Story 41

I’ve read many of the stories shared on this platform and most focus on behaviour in the front office.

What’s missing from that narrative is an honest acknowledgement that the same behaviour, harassment, intimidation, and discrimination towards women, was also deeply prevalent in ops. My time in the Citigroup London in operations years ago now was incredibly unpleasant.

There was a clear attempt by men in the ops to mirror and project what they believed front office culture to be. We constantly heard stories of strip club visits, heavy drug use outside the office and so-called special massages on business trips. Whether exaggerated or not, these stories were told openly and with pride, shaping the tone of the workplace.

Alongside this was a constant undercurrent of casual racism, homophobia, and sexism. Comments were thrown around as jokes. Slurs were brushed off as banter. Women were expected to laugh along, stay quiet, or look the other way. At that time, you were expected to grin and bear it. Challenging it marked you out as difficult, humourless, or not “a team player”.

Inside the office, the environment was aggressively male-dominated. The manager who ran ops treated it like a trading floor, loud, confrontational, hierarchical, and hostile. Long hours were the norm. Ten-hour days were expected without question.

We were made to feel like we were critical revenue generators for the firm when the reality was very different. We were junior staff resolving breaks, earning around 30k a year, absorbing pressure without power, status, or protection. The rhetoric never matched the reality, but it was used to justify overwork and mistreatment.

This culture was not isolated to London there are stories in NY too. It matters to say this clearly. It is not just front office traders. It is not confined to one desk, one city, or one function.

These behaviours exist and are tolerated across all levels and departments. The power dynamics may have looked different, but the consequences for women were the same. If institutions genuinely want to confront the truth about workplace culture, they need to stop treating misconduct as a “front office problem” and start listening to the voices that were systematically ignored everywhere else.