The First, First Time I Was Fired

I told you about the first time I got fired. Now let me tell you about the time I got fired after I quit my fucking job.

I had left a boiler room operation because, well, it was a fucking boiler room. They ripped people off and the brokers were dicks. I was unlicensed and never sold stock to anyone. I went to a small start up firm, got my series 7, then left after 6 months because my boss was a fucking pussy and I couldn’t learn anything from him. However, I did learn a great deal from a gentleman and “professional account opener” and prolific cocaine addict named “Ed Motta.” However, that’s another story.

Anyway, after I got licensed, I went to another start up firm. Back in the late 90’s, Wall Street was littered with boutique investment banks. I was hired and assigned to their biggest broker. Let’s call this prick Neil.

Neil was in his mid 40’s and was doing about $110k in gross commissions per month. Even back then, despite living on a cold callers salary of $200 per week, I looked down on such a number, mainly because the biggest broker at my previous firm was doing $300k per month. Then again, that was a boiler room and Neil was selling NKE.

By the time I met Neil, I was fairly adept at opening new accounts. On average, I’d get about 7 new accounts per month, with hardly any renegs. Other people did more, most did less. But my new accounts were usually big guys, due to my ability to hold a conversation with intelligent life-forms, unlike Neil. The first morning working for him, I was handed a sales script. This did not surprise me, since scripts were commonplace in any brokerage house. However, what did shock and appall me was his insistence that I follow it, verbatim, like some sort of idiot robot.

In Neil’s small brain, there was a canned response for any possible objective. If Mr. Jones said “not interested” or “go fuck a chuck wagon”  Neil wanted me to reply with an exact set of words, strung together by dicks, without deviation–no matter how retarded it seemed. Basically, he was the FOXCONN of the brokerage industry. He had this shit down to a science. Any objection you could think of, this fucking sociopath had a canned response to defeat you, then cajole you into sending him money. Every morning and afternoon, he’d call me into his office to “skill mill” and he was never happy. I was always stubborn and refused to use his “straight-line” approach, which ironically was invented by the scumbags at Lehman. We’d get into heated arguments and it always ended the same way.

“Fly, who’s the fucking millionaire here and who is the piker cold caller?”

After three weeks, I called the owner of the firm from home and told him that I quit. In a fury, Neil called me back, trying to address my objections  with his patented canned pitch. It was hilariously pathetic. I told him I wasn’t anyone’s doormat and I’d do just fine without him. The truth of the matter was, I had no money– other than some account set up by my Mother that I used to purchase American Online stock. I had just moved out into a basement apartment with my wife and newborn baby and relied upon the $200 per week check to buy food.

The owner of the firm called me back and said “fuck Neil, come work for me.”

I kind of liked that idea on several levels. One, I knew bouncing around from firm to firm would look horrible on my resume. And, secondly, I needed the money and wanted to get my shot at “going on my own” by managing my own book.

I agreed.

The next day I reported to the owner and Neil just glared at me, like “WTF is this piker with the bullshit money tie still doing here.” I didn’t care. I put my head down and went to work on a new iPO the firm was underwriting. That same day, Joe Montana (football legend) came to the office for the roadshow. He was on the board of directors of this company and I got him to sign my prospectus. It is likely worth something today, as only 50-75 of these fuckers exist.

Anyway, I did some calling and got about 30 “indications of interest” for the bullshit deal. It was 5pm and the junior brokers were all called into a meeting. In the middle of the meeting, the owner of the firm barged in like Jack Nicholson in the Shining and said “where is Fly?” About 20 other people looked at me, as I raised my hand, and he said “you’re fired. Come with me.”

This really shocked me, since I thought the owner was “cool.” The truth of the matter is, no one is cool. The owner convinced me to not quit, just so that he could humiliate and fire me. I was young, naive and I thought I was special. These guys were making millions of dollars and couldn’t care less about my plights, goals and aspirations. As a matter of fact, I wasn’t even mad for the affront. I viewed it as a game of chess and I got mated.

I picked my shit up, made a few phone calls and had a new place to work the next day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS_ux2H473I&feature=fvwrel

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