Story 209
I have multiple stories (strip clubs, drugs being brought to team dinners etc), but the one that sticks out was when aged 22, 2 weeks after being offered a job on a trading floor desk I was asked by my hiring manager on a night out to a club to ‘entertain clients.’ I woke up the next morning to him running out of my house without saying a word, I had absolutely no recollection of the events the night before, and had received text from the client asking if I was OK as I seem ‘out of it.’ I will never know the details of what happened but I know 100% I would never have taken him home wit me sober. When he heard that I’d mentioned to other people what had happened he told me to self-report to HR or never speak about it again.
Over the decade that passed he eventually became head of our team. When I saw him drunk at team drinks hitting on the new female analyst I reported his actions to his boss at the time who instructed him to apologise (which he did), then made him MD 3 months later. I spent years with him going through months-long periods of refusing to look or speak to me at all as a punishment. I wrote to the Ethics hotline and made an anonmymous enquiry to HR about my options – they said I’d be put on leave whilst my allegations were investigated – and implied strongly it would not be worth it.
It’s taken years of therapy to understand what he did wasn’t ok, and to understand why I didn’t just leave. I’ve since quit the industry entirely as watching these types of people continue to succeed whilst harassing and bullying just got too much. I hear stories of him still showing up at work so drunk from the night before that he can’t remember his own login, so looks like nothing has changed other than the number of people he manages.