And now he was about to tell us what we wanted to know. "So you want to know how to deal with those assholes, don't you?" he said. Trainees sort of nodded their heads. O'Grady said he had discovered the secret earlier than most. When he was just starting out, he said, he had an experience that taught him a lesson.

He had been a flunky for a senior bond salesman named Penn King, a tall blond Big Swinging Dick if there ever was one. One day King told him to find prices on four bonds for a very large customer, Morgan Guaranty. O'Grady therefore asked the relevant trader for prices. When the trader saw him, however, he said, "What the fuck do you want?"

"Just a few prices," said O'Grady.

"I'm busy," said the trader. Oh, well,thought O'Grady, I'll see if I can find the prices on the Quotron machine.

As O'Grady fiddled with the keyboard of the Quotron -- it resembles a personal computer -- Penn King demanded the prices for his customer. "I told you to get the prices, goddamit," he said. So O'Grady race-walked back to ask the trader again. "Fuck it," said the trader, "here, read it off the sheets," and handed O'Grady a sheet listing bond prices. O'Grady returned to his desk only to find that while there were plenty of prices on the sheet, they weren't the prices he needed.

"Where are the goddamn prices?" asked Penn.

O'Grady explained what had transpired between him and the trader to that point.

"Then this is what you do, you hear me," said a completely pissed-off Penn King. "You go over to that asshole and you say, "Look, asshole, since you were so fucking helpful the first time I asked, maybe you cold give me the goddamn prices for Morgan Guaranty.'"

So O'Grady went back to the trader. He figured he could edit the request, you know, take out the part about the asshole and being fucking helpful. He had his sanitized version in his mind.

"Look, I'm really sorry to be such a pain in the neck," he was planning to say, "but Morgan Guaranty is one of our biggest customers and we need your help...."

But when he reached the trader, the trader rose to his feet and screamed. "What the fuck are you doing back here? I told you: I...am...busy."

"Look, asshole," said O'Grady, forgetting the sanitized version, "since you were so fucking helpful the first time I asked, maybe you would be kind to give me the goddamn prices now." The trader fell back in his chair. O'Grady was, conveniently, about twice the size of the trader. He stood over the trader and stared for about a minute. "Asshole," he shouted again, for effect.

All of a sudden the trader looked spooked. "Pennnnn!" he half screamed, half whined across the floor to O'Grady's boss. "What the fuck is it with this guy?"

Penn gave an innocent little shrug as if to say he didn't have the faintest idea.

O'Grady walked back to his seat, to a standing ovation from three or four other bond salesmen who had watched the scene develop and a big grin from Penn. Sure enough, not two minutes later, the trader came to him with the prices.

"And after that," said O'Grady to a spellbound training program, "he didn't fuck with me again."