“There’s no crying on the trading floor”

This statement was directed at me as I started my first job on the trading floor. It’s not something I ever thought twice about. I wasn’t concerned about the cultural impact, or that no one uttered this rule to my male peers. I accepted it as a mantra. A mission even. “I’m not allowed to cry here? No problem, I don’t need to cry.”

Day one on the job and already my armor was being constructed. But what happens when the armor develops a crack? Crying is a natural reaction for many. Well, it turns out there was an exception to this rule, called the ladies room.

The ladies room is where we let it out when we couldn’t keep it in. It wasn’t an unusual occurrence to enter the ladies, hear someone crying, and wait to comfort them once they emerged from the stall. And I was certainly on the receiving end of that comfort more than once. There, in the ladies, we created a subculture. We made our own rules. 

Ten years or so ago, I was mentoring a bright and capable graduate. She was given a challenging Excel project and was in an absolute state about it. As I tried to help her break down the task, she looked at me, eyes brimming with tears. “BATHROOM. NOW”, I barked at her. And as she made her getaway, I nonchalantly followed. 

As much as we still laugh about that day, I have now thought twice about “no crying on the trading floor”, and it strikes me as unbelievably wrong. It is symbolic of a corporate world that was created by a certain generation of men, for a certain type of man.

Nowadays, there is a consensus that women should be welcomed into all facets of the workforce, but such phrases indicate that this welcome comes with conditions. Women are welcome IF they conform, IF they adhere to the rules of the man’s world, IF they act like men. It’s like they left out a sentence, and the saying should really go:

There’s no crying on the trading floor. Women welcome, but only if you follow our rules. 

Therefore, it’s no wonder that so many women are entering the corporate world but not making it to the top ranks. They drop out at some point when it becomes too hard to play by a rule book they didn’t get a hand in writing. It gets too hard to suppress their emotions, put on that armor, contain their authentic selves to the confines of the ladies room. It gets too hard to feel like you don’t fit in, or don’t emulate the values of the corporate sector (and men, I know this goes for a lot of you as well). 

So, phrases like this one need to go. I’m not saying that work is the first place you should go when you need a good cry, but we need to start to break down these outdated, rigid pillars of corporate culture and turn the corporate world into a place that accepts humanity, in all its forms. 

Let us hope that new entrants to the trading floor in 2025 hear something like:

“Welcome to the trading floor, where authenticity is celebrated.”

What welcome sign would you put on the door to your workplace?