length of an entire city block. I was only eight years old, but I already felt like I was part of something special. I felt sorry for the people who would never get close enough to know what they were missing, and so amazingly lucky that I wasn’t one of them. I decided to make sure that that never changed.
My father had no idea those days would alter the course of my life.
“The Business” was what my father and all the other Wall Street guys called the finance industry, as if there was no other profession on the face of the earth. And, to them, there wasn’t. The very first time I went to his office, I knew this was what I wanted to do. My parents always joked that I had a lot of energy, sometimes too much. My teachers commented that I talked too much in class, that I ran in the hallways, that I had to learn the difference between my “inside” and my “outside” voice. I always found it all difficult to do, no matter how hard I tried. I could never seem to harness my energy, and I worried that it was something that would end up being a problem for me when I grew up. But everyone ran in the hallways at Sterling Price. Furthermore, from what I could tell, there was no such thing as an inside voice, and all anyone seemed to do all day was talk on the phone or to each other. It was like a giant adult playground, where people could do everything I was always told not to do. It was fantastic! I felt like I had walked into a world where every quality that made me a difficult child was actually valued. I felt like it was where I belonged. From then on, working on “the Street” was the only dream I ever had—I never wanted to be a ballerina, an astronaut, or a teacher. I became the eight-year-old who wanted to work in finance—the quirky, precocious, “interesting” child. My teachers found me amusing. My mother figured I’d grow out of it. But there was no way that was going to happen. I didn’t know where I wanted to go to college, or even what kind of Trapper Keeper I wanted for fourth grade, but I knew what I wanted to do with my life. And once I set my mind on something, there was nothing anyone could do to change it.
I DEDICATED THE NEXT TWELVE years to getting a job on the Street. Originally, it was because I thought it seemed like a really fun job, but in college, it became about something else, too. As I grew up I realized that I was privileged. My father made a good living as a banker, and money was never something we worried about. When I arrived at UVA, I realized how many students had taken out loans to pay for their education. I hadn’t. Some kids couldn’t get home for Thanksgiving or Easter because flights were too expensive. I didn’t even check the fares before I made my reservations. Some kids had to work for spending money. I had my parents’ credit card. My father’s career afforded me luxuries I didn’t even know I had until I left the cocoon of suburban Connecticut and entered the real world. (And college wasn’t even the “real world,” really.) It was eye-opening and scary. I didn’t want to live my adult life without the luxuries I grew up with. I didn’t want to worry about paying bills once I graduated, or end up a grown woman completely dependent on a man. I wanted to give my kids the same blissful upbringing I had no matter what my marital fate. I wanted it more than anything. The Street could make that happen. Besides, no one went to work in the Business because they really liked stocks or bonds, right? They liked financial security. And so did I. So, come senior year of college, I dropped my résumé off in the campus business center and researched various companies to determine where I wanted to work.
As soon as I started educating myself on the differences among the top ten brokerage firms, I realized that Cromwell Pierce was where I wanted to be. My father worked at Sterling Price, Cromwell’s fiercest competitor. Sterling is a more uptight, old-school firm. Cromwell had a reputation for being younger, hipper, and a more fun place to work. The headquarters were located downtown, away from the tourist mecca that was Midtown Manhattan (where some of the banks had migrated over the years), and was close to the waterfront. I decided I wanted to apply to the sales and trading program and not the investment banking division. One thing I didn’t like about my father’s profession was that he worked obscenely long hours most of the time, and he told me that starting out I would be expected to work sixteen-hour days and weekends. Not something I had any interest in doing. Salespeople and traders worked much more humane hours, and weekends were rarely required. It was an easy enough decision to make. My mother sent me a black skirt suit that made me look like Working Girl Barbie, but was a necessary evil if I wanted to impress the people conducting the interview. More than one hundred students were interviewing for just three spots, and while we all sat in the campus business center waiting for our names to be called, the tension was palpable. I had done my due diligence: read the Wall Street Journal every day for two weeks, watched CNBC during the day to bone up on industry lingo and jargon, some of which I already knew from my dad, and learned as much about Cromwell as I could. I felt prepared; at least, I thought I was.
When my name was called and I was escorted to a small windowless room, my knees were weak with fear and anticipation. At a large mahogany desk sat two middle-aged men, waiting for me. I took my seat facing them and exhaled one last deep breath before flashing a smile and folding my hands demurely in my lap.
The man on the right, a broad-shouldered blond guy named Ted something or other, wearing a pink tie with yellow starfish on it, spoke first.
“So, Alex, it says here that you’re a finance major. Do you think that makes you adequately prepared for a job on the Street?”
“Well, no, the short answer is, I don’t. I think a solid understanding of the fundamentals will help, but from what I’ve been told, there isn’t a course in the world that can prepare you for a career on Wall Street. You have no idea what it’s really about until you actually do it.”
They both nodded slightly. Ted’s sidekick, a slightly older man who was graying at the temples and had leathery skin that suggested a lot of time spent outdoors, was next to ask a question.
“What’s the square root of two?”
The square root of two? Does two even have a square root? The square root of a number is the number that you squared to get the first number. So the square root of sixteen was four and the square root of four was two. What the hell was the square root of two? It couldn’t be one, because one times one is still one. So it had to be some number greater than one but less than two. Fractions. Shit. Leatherface smirked. Then it hit me.
“The square root of two is the number that you multiply times itself to get two. I don’t know what the exact number is but the square root times itself will equal two.”
Leatherface leaned back in his chair and smiled approvingly, while Ted straightened his starfish tie.
“Interesting answer. You have a unique way of thinking, Ms. Garrett. We like that in the Business. Thinking outside the box is an important ability, and it can’t be taught. You either have it or you don’t.”
“Thank you.” I breathed a sigh of relief, crossed my legs, and noticed a slight tear in my nylons by my left anklebone. Swell.
Starfish Ted looked at me intently. “Do you squeeze the toothpaste tube from the bottom or the top?”
I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. What the hell did that have to do with anything?
“Do I what?” I asked him, confused.
“Do you squeeze the toothpaste tube from the top or the bottom?”
Okay, seriously what kind of screwed-up interview was this? I figured the best way to answer the question was honestly, because trying to figure out what these guys were up to seemed futile. “I umm, I don’t. I use one of those toothpaste pumps.”
Leatherface laughed. “You’re the first person that didn’t try to figure out what we wanted you to say.”
“Is there a correct answer?”
“Yes,”
