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of computer monitors looming in front of everyone. Every single employee on the floor had at least three monitors at his workstation. Some traders had as many as six. In order to view them all, some were elevated above others on stacked reams of printer paper. It was hard to believe that there was enough information to look at on a daily basis to warrant multiple computer monitors, and I quickly began to worry that I wasn’t going to be able to follow everything the way the other guys could. At the time I didn’t realize that someone could sit directly behind you and you could be so busy you’d go months without ever actually speaking to that person, or even know his name. You could. I would.
    I was nervous, adrenaline making me so jittery it was hard to stand still. I scanned the men sitting in the rows. They were all on their phones, some of them with their feet up, mindlessly tossing small rubber balls into the air while they spoke. The phones rang incessantly, multicolored lights blinking on an enormous switchboard. The desk was covered with coffee cups, soda cans, bottles of water, and newspapers. The place smelled like the short-order cook station at a diner—a combination of grease, sweat, strong coffee, and burned bacon. I gave a quick glance around and saw a huge box filled with bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches lying on the floor. As I scanned the group, I noticed the one other woman on the desk. I made a mental note to introduce myself to her sooner rather than later.
    Chick grabbed my shoulders and began to turn me in ten-degree clips as he pointed to other long counterlike rows filled with people conducting business. “Here’s a brief layout of the floor.” He spun me to the left and pointed to a square configuration in the corner of the room. “That’s the emerging markets desk. They sell bonds issued by developing countries. Brazil, Mexico, Chile. Most of Latin America.” He turned me another ten degrees so that I was facing the middle of the room. “Over to the left we have high yield, bonds issued by companies with lower credit ratings. That means the debt has a higher risk than say a high-grade bond, which is debt sold by larger, more well-established companies. Your Ford, IBM, Procter & Gamble, and most other big-name companies you can think of are traded off the high-grade desk, which sits directly to their left. Past them you have mortgages, which should be self-explanatory, and at the end of the room you have the money market team. They sell bonds that mature in one year or less. There’s also some structured product teams over there,” he said as he rotated me again and pointed to a bunch of nerdy-looking guys in the right far corner. “They do highly complicated structured trades that most people don’t understand, and that includes a majority of the people in this room. You’ll learn what they do eventually, because I’m training you and I don’t have idiots working for me. Finally, around the corner is the foreign exchange desk. They trade global currencies. If you ever travel to Europe and have to change your dollars for sterling or euros, you’ll have to know where those rates are trading. That’s their job. Capiche? There are economists and strategists scattered all over the place. You won’t have much cause to interact with anyone who doesn’t work in rates to start off.”
    I tried to process everything he was saying, but my brain shut down somewhere around the time he mentioned Brazil. I was so screwed.
    â€œNow, these rows over here,” he said as he pointed to long rows that faced each other, the elevated monitors forming a wall in between the guys so they didn’t have to stare at each other all day, “is the trading desk. These guys actually price and trade the bonds that we, the sales desk, buy and sell for our clients. It’s our job as salespeople to solicit business and keep our