Apparently, no one did at Shearson, where it is also difficult to believe that no one at the top realized the gravity of the charges brought by Martens and other women.īut back to the notorious boom-boomers.
Would you throw it away? You would certainly want to check it out. Imagine someone sent you a letter telling you there was a cancer on your business. She's a very determined strong woman who falls out with some of her fellow plaintiffs and is angry with some of the lawyers who she didn't believe were effectively pushing the case. It is also impossible for me to believe that Martens didn't know where to send this powerful indictment of a wirehouse. But it is difficult – nay impossible – for me to believe that nobody at Shearson ever saw that letter. Twelve years later Simmons – soon on his way to head up Nasdaq, where he was later bounced – said through a spokesman that he had no recollection of the letter. This letter was sent well before any lawsuits and resulting bad publicity that gave the brokerage and its parent a black eye. She warned that women "were getting fed up" with Cuneo's antics and the Boom-Boom Room. In 1988 she wrote to Hardwick Simmons, then chief executive of Shearson Lehman. Martens, who would be the lead plaintiff in a class-action sex discrimination lawsuit, went upstairs to look for help. Many of the scarred women departed the industry or reportedly end up with mental problems brought on by the pattern of harassment with almost no chance of vindication.)īut the problems go beyond the branch manager. (By the way, here's another you-got-to-be kidding line: Cuneo, who retires before the notorious Boom-Boom Room lawsuits are filed, reportedly escapes with plenty of dinero and lives happily ever after. Cuneo, who loved to tell lewd stories in front of everyone according to the author, says he is surprised that she is upset, Antilla reports. You think it's funny," she said of her fellow brokers. "I'm sick and tired of this that goes on day in and day out," she tells her boss. Nevertheless, one Friday afternoon she tried to join in the festivities and found obscenities written about here in the Boom-Boom Room. To paraphrase Freud, fleeing from Vienna just before the Nazi Anschluss, "the inmates had taken over the asylum."Ī woman broker, Kathleen Keegan, had been disgusted by what she had seen in her first months in Garden City. Sometimes, the merrymaking would begin at 10 o'clock in the morning. We are now serving cocktails," Cuneo would announce on the office loudspeaker just before the close of trading on Friday afternoon (page 63). He enjoyed it as much as many of his booze-loving male charges, Antilla writes. The notorious Smith Barney branch manager, Nicholas Cuneo, led the partying, the drinking and obscenities at the Garden City branch, according to Antilla.Ĭuneo ran this crazyhouse and he didn't discourage the sexual intimidation of his female brokers, the author writes. The kind of person who is often sent packing within a short period. Anyone who has ever tried to hire someone realizes that it is not an impossible task to come up with a resume that looks good, yet the person turns out to be a poor hire. While it is not surprising that there was a pattern of sexual harassment in the securities industry, a pattern that may continue to today, what is amazing is the tacit or overt institutional approval of this Animal House behavior at Smith Barney.Īny brokerage, any business, can end up with a rogue or two, male or female, as an employee. One wonders how any rep ever met his or her production quotas. This room, where brokers seemed to spend a hell of lot of time, had a makeshift bar as well as a bicycle and toilet seat hanging from the ceiling. This madhouse brokerage had a frequently used party room called "the Boom-Boom Room." Antilla, who has excellent sources because she covered the story as it exploded across the pages of the national media, provides chapter and verse of a persistent pattern of sexual harassment at Smith Barney's Garden City, New York branch. Most of what went on will not, indeedĬannot, be described here. She provides shocking and graphic detail. Reading this racy book about the sexual harassment of women at Smithīarney, certain phrases kept crossing my mind: How could it have happened? You've got to be kidding me. (Bloomberg Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 342 pages, $26.95)
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