Confessions of a Wall Street Shoeshine Boy

Confessions of a Wall Street Shoeshine Boy
by Doug Stumpf

• Business area: finance
• Country: United States
  
• Language level: medium

Aguilar (“Gil”) was born in São Paulo, Brazil. Now he lives in New Jersey and works on Wall Street. Not as a financial trader, but cleaning the shoes of the money makers at the firm Medved, Morningstar and Bigelow. By keeping his eyes and ears open, Gil learns what is going on in the company: who is sleeping with whom, who uses his mobile phone illegally on the toilet, and who is involved in insider trading. Told partly by Gil, and partly by his journalist friend Greg, the story is amusing, touching and vulgar. It also gives an insight into the world of high finance and the lifestyle of those working on Wall Street. The book is interesting for the way a non-native speaker uses English. For example, Gil speaks of “womens” and how he wants to learn how to “talk nicelyier”. And, as he says of the traders looking at their screens: “Damn, there’s so many fucking numbers. How the fuck you know which ones good, which ones not good?” If you don’t like that sort of language, this book is probably not for you. But if you can accept it, you’ll enjoy a most entertaining story and improve your business English at the same time.

Harper Collins, ISBN 978-0-06-088953-1

• First chapter