Life on the Trading Floor

Here’s a slice of everyday life, but not from an advice column. With the exception of Miss Manners most advice columns are embarrassing. They tend now to be infested with wokeisms, and generally offer bad advice. Now, some enterprising soul should start writing a column called: Bad Advice.

Anyway, this slice of life, brought to us by the Guardian, shows a woman recounting an incident that occurred in her office at around the time she had married. For the record, this happened between two and three decades ago.

Sindhu Vee, as she calls herself, was working on the trading floor of a financial institution in London. She was at a desk that was so close to the other desks that privacy, not to say, private conversations were impossible.

She describes the situation thusly:

But I worked on a trading floor – each desk crammed next to another, with everyone eating lunch there, too. Perilous didn’t begin to cover it.

In addition, phones rang constantly, people shouted across the room or at each other, and market information was broadcast over the Tannoy while overhead TVs blared CNBC and Bloomberg News. Private conversations had to wait.

But, what to do when she, newly married, started having screaming fights with her husband?. Where to go? How to hide? Where could she go to speak her mind without embarrassing herself in front of her colleagues:

One day, early in my newlywed life, I got to work at 6.30am, as usual, fuming about an argument from the night before that my husband and I had failed to resolve. When he called me later that morning to “check in” (his code for “just making sure you agree I was right all along”), I lost it.

A massive row ensued that lasted for, literally, hours. I had to conduct this angry marathon from under my desk, the only place I could find that had a semblance of privacy. Beneath my workstation, I curled in a foetal position, shrieking and sobbing, before coming up to take calls from clients, get prices from traders, confirm and complete trades, file the “tickets”, and then get back to marital war. I was new to the trading floor and new to marriage, and I definitely jeopardised both that day.

Quite a vision, don’t you think?

Now, for the question. Let’s imagine that you are one of the male human beings-- those who are infused with toxic masculinity-- on either side of the newlywed throwing a tantrum. What do you do? How do you handle the situation, and your erstwhile colleague’s tantrum?

Here is what the British gentlemen did.

Appalled and petrified at the volcano of unfettered emotion erupting around their feet, they handled it the only way they knew: by pretending everything was fine. They ducked under my desk to get me when my clients called, offered me cups of tea (and Diet Coke) from time to time, and absolutely did not acknowledge that personal issues were being aired in front of them.

They did not get involved in the brawl. They did not look at their colleague with contempt. They did not show her sympathy or empathy. In fact, they acted as though nothing were amiss, and they helped her to do her job. 

They said nothing about her personal issues, because they knew that personal problems do not belong in the office. They took the incident as an aberration, and carried on. Because none of it was any of their business. They did not get involved and did not take advantage of the situation.

Just what your neighborhood feminist would expect from these toxic males. 

She concludes:

Neither was married and I think that day extended their singledom by some margin, but their supportive efforts in my time of need were truly touching.

Over the following years, that day was never again mentioned between us, but I know it marked us all for ever. I met one of them in 2019, after one of my comedy shows, and he opened with: “You’re still married! Ha! Good stuff.” I hear him.

Vee now has three children and works as a comedian. 

I report the example because it runs counter to everything that our therapy culture tells people to do. It contradicts the advice that most advice columnists would give. And it shows another side of male behavior, one that has nothing to do with the toxic masculinity that supposedly surrounds us.