Things My Boss Said To Me

It's Friday and time for another installment of Things My Boss Said To Me.

This time it was a female boss and this was fairly early on in my career at a mutual fund company. My boss and I had the same first name. She went by Debra and at the time everyone called me Debbie. I was Debbie Conn. Nice ring. Two syllables followed by one.

But this boss pulled me aside and said Debbie didn't sound professional. I should use my given name Debra. Never mind that now there would be two Debra's in the department and that could be confusing. Not wanting to cross the boss, I went along with it and from thence forth I was known as Debra.

Now I understand Debbie sounds like a nickname, and I endured plenty of Debbie Does.... snickers (ala the porn film) and plus its dated (50's sounding), but its kinda weird changing your name in your 20's. Looking back though, should I have let this person influence the use of my name? There are plenty of successful women named Debbie. Did anyone ever really treat me differently as a Debra? Would it have ever kept me from a promotion? Doubtful.

But because of that one boss, my professional name changed.

My family still calls me debbie.

Wall Street Mother's Day

Of course you are behind if you are a Wall Street Broad. Cause you're too darn busy to write a blog post on Mother's Day. So, here's my mom's day contribution.

There's this lawsuit again the Bloomberg organization filed by women saying they couldn't get ahead at the company. That having kids was certainly a deterrent to climbing the corporate ladder. Mayor Mike Bloomberg says he has no idea what these women are talking about. When I read some of the things the women were complaining about - it sounded all too familiar.

Back when I was a bonus baby at Bear Stearns, we used to call it the pregnancy punishment. If you got pregnant, then your bonus that year would be flat. The argument was that you didn't work the entire year - you took 3 months off. While it was never said - it was understood. All you had to do was ask a couple of other female executives and everyone had the same experience. Now you couldn't complain about this. If you did, your career as over. And maybe today that doesn't happen anymore. It didn't keep you from moving up, but you were definitely hit in the pocketbook.

Of course, it was a small price to pay for my wonderful boy!