Florida
(part 7)
Some number months after I became a broker the weirdness got really going strong. I got a letter one evening in my roach infested apartment. I never got mail.
[Oh what a tangled web, in the winter I could just see this place from the Big House's back porch years and years later.]
The envelope was pink. At first I thought it was some coupons or an ad, but it looked very Legal. An IRS audit? Noooo, the address was from Tallahassee, Florida. What the hell was this? I opened it up. The letterhead was from the Florida State Comptrollers Office. State Comptrollers regulated financial stuff at the state level.
According to Fla/Comp/Off, apparently the company I worked for had been selling some allegedly phony or suspect securities in Florida and now the State Comptroller and the Attorney General were digging around in their records and stuff. It further informed me that if I had sold stock to anyone in the Sunshine State and it turned out that they had lost money on that phony stock or stocks I could be subjected to recission. We had covered that in the Series 7 class, but I grabbed a study book off my shelf and double checked the word just in case.
Rescission is the unwinding of a transaction. This is done to bring the parties, as far as possible, back to the position in which they were before they entered into a contract i.e. the "status quo ante".
Rescission also meant that the unwinding came out of my pocket. Yow. Also, some of the nagging worries and heretofore uncomfirmed fears I had been developing (along with the stress tic in my left eyelid) were morphing together in this letter.
Why was Florida doing this? Was I a criminal? What did Florida know about my employer, and of course the immediate thought was did I have any Florida clients, I had rather a lot of clients. All of our client records were held in these medium sized notebooks, called, "books". You could look at someone's book and see if they were good, or had been around a while, it was like having the fifty-mission crush on your Air Corps hat. You kept your book under lock and key, or with you, period.
I was visualizing the Florida Comptrollers Office as kind of like the Eliot Ness team, only for white collar criminals instead of mobsters or bootleggers. They would bust in wearing Disney shirts bearing subpoenas and clipboards. People would get arrested and fined. Holy SHIT. I threw on a power suit and tie and put the letter in my briefcase. Shit shit ohshit.
I was spooked, and it was the spook of a thousand smaller boos followed by the biggest boo of all, Jail. I needed someone to ask about this (i.e. give me a rational explanation), and so I arrived at work a bit early, despite the snow. T, the assistant manager was in, so I went into his office, closed the door and held up the letter. He said it was all bullshiyit and to not worry about it in this fahn Jo-jah good ole boy drawl.
Didn't the Florida Comptroller’s Office mean anything to him? He stared at me for a few seconds and said if I didn't like it, I could just kwee-yit. Ah, thanks a million for the rational response.
I went back to my desk. Our desks were arrayed four to a grey carpeted plinth. On said plinth was the NASD terminal. I spent my days looking at the back of someone's head, or a terminal. We were arrayed like sailors heaving up an anchor chain, except there were about 7 little four person crosses and not one big spoked wheel. We could sit anywhere we liked if we got there first. What heady freedom.
What to do.
I tidied up my desk. I have always put things into stacks or vacuum the floor or cleaned up when I am really really really bugged out. I once put everything in my house into cardboard boxes and moved them into the basement once, denuding the entire house down to a set of dishes, my bed, a towel and just the stereo and TV once-another story. I looked at the terminal, the markets weren't open yet, as if that mattered. I looked at my phone.
I was getting married in a month, in March. There were people who were going lose money because of I had sold them utter crap. I was getting married on March 11th. Maybe some of those clients could afford to lose their money. MARRIED. I knew some of the clients now, too. I pulled out my book of clients names and read through it. No Florida clients. Yay me. MARRIED MARRIED MARRIED. If these securities weren't even just badly valued stocks with some net worth, i.e. just paper, some of these folks were getting burned, and I had helped. March 11th in front of a zillion friends and family. In church. Roman Catholic service (I am not Catholic). Married. I was even starting the pre Cana classes in a wek or two at St. John's. Jesus.
I was not on the phone, selling or making cards, I was just sitting there, thinking. I looked out over the room filling up of sales people, er, brokers. Some of these people were real dirtbags, some weren’t and some were guys just trying to get ahead. We were all there to sell this, this, stock. I had become one of them. I had been working six and seven days a week for over a year., I wasn’t sleeping much, and the sleep dep had gotten so bad that at one point I had taken to driving two hours to St. Mary’s College, talking to my fiancé about stuff (around her studying) and then driving back to work after she went to bed and not sleeping well until the next work day started. I sure as hell wasn't driving down there for sex (see Catholic, Roman).
I wanted to talk to my VP and find out more about the goddamn letter. There was something funny going on, and the Florida Comptroller had finally nailed it. I didn't have any Florida clients though.
The VP walked in waving his letter. Everyone had gotten one, even asshole assistant manager. No wonder he was so pissed off. Damn, he hadn't even asked to see MY letter when he talked to me. Duh, he already had one and I knew he had Florida clients.
