t want to go to the ballet. These are men who work hard all day, who are under pressure all the time. What’s the harm in letting off steam? There’s nothing more bonding than when we entertain our clients and when we do that, in either banking or trading, guess who bonds with our trading floor? Guess what you get to bond with? Your bank account. If some women are that sensitive, they’ll never cut it in this business and don’t belong here.”
Seeing that this conversation is too narrow, a star currency trader named Caleigh Caruso shifts gears. “Tell me how I should deal with a situation like this: I have a major Boston account that I cover with a man. I’m the senior person on the account. One day I’m on the phone to the account and they say something to the effect that we’ve got a great day for the Feagin golf outing. I know nothing about this golf outing and I’m a scratch golfer. This was done behind my back because it was being held at an all-male club in Boston.”
“Oh, yeah? What’s your handicap?” Gruss laughs and then turns serious. “Look, ladies, all I’m saying is that we have to get along and be the most productive we can be. If that includes adjusting yourself so you work better with the person sitting next to you, so be it.”
“Nobody should have to compromise their morals so that they can have a job,” I retort.
“I haven’t heard anything today that sounds remotely like a moral or ethical issue.” He pushes back on his chair, making an expensive scraping sound on the floor, and continues. “My door is always open and I welcome the chance to chat individually.”
With this he rises from his chair and, without touching his lunch, he leaves. The cigar/pacifier is still being fondled in his hand. He’s leaving? This is just the beginning. I look at my list of items to cover and realize we’ve barely touched one of them. His legal counsel is left there alone, awkwardly recleaning her red spectacles.
“How can you stand to defend that?” I burst out, motioning to the closing door.
Without responding, Blythe stands. “Look, every firm has issues normal to the course of their doing business. We are thriving here despite your criticisms. I too have an open door, and invite each of you to walk through it and visit
me.”
“Why visit you when we’re all here now? When will all of us in the same room ever happen again?” I ask. “Look, some of you have come from California, Chicago, and even London to discuss this. There’s been no discussion so let’s have a discussion right now, with or without management!” I feel energized, like some community organizer. Defiance is suddenly the most liberating drug and it’s surging through my system. I expect to hear a chorus of “Hell yah!”
Except I don’t.
Nobody says anything and all eyes are staring at the microphone jacks on the table, the ones that are probably recording every bit of my rant. But I’m crazed and don’t care.
“Ask Chungda what it feels like to be back at work when she gave birth four weeks ago,” I beg. “That is not normal.”
Chungda makes clear that she disowns me and wishes I would shut up.
“Ask Kiera why she still isn’t a senior managing director after winning the Institutional Investor poll seven years in a row?”
I am referring to Kiera Goodfriend, a wiz accounting analyst who sits rigidly, staring into space.
I continue, “There isn’t a person in this whole firm who has been so consistently recognized by the outside world as her, yet she still hasn’t been promoted to partner.”
Kiera twists her very styled hair and looks away, letting it be known that she too is separating herself from anything I say.
“And Kathryn, how is it that you’re a director on the mortgage desk and have no say in the portfolio holdings in our subprime packages? There are no women on our risk committee, no women on the executive board. These bonds come with ratings we tell our clients are triple-A but the holdings look like crap. How are they getting these ratings? Who will take the fall for these when they crash? Do you know how much risk that puts all of us in?”
A few quiet seconds pass and I start to look around the room. Everyone is frozen. It’s as if I’m at an intervention for a dysfunctional family, all squirming with pain but unable to find any words. Whatever sisterhood thing I was feeling is not being felt both ways. It’s not just a lack of love that I’m picking up on, I’m feeling downright disowned. The individual shuffling, the electrical glances they exchange with each other say it all. Nobody wants to be associated with me. In just minutes I’ve switched from being a golden girl just like them to an ugly, ranting, contagious disease. I stuck my neck out for these women and I don’t even like them.
“Look, when I was pregnant here,” I start to softly explain, “I would cover my stomach when someone downstairs dropped too many f-bombs on me. I had to laugh with King when he mooed at the sight of my breast pump. I ignored the time someone taped torn panties on my screen when I came back from my honeymoon. I’m just depleted from all of this. I don’t want to hear slut jokes all day long. I don’t want to work in a frat house. I want to be paid equally. I want my input on abnormal rates of risk we take to be heard. I want this place to live up to its potential.
“This is the same environment your daughters will work in, getting her ass pinched like it’s a 1960s advertising agency, unless we do something to fix our broken culture.”
The women in the room aren’t moving. They look like they’re desperate to hear more yet know they should leave. I can almost hear them trying to control themselves from speaking.
Keep going, I say to myself, so I do.
“Most of you came here from business school. You thought you’d run a division of this place or lead this bank in some meaningful way. I know women like you because I’m just like you. By now you get the joke. We aren’t going anywhere. This is it for us. No women are in truly senior positions that matter. We all have fancy titles that are worth as much as Feagin Dixon stock is going to be worth once this mortgage façade cracks.”
I can see Kathryn looking upset under all of that hair. I think she really wants to join in; she’s obviously weighing the consequences.
“Look, you’re all exceptional women who get paid to be creative and smart. Why are you able to turn that off, to act stupid and submissive when it comes to things that matter?” I ask.
