(part 8)
Al told everyone to get off the phone and to listen up, which we rarely did (the getting of off the phone part). He was calm, he looked like he was going to tell us all a this great joke. He smilingly explained that the President of the company, Paul Michelin had been on a Delta Airlines flight that had made a very rough landing a year or so back. (Note that all aircraft manage to reach the ground, sometimes with bad results). Paul Michelin had been injured and had then taken Delta to court, along with a few other passengers in a class action suit. Wow.
Now Delta was all fired up about the lawsuit and had been digging around trying to get some dirt on him and this whole Florida Comptroller thing was simply the result of this. It was a ploy, in effect, to get our President to drop his lawsuit. That's all. Ok, everyone back to work. It sounded completely authoritative and true. Al was completely convincing. Whew. So that was it.
I watched Al tell us this great explanation, and there was only one thing wrong with the whole spiel. Al was a stockbroker, and worse, so was Paul Michelin and I. We were therefore professional liars. Al had just sold us on this story. I didn't believe it because godammit the Florida Comptrollers weren't just going to fabricate this stuff and, and there were all these other slightly bent things, OK? I MEAN COLLECTIVELY THIS WAS REALLY STINKING, EVEN THOUGH EACH AND EVERY LITTLE STEP LOOKED JUST FINE.
When I realized that this story might not be the complete truth or even partial the next thought that came into my brain was what all the other things I had heard Al say that I had thought were true? Dammit, we were all liars.
I worked there and regardless of my intentions, I was part of it. I could stay or leave. I was numb and freaked. I was definitely feeling like I did not want to to do something sudden but what were my options?
First, even if the story was legit, I did not want to get hung up in a maybe problem, I did not trust the company line on this and ergo, I did not trust the company. Secondly was the feeling like I was selling snake oil to people who did not need snake oil and worse, snake oil recipients at least had a useful bottle after they were screwed. We didn't even have leave them bottles.
My clients wouldn't have jack if something slipped in this, this scam.
What I was doing was making my brain hurt and my heart hurt. I had established that I would do something that had become odious to me, for a price, just like one of those high priced call girls getting pawed by my coworkers while they eyed the coke rails - it was still bad money for something I had decided perhaps way to late, was wrong.
Maybe in future, if I could just stop caring about this, I could become one of those people who slept at night again, having excised the parts of myself that mattered, at least to me, and just roll over the uninformed and gullible, like the scumbag broker did all the time. He was a happy broker. I didn’t want to sell any more.
I wanted to not avoid looking into mirrors. I shoved all my stuff into my fancy goddamned broker leather briefcase and locked it.
I had hated being unemployed, hated being broke all the time and goddamn it, I was probably going to the altar next month as the Jobless Groom with Zero Prospects (roll Dickens theme) and move into my new apartment as a total liability. Terrific. My hands were shaking. I wasn't mad at anyone, I was just in the grip of some real loathing.
This next bit seems like a digression, but it really isn't.
When I was in college the year or two before all this happened, I was in a production titled "The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat As Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis De Sade." I had the part of Duperret, a kind of comedic singing sex maniac role. Seriously.
Pre production workshops included the entire huge cast being in this large room for 2-4 hours at a time, in character, since the play itself proceeds without acts.
The inmates, nuns and asylum guards were all crabbed together for significant periods to learn just how the food chain worked amongst us. Sounds great, right? Except that after one or two workshops the fellow students who were playing the roles of asylum guards had to be pulled aside by the director and talked to. Why?
See, the guards had these little rubber truncheons and they all wore a sort of uniform and they were roughing up the inmates, i.e. other students just a bit too much. Sounds kind of like the Stanford Prison experiment, doesn't it? Perfectly ordinary people gradually becoming something different. This is how we generate brutal cops, careless retirement home employees, avaricious salespeople and fill in the blanks. You don't start out like this. So there is my tiny excuse. Philosophizing is done.
I walked into Al's office, which overlooked Merriweather Post Pavilion. I told him about how the explanation was not gelling, and how unhappy I was, and had been. I wanted to feel like the stocks were going to be an investment for our clients and not a shell game and it wasn't going to happen for them, ever. Al was very professional, he asked me to calm down a bit and he listened very attentively to a long winded and probably vague series of words, when I ground to a halt he said he understood and accepted my resignation without any notice. I thought I was quitting. Resignation? Fine.
I would like to write that I said something pithy and eloquent but I didn't. I was in a serious funk. In fact I cannot remember what I said.
Al walked out to the elevators with me and shook my hand, wishing me well. Al was a very sincere person, and quite likable. Al also relieved me of my book, which had all the data on my clients since, as I had been his assistant and all, they were really his clients now. Fine. I couldn't even call these folks to tell them. Shit. I still feel bad about this. Hindsight being all laser resolution, I should have duped the info and sat down and called every one of them. It certainly might have helped with the still extant guilt I have about them (I still have bad dreams about them). I got on the elevator.
As the elevator descended, about nine thousand tons just lifted off of my back. The feeling was completely unexpected. Here I was, unemployed, no benefits to speak of, about to be married and wearing a brand new gray suit with a $100 dollar hand painted tie. I remember it was silk and what I called Broker Red, i.e. it could direct air traffic. The tie had these little embossed boomerangs on it, Feragamo or something. I took it off and dropped it into a wastecan in the lobby as I walked out past the receptionist.
I had just screwed myself but I felt, well, not great, but certainly better.
Here is what happened to ALL of the clients of Michelin & Company after I left, approximately a month or two later.
Bear Stearns dropped Michelin & Company like a hot potato in the wake of the "allegations", so the company had to clear their own trades (i.e. brokers could no longer connect Bear Stearns to their sales pitch). Then, Michelin & Company was bought by another company. That company decided to stop being a market maker in the former stocks. All the brokers could choose to work with the new company or leave. Some left, some didn't.
The stocks tanked with no market makers to support buying pressure, which cost a whole bunch of people everything they had put into them. B the former mechanic stayed on and told me about this later. I called him (I still had a zillion billion business cards) and he told me about it. what a mess. He said the new management had called our stuff "Whomarewe" stocks. If the company didn't sell them, and no one bought them, then whom are we kidding?
Here is what happened to Paul Michelin after I left, and thank you Google.
" From 1983 to 1987, Mr. Michelin was a principal of Michelin & Company, Inc., a brokerage firm. In 1986 and 1987, certain allegations were made against Mr. Michelin and Michelin & Company, Inc. with respect to non-compliance with certain state and NASD regulations.
Mr. Michelin has advised management that the foregoing claims were totally without merit. Nevertheless, he chose to pay certain fines in order to avoid the expenditure of substantial time and money in litigation.
The Company made a determination to cease business and elected not to pay the fine to the NASD in view of the fact that the only penalty for non-payment would be the suspension of its business, which the Company had determined to cease. "
Caveat Emptor.
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