Some number months after I became a broker the weirdness got really going strong. I got a letter one evening in my roach infested apartment. I never got mail.
[Oh what a tangled web, in the winter I could just see this place from the Big House's back porch years and years later.]
The envelope was pink. At first I thought it was some coupons or an ad, but it looked very Legal. An IRS audit? Noooo, the address was from Tallahassee, Florida. What the hell was this? I opened it up. The letterhead was from the Florida State Comptrollers Office. State Comptrollers regulated financial stuff at the state level.
According to Fla/Comp/Off, apparently the company I worked for had been selling some allegedly phony or suspect securities in Florida and now the State Comptroller and the Attorney General were digging around in their records and stuff. It further informed me that if I had sold stock to anyone in the Sunshine State and it turned out that they had lost money on that phony stock or stocks I could be subjected to recission. We had covered that in the Series 7 class, but I grabbed a study book off my shelf and double checked the word just in case.
Rescission is the unwinding of a transaction. This is done to bring the parties, as far as possible, back to the position in which they were before they entered into a contract i.e. the "status quo ante".
Rescission also meant that the unwinding came out of my pocket. Yow. Also, some of the nagging worries and heretofore uncomfirmed fears I had been developing (along with the stress tic in my left eyelid) were morphing together in this letter.
Why was Florida doing this? Was I a criminal? What did Florida know about my employer, and of course the immediate thought was did I have any Florida clients, I had rather a lot of clients. All of our client records were held in these medium sized notebooks, called, "books". You could look at someone's book and see if they were good, or had been around a while, it was like having the fifty-mission crush on your Air Corps hat. You kept your book under lock and key, or with you, period.
I was visualizing the Florida Comptrollers Office as kind of like the Eliot Ness team, only for white collar criminals instead of mobsters or bootleggers. They would bust in wearing Disney shirts bearing subpoenas and clipboards. People would get arrested and fined. Holy SHIT. I threw on a power suit and tie and put the letter in my briefcase. Shit shit ohshit.
I was spooked, and it was the spook of a thousand smaller boos followed by the biggest boo of all, Jail. I needed someone to ask about this (i.e. give me a rational explanation), and so I arrived at work a bit early, despite the snow. T, the assistant manager was in, so I went into his office, closed the door and held up the letter. He said it was all bullshiyit and to not worry about it in this fahn Jo-jah good ole boy drawl.
Didn't the Florida Comptroller’s Office mean anything to him? He stared at me for a few seconds and said if I didn't like it, I could just kwee-yit. Ah, thanks a million for the rational response.
I went back to my desk. Our desks were arrayed four to a grey carpeted plinth. On said plinth was the NASD terminal. I spent my days looking at the back of someone's head, or a terminal. We were arrayed like sailors heaving up an anchor chain, except there were about 7 little four person crosses and not one big spoked wheel. We could sit anywhere we liked if we got there first. What heady freedom.
What to do.
I tidied up my desk. I have always put things into stacks or vacuum the floor or cleaned up when I am really really really bugged out. I once put everything in my house into cardboard boxes and moved them into the basement once, denuding the entire house down to a set of dishes, my bed, a towel and just the stereo and TV once-another story. I looked at the terminal, the markets weren't open yet, as if that mattered. I looked at my phone.
I was getting married in a month, in March. There were people who were going lose money because of I had sold them utter crap. I was getting married on March 11th. Maybe some of those clients could afford to lose their money. MARRIED. I knew some of the clients now, too. I pulled out my book of clients names and read through it. No Florida clients. Yay me. MARRIED MARRIED MARRIED. If these securities weren't even just badly valued stocks with some net worth, i.e. just paper, some of these folks were getting burned, and I had helped. March 11th in front of a zillion friends and family. In church. Roman Catholic service (I am not Catholic). Married. I was even starting the pre Cana classes in a wek or two at St. John's. Jesus.
I was not on the phone, selling or making cards, I was just sitting there, thinking. I looked out over the room filling up of sales people, er, brokers. Some of these people were real dirtbags, some weren’t and some were guys just trying to get ahead. We were all there to sell this, this, stock. I had become one of them. I had been working six and seven days a week for over a year., I wasn’t sleeping much, and the sleep dep had gotten so bad that at one point I had taken to driving two hours to St. Mary’s College, talking to my fiancé about stuff (around her studying) and then driving back to work after she went to bed and not sleeping well until the next work day started. I sure as hell wasn't driving down there for sex (see Catholic, Roman).
I wanted to talk to my VP and find out more about the goddamn letter. There was something funny going on, and the Florida Comptroller had finally nailed it. I didn't have any Florida clients though.
The VP walked in waving his letter. Everyone had gotten one, even asshole assistant manager. No wonder he was so pissed off. Damn, he hadn't even asked to see MY letter when he talked to me. Duh, he already had one and I knew he had Florida clients.