Holy FUCK. I was out at 5am this morning digging a path for my car to get out of my driveway. When I backed my car out, it got stuck in the street about 6 feet from my house.
The situation was FUBAR. There was absolutely no way for me to get to work other than walking, which is obviously a crazy thing to do. I wouldn’t make it on time anyway. If I’m not in the boardroom by at least 8am, then I get sent home. See what I said yesterday about how bad it is missing one day of work at this firm? Well missing two days back to back is enough to get me fired. People have been fired for less.
I called my 2nd in command senior broker and he told me to just make sure I show up tomorrow.
At around 8am, my main senior broker called me. Conversation is as follows.
“Yo *** where are you?”
“I’m at home.”
“What are you doing at home?”
“Didn’t ******* tell you what happened?”
“Yea, you can’t get to the trains?”
“No, I take a bus in, but I can’t drive to the station.”
“Well where’s the train station?”
“Like 30 minutes from me, maybe longer because of how it’s like today. My car is stuck so I can’t get there. They did a bad job plowing the roads here.”
“…Did you see the YMCA sign outside this building? Does this look like a nonprofit come whenever you want?”
“No…what?”
“Work here is MANDATORY. This is unbelievable…you just passed your test and you missed two days of work. Listen I have no problem cutting you, I have people coming from farther away than you. Everyone’s here. You want to make money? You are to NEVER miss a day of work again.”
“Ok…I understand.”
“We’re never going to miss work again right?”
“Right…”
“Ok then, I’ll see you tomorrow in the AM.”
Well after that call, I spent the day wondering if it was worth the risk to continue working at this firm. I got lucky. I could have gotten fired. What if one day I legitimately can’t make it in, and I get fired because of it? All the senior staff there have no problems getting to work because they all live like blocks away from Wall Street. They wouldn’t really understand any sort of excuses.
Do I want to take the risk of having months and months of hard work taken away from me? I cannot believe I’m already starting to doubt working there. My doubts aren’t just because of a snow day, I’ve been having them for weeks now, but after starting work as a real broker, things are starting to become more real.
Wall Street Broker 