I got canned for NOT being a skank
But the other assistant was a skank and she got to keep her job
Life in the fast lane in one of the the “bigger” cities
Continuing with my roller coaster ride of Wall Street but what I refer to as “Philly style”. I worked for various big name firms. I was goal oriented and took my jobs seriously because the only way to move up was to show you had what it takes and have skin as thick as crocodile skin. I enjoyed almost every minute of it, except the part when I realized that most of the FAs (Financial Advisors) were whiny, self-absorbed, entitled sociopaths. Don’t get me wrong there are some good people out there who also happen to be FAs but in my experience that was few and far in between.
Money and greed are like a lightning rod to both the best and the worse folks in society.
At one job at a small boutique financial advising firm, I was hired to do one job, but after I took it, I found out that my boss expected me to do 3 jobs. To be fair one of them only required what amounted to a part time position but the other two were full time positions. What’s worse is he was often very inappropriate towards me but then would flip a switch to being nasty and rude because I wouldn’t agree to the type of “personal” interaction he was seeking.
I say it was a roller coaster because it went from hanging out with him at private clubs with his clients drinking top shelf liquor and fine dining, to a living hell in the office. Imagine working what amounted to working 2.5 jobs while being hit on all day every day, then screamed at and mocked for not wanting to be his side chick. (Yes, he was married). I ended up having to report him to human resources and to the other senior partner. But that didn’t stop him, it only pissed him off and slowed him down a little. A mere speed bump in his life.
There was another assistant that primarily worked for the senior partner, but little did I know that she also “worked” with my boss. What I mean by that is one day, she and I were in her car on the way to a client event we had put together. She decided to have a little “talk” with me.
She had observed my boss being rather friendly towards me and proceeded to advise me that she was his official “side chick”.
At first, I didn’t know how to respond or what to think, so I reassured her that I had ZERO interest in banging my boss. The pathetic part was that she was engaged to be married to someone else in about 9 months. Needless to say, I had renamed her “Skank” in my mind. There was many a day I held my tongue to keep from telling her what I really thought of her.
Despite all that dysfunctionality, there actually was a positive aspect to this job. The clients I worked with were people who needed complex financial planning strategies. I assisted with pulling together assets strewn across the globe. With help from our attorneys and the FAs, I learned how to write diverse types of trust documents like Irrevocable trusts, asset protection trusts and tax bypass trusts.
That was the part that I lived for. Writing trust documents may sound boring to some people, but I learned way more than just writing documents. I learned about money and how some people handle it well, and others handle it badly. It brought to light the underside and dysfunction of some families as well as having to keep a few secrets I wish I didn’t know.
It also showed me that blood really is thicker than water, but only for some people.
The document writing was something I would have never had the opportunity to learn elsewhere, and it was absolutely fascinating to me. Because I had a good relationship with most of the clients, I really enjoyed hearing the stories of how they amassed their wealth as well as being on the team that helped them keep it intact. If I could have subtracted the inappropriate office shenanigans part of the job I would have worked there forever — or so I thought.
I should have realized that if your soon-to-be boss tells you that he has to fire his current assistant before he can hire you, that I should have run for the hills.
But nooo, I was too intoxicated with working with the Wall Street types. It also was 2008 smack in the middle of nasty recession. Since I needed a job, I gave it only a passing thought.
You also might think that the assistant he fired to hire me would be too embarrassed to come back to the job, but she “visited” other people in the office frequently. One day one of the other assistants down the hall ran over to my desk to tell me that the previously fired assistant was in the building and headed my way. So, I already knew who she was by the time she got to my desk. I finally met her face to face and of course it was crazy awkward. My guess was that it might have been that shit eatin’ grin on my face.
I later found out that one of the reasons that she had to be canned is that she and the senior partner’s assistant who was currently banging my boss didn’t get along because she wanted to be the “head” side chick” (Yes that pun was intended) — not just another dusty jump off.
She wanted it so bad that she also was frequently rude to my boss’s wife when she called the office and got into arguments with the current side chick. She had started making moves to become my boss’s next wife, but he clearly wasn’t interested in that. He needed to keep his wife because as a doctor, she was the major breadwinner of the family while he was getting the company off the ground. He was never going to leave his meal ticket wife for his assistant, and the dusty jump off hated that.
In addition to all of the skirt chasing, the other more senior partner and my boss frequently didn’t agree, and it brought about some tense moments between them. This was going on long before I was hired.
A little more than a year later, the senior partner had had enough of my boss’s bad business moves and skirt chasing, so he walked out, taking 2/3 of the company with him. He started a new company, which then made them both mortal enemies. The senior partner told me he couldn’t take me with him because he couldn’t afford two assistants, and I immediately was laid off by my asshole boss two days later. He said he couldn’t afford me either, because most of the clients went with the senior partner. That part I believed, but he also said he was letting me go because he actually thought that I knew about what the other partner was going to do in advance. He thought that I knew but had kept quiet about it. Not only did I NOT know — I ended up being collateral damage from both sides.
What I found out later is that the skank who was currently banging him broke ties with the senior partner and stayed on as my boss’s new assistant. All I could think when I heard that is WTF??
Yes, real life is stranger than fiction.
Wow, had I known that being a skank was required in order to keep the job I would have thought twice about taking it in the first place.
This is the third installment in a series. You can read part one here https://luxurycardstore.medium.com/plaid-green-jackets-but-no-hookers-28059b7661cb
