Like many of my adventures do, this one takes place on a Thursday night – last Thursday to be precise. Typically, before I order my first drink, I ask myself, “Is this a vodka soda night or a Jack and Coke night?” Kettle and Soda is definitely my go-to but when I’m away on business, off the next day or just looking to tear it up a little I reach for the Jack.
Anyway, it’s Thursday with some of what’s becoming the regular crew. Since I knew I was going to be able to sleep late the next day, not only did I order a Jack and Coke – I made it a double. I planned on going to work after dropping the family dog off at the kennel when they opened at 8AM (where he would sit on death row until possibly getting euthanized Monday).
After eight solid hours of nothing-to-eat drinking, almost feeling bad about my dog and four barrooms later – it was time to do shots. “Chilled Patron for me and all my friends, even the ones I don’t know!” In the real world, shots are usually used to jump start the night but on Wall Street, doing shots is a Trader’s way of locking the door from the outside. Shots don’t start getting ordered until the first one or two people leave and are usually ordered by the one guy who for whatever reason prefers not to go home and wants to keep the party alive. The shot guy feels that by totally incapacitating the rest of the gang he can prolong outflows. After 8-10 hours of just got out of prison binge drinking (a typical Thursday night) the shots will x-out what’s left of your common sense and not only will you no longer be thinking about leaving, you won’t even be able to find the door.
So there I am, a complete puddle with my credit card down, tab open and I was making it rain Patron Silver. You know what happened next? Me neither. I have no fucking idea. Since then I’ve had flash backs to a bowling alley (I hate bowling), me pumping gas into a town car in the freezing cold while the driver argued in another language from his warm seat and I can remember attacking a slice of pizza like a junk yard dog. I have no confirmation that I was actually in a bowling alley or I played the role of gas station attendant for ‘my driver’, but I did have some pretty nasty pizza sauce stains all over my shirt, tie and pants.
I’m not sure what time I got home but I missed the kids going off to school and woke up face down (in my pizza stained suit) to my less than impressed wife throwing the dog’s leash in my face, “You’d better get up. You’re supposed to be at the kennel in five minutes.” As I pried myself from the bed she gave me yet another look of confused disgust, “Is that blood all over your shirt?… And who’s glasses are these I found on the counter? (I don’t wear glasses)” I just mumbled something incoherently and made my way for the bathroom.
So I after dropping the dog off I started driving to the office. I needed coffee bad but since I was already late enough, rather than look for coffee in an unfamiliar neighborhood, I decided to get directly onto the expressway and head to work. Now it’s 9AM and I’m stuck in the middle bumper-to-bumper rush hour traffic when I noticed the following text message from one of my buddies (Let’s call him Joe ) that was sent two hours earlier, “YOU LEFT YOUR CREDIT CARD AT BAR. I GOT IT.” followed by a second text from the same guy fifteen minutes after the first, “HOPE YOU’RE HUNGRY”.
I finally got to work around 10:30AM and as I made my way across the trading room everybody was thanking me for breakfast. Initially I thought, “What the fuck is everyone talking about?” and then I remembered the text from Joe. You see, Joe did rescue my card from the bar for which I am grateful, but then he thought is would be fun to send my entire trading room a complete breakfast, from me, paid for by me. Let me tell you, and I speak from this recent experience, if you ever want to slip into work late unnoticed, having your dbag buddy over-order a $600 breakfast to the trading floor in your name is not the best way to start. Sandwiches, bagels, wraps, juice, coffee, you name it – it was there. Even after the close there was still a small mountain of bagels left untouched on one of the file cabinets and since we don’t have a duck pond behind the office building – they got tossed.
Personally I love what he did with my card that morning. It shows creativity – I respect that. What I’m not crazy about, and what took a couple days to hit my American Express account, is the $4,400 that fuck-head Joe spent later that night (and never said a thing about) at Head Quarters. Nothing like tossing away an extra five grand during the holidays.
Next time I think I’ll just stick to vodka,
Dopey
