To my credit, I lasted a whole three days after coming back! A few people welcomed me and inquired about my health, but my new manager Mr. Pink didn’t seem to have anything of substance that he wanted to discuss with me. No updates, no words of encouragement. I see you’re back, try to make some money.
Apple was scheduled to speak at a conference the third day I was back. I had traded this company successfully for a long time and knew that they loved to make big product announcements at these conferences. Anticipating this, I bought a couple of hundred upside calls and sold stock against them. I was hoping for a big announcement that would move the stock.
In order to keep up with the conference, I asked a girl in research to alert me to any news that might come over the tape in Apple. The conference was set to start at 11:00. At 11:15 Apple stock started to fall. A few minutes later, the research girl sent me an email telling me that Apple would not be announcing any new products today, which totally explained the sell off.
I immediately did what anyone else would do; I sold out my calls and started looking to buy back the stock I had sold against them as a hedge. At this exact moment, word that Apple had announced plans for their iPhone went over the tape. The stock immediately skyrocketed right through my gut.
My luck here was just incredibly bad. I’d been at ACME9 for over two years and in the business another 11 or so, and I’d never seen something released as news that turned out to be completely false two minutes later. The erroneous bit of news that the research girl had sent me had turned a $30,000 winning trade into a $40,000 loser. I couldn’t believe my luck, I was incensed. This could have happened to anyone, but again it had happened to me.
After a few minutes, I decided to face the music and do the honorable thing; I told Pink what had happened to me. $40,000 isn’t that big of a deal, but as a day trade it looks horrible so I decided to give him the heads up. Pink groaned and told me to send him an email explaining what happened. This seemed odd, but I’d never worked for the guy before and sent him the email.
Fifteen minutes later he called me and asked me into his glass walled office. He was in there with the human resources director. I instantly knew that I was history. I’d worked for this guy for about a month and he was going to be the guy to let me go.
The conversation got ugly quickly. I asked Pink what I had done wrong. Essentially his answer was that I had lost money, regardless of the specifics. When I pushed him on it, he said “this was basically the last straw.”
Later on I would talk to the HR woman and she would assure me that the partners all really liked me as a person, but they were unsure about my trading ability. They really liked me? If they really liked me, couldn’t they have given me a heads up that I was one trade away from being fired?
I was incredulous. I pointed out to Pink that, unlike Mr. 700K, I hadn’t really lost any money. I had been up $40,000 when I left. Pink said, “$40,000 is nothing!” I agreed, but wasn’t that the exact figure that I was being let go over?
Fucking Spivey got to tell people he was fired after losing 4 million dollars. I had to live with $40,000. No one gets fired over $40,000 in my business.
I knew I was screwed, and I lashed out. I told Pink that this was so absurd, with me having been back all of three days after being assured my job was safe, that I almost had to sue ACME9. I didn’t have any plans to do so, but that was the only stick I had left. I told Pink that I wanted a copy of my last review, which was extremely positive, along with an acknowledgement that since that time, I’d never had another review or so much as a warning that my job had been on the line.
Pink immediately made a beeline out the door and Air Force Whiz came in to apparently make sure that I didn’t go find a gun and start taking out some capitalist monsters. I wasn’t even allowed to get anything out of my desk. They would mail me my effects. They just wanted me to leave.
Later on I felt bad. I’d actually made a ton of friends at ACME9, and I had thought that Orange was one of them. If they had just treated me somewhat rationally, I could have made a lot of money there and if I had, I would have been willing to run through a wall for them.
I eventually email Orange the letter I had never sent him, which detailed my fears and dissatisfaction with how I was being treated, and assured him that I didn’t really have any litigious plans. He wrote back and said that he had always really liked me and admired that I’d never been anything but honest with him. He added that as a partner he couldn’t commit on what had happened to me.
It was nice to hear, but I couldn’t help but feel that after encouraging me to trade in a certain way that he had bailed on me and left me to the wolves. I understood, since I knew that he had gone through some tough times too, but still he was a partner. He was fine. I was out on the street looking for a quick way to explain to prospective employers why I’d been let go by a company I seemed eminently qualified to work for. I’d like to think that had our positions been reversed that I would have stood up for him, but I guess there’s no real way of ever knowing that for sure.
I thought back to that joyous conversation where Orange had told me that he was convinced that I’d finally turned the corner at the firm and wondered why I was so reserved in my optimism for the future. Now he knew.
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