They won’t make eye contact with each other or me. They act like frightened children who’ve been yelled at. They can’t wait for the adult to leave. Everything depends on the next move.
Everything.
A full minute passes. It’s as if we’ve been told to freeze while someone paints a portrait of us to capture a significant moment before everything will change. But the change doesn’t come.
A waiter walks into the room and stops abruptly, sensing that something has just happened. Someone sighs. Another looks at her watch, then rises slowly. Another clears her throat and walks over to Blythe to shake her hand good-bye. I look down at my plate while the rest start filtering gratefully toward the door. Nobody says anything as they all try to exit as quietly and fast as possible. I’m left alone in a room of amped-up microphones to record voices that don’t speak.
CHAPTER 26
Golden Handcuffs
BACK IN 1996, when I was first hired here, I noticed a woman straining to keep her skirt zippers up and her belly sucked in. She didn’t tell anyone she was pregnant until she had what appeared to be a watermelon under her dress. She returned from maternity leave to find her accounts ransacked, and because there was not much of a job left for her, she quit. When I anticipated the same happening to me with the birth of my first child, I got ready. I made myself as irreplaceable to my accounts as possible. I made promises to clients that I was coming back in a short amount of time and I did. I only lost two small accounts.
I paid attention as other banks were accused of this same practice along with the harassment-as-usual environment. I watched lawsuits filed against Smith Barney and their “boom-boom room,” watched as a Citibank boss was accused of noting which women “liked to blow.” When Nomura was sued after their traders apparently told female colleagues they belonged at home cleaning, I was sure something would come of it. The lawsuit was thrown out. Then a British bank, HBOS, was sued with X-rated details that I was sure would sound scarily familiar to Feagin Dixon and force a change, but again the suit was thrown out.
For years, allegations have been settled in arbitration and the quiet exodus of women in banking has remained hushed and steady. Merrill Lynch had fifty complainants that increased to almost nine hundred by the time their class-action suit was filed. An arbitration panel found there was a pattern of bias against female brokers. As the winning lawyer explained, “The essence of the finding is the standard operating procedure at Merrill was to discriminate against women.” That cost them $39 million. Feeling emboldened that same year, some women from Morgan Stanley opted out of arbitration and filed for class action status. The members of the GCC all waited to hear if their details were similar to ours. The night before the story was to be told in a public courtroom, the women settled for $54 million and the details remained private.
A few months ago a prominent banker at another big bank was sued for relentlessly commenting on women’s breast size. The female executive settled for $1.3 million. I have twelve years of boob comments under my bra, a relative treasure trove in current litigation dollars, but the idea of suing Feagin Dixon seems absurd to me. Dixon is my firm. I’d be suing myself.
The Glass Ceiling Club gave me a frosty reception after my unsuccessful performance at the Gruss lunch. Amanda, Amy, and Violette were in a private conference room when I got back downstairs so I joined them there to tell them everything.
“That’s it?” Amy asked, thinking that I was kidding. “Nothing?”
“I would have crushed that damn cigar in his lettuce,” Amanda ripped. She was walking in circles around the table.
“My guess is that Belle handled it like a reporter, like you presented it as thoughts that maybe other women had, maybe like they were thoughts that you didn’t share,” Violette said. “That way you managed to protect yourself as always.”
“Why do you dislike me so much?” I as
ked Violette. “Those women sat like statues. Like they didn’t even know how I got to the table. They acted like I was a freak.”
My hands were shaking.
Amy stood. “This was such a stupid idea in the first place. I’m going back to work.”
The other two followed close behind. I just sat staring into space, wondering how I should tell this story to Bruce. How could I have done anything differently?
Clarisse poked her twitchy face into the room. “Heard you’re getting all antiestablishment on us?”
I rolled my eyes at her.
“Thanks for leaving more room at the top for me, Belle,” she gushed, and she really meant it.
That afternoon what would be the final Metis memo arrived:
To: All Employees
From: Metis
Subject: White Flag
I’m done warning you people. You seem to want to continue on this miserable path. You don’t ever want to move forward. You’ve made your beds so go sleep on them. Enjoy your unflippable mattress.
Stone left a yellow Post-it on my screen. “Did you get writer’s cramp? Did you girls break up?”
I’d never met such an entitled empty suit in my life, a kid who just seems itching to be fired.
“Stone, very glad you signed this thing. It’s going in my memory book. The one I use when your next employer calls for a recommendation.”
He smirked and pulled up his Facebook page, posting something that undoubtedly pertains to me. I’ve heard he does this regularly.
When I tried to thank Lisa for allying herself with me at the Gruss lunch, she acted indifferent, as though she couldn’t remember it ever happening, and when I relayed the details of the lunch to Bruce, he looked at me with something bordering on contempt. He’s suddenly so removed again and I can’t help but think that I’ve let him down too.
A few days after the lunch some of the attendees sent me emails that could almost be considered supportive. While they never apologized for not speaking up or adding anything at all to the conversation, they thanked me for saying what I did. As one put it, “Thanks for putting into words what we all think and experience, yet never say.” She sent it from an untraceable IP address and I was too angry to respond.
Opening Belle Page 18