For the last four summers, I have worked at arguably one of the most secretive, exciting and chaotic institutions that this country has to offer: The New York Stock Exchange.
During my four years there, I have watched certain companies skyrocket toward the financial elite and others spiral toward oblivion and bankruptcy. I have traded barbs and insults with floor brokers as they simultaneously taught me how to buy and sell stocks. I have even had the privilege of ringing the closing bell.
Yet the most lasting and significant lesson I have learned deals not with some minute, abstract economic theory, but with a certain kind of politics: office politics.
As seniors at UW and across the country get set to join the American workforce, many will find themselves working in some sort of corporate setting, equipped with standard cubicles and water coolers. Undoubtedly, many will enter into an environment of established hierarchies where respected social conventions reign supreme. Many will be forced to play a role in the specific confines of office politics.
As an intern this past summer, I worked mainly in the communications department at the NYSE and was a first-hand witness to office politics and its subtle, yet no-holds-barred tactics.
I want to be brutally honest. My internship was not intellectually stimulating, challenging or even thought provoking. Working off the trading floor certainly isn’t as exciting or harsh as working on it.
For the first few weeks, the majority of my tasks were those of physical labor (picking up boxes or bringing heavy items to the mail room). I may have spoken to my boss twice.
However, as the first month came to an end, I found myself being used as a pawn in a chess game between two of the office’s bigwigs.
During the third week of my internship, I was approached by an established employee and asked to partake in a project that would research the types of educational products and services financial organizations provide their customers. Snapped out of my comatose state, I jumped at the chance.
As the week progressed, I actually had some motivation to come to work. And yet, within a few days, I was removed from the project and was basically told to resume my previous state of boredom. Amazed and astonished, I would only come to learn what had happened from a nosy intern on my floor.
The intern told me that a close colleague of my boss had told her that I was working for someone else. At the sound of this my boss became enraged. My boss had a long, drawn-out history of bad blood with this employee and marched into his office and demanded I be taken off the project. Due to his subordinate status, he had no other choice but to comply.
I was never approached about being removed from the project by either my boss or the other employee. No one mentioned it. It was totally forgotten.
Used as a pawn in this office chess game, I could only shake my head in astonishment and bemusement as my work on the project was listed as an accomplishment on my evaluation form.
Josh Moskowitz ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in political science and journalism.
