In the early 1980s I spent the most hateful year of my working life in the foreign exchange dealing room of what was then Morgan Guaranty in London.
It was beastly for three reasons. First it was boring. The currencies went up – and then they came down again, but they seldom did so in a way anyone seemed able to predict. Secondly it was stressful, as if you got it wrong you lost an unconscionable amount of money. Fortunately, I was never trusted to trade myself; instead my role was to ring up big companies and try to persuade them to buy and sell currencies with us. But mostly what I did was not very much. I sat there and watched the traders being alternately very idle and very frantic.
They were the third reason it was so horrid. Many of them were boorish, mean, sexist, racist barrow boys who operated a feudal system with its own vicious hierarchy. The chap who traded “cable” (dollar-sterling) was king and the guy who traded the “exotics” (piddling currencies like the Danish kroner), was there to be bullied. Being neither a boy, nor having barrows in my recent history, I was too insignificant to be worth more than routine ridiculing of my voice and appearance.