Some twenty-five years ago I was pleased and proud to work for a brokerage firm--a status name--that this week, was bought out.

"Merrill Lynch Pierce Fenner & Smith, may I help you?...No, sir, he's at a lunch meeting. Would his secretary be able to assist you? Yes, sir! I'll connect you right away."

Ah, yes, back in the days when customer service meant something! There I was, doing a task shared around equally among the secretaries. About once a week, I'd be on the front end phones. Although I did not know it, mine was the most productive ($$$) brokerage office in the Merrill system. The main phones were busy, and these customers expected their needs to be met.

The elegant lady who did the job for eight hours every day got an entire hour for a lunch lunch break and she darn well deserved every minute of it. Sue knew every regular caller by name and rank, and she had a wonderful Tennesee country accent, sounding as sweet (and as smart) as that successful businesswoman, Miss Dolly Parton. The customers adored her, especially the ones she called by name. They were always sulky and disappointed that they'd got one of the broker's "girls" instead of Sue. That, along with the the lightning pace could really send whoever was trying to fill her shoes into a sweat.

Although I was only a "girl," it was a job which required a certain kind of secretarial skill. Like a lot of women's jobs in those days, you did it for pride, because it sure as hell didn't pay, unless you had a good relationship with an outstandingly successful boss. Sort of the "trickle-down" theory in action, but, don't get me wrong. I'm not bitter, just explaining how it was. A fine, traditional Capitalist enterprise.

I liked working there. There was an esprit de corps. We may have been muddling some days or waging territorial war, wrangling between back office and front, but we were all proud to be Mother Merrill's children, and we wanted to help our bosses succeed. In the end, we felt, it reflected well upon us. We had our honor, in a very old timey way, as good secretaries. Formally, we were listed as "sales assistants" for that really was what we did. We helped the boss stroke his customers and we were often the ones who took care of their account problems, so the boss wouldn't have to. Sometimes, we wrote orders from customers who knew what they wanted when the boss was at lunch. We were "secretaries" in the traditional meaning: "keepers of secrets."

The older gentlemen I served were wise old reptiles, who sat in big chairs and watched the tape which ran across the front all day making a huge mechanical clatter. Occasionally, they'd make a chatty phone call--this was the South. Sometimes there was fruition, in the form of a leisurely stroll up to the pneumatic tube station, where they'd drop an order for the back room clerk to retype and wire to the firm's traders. If it needed to be run, it was often handed off to me. After a minute or so, you'd see the order cross the tape: 500 shares of this, 100 shares of that. Maybe it wasn't his order, but most likely, in those days, with so much smaller handling capability--the very dawn of the computers--it was.

They explained to me that they had once been called: "Customer's Men," and so the best of them were. These were old school guys, businessmen with honor and a sense of fair play. Even if the firm badly wanted them to sell a certain stock, they had the seniority and financial clout to resist doing things that were not in the customer's long-term interest. They cared about their clients, and worked hard to produce for them.

And that I think is what has gone wrong. So many began to think only of themselves, only of short term profit. The "churn 'em and burn 'em" that was the philosophical property of the "boiler rooms" took over. They used up their customers with one shell game after another. This attitude went to the highest levels, where top executives thought from only quarter to quarter, of what profit they could wring out of the company for themselves--RIGHT THIS MINUTE.

It seems there has been very little long-term planning. The old regulations disappeared, like Glass-Steagall which had kept banks and brokers businesses separate. Everything was paid for, as the British used to say, on the "never-never," a line of credit based on new financial instruments that were not entirely understood. Banks, Brokers, even Insurance--it was a free for all, cashing in on those apparently endless supply of sub-prime mortgages.

Let's face it. Where humans are concerned, you've just got to have some rules that everyone, without exception, follows. Otherwise, it's just monkey business. The Customer's Men knew that. They knew the rules of the game, and although they were tough businessmen, they treated their golden-egg customers and their best employees well. They did not foul their own nest.

Tonight, golden parachutes are probably floating softly down, giving the thoughtless, rapacious higher ups who constructed this current financial mess (this is September 17, 2008) lifetime and generational security. The loyal back office workers, the secretaries, the receptionists, are out of luck. Will there be pensions? Will there be health care for retirees? Will the contract between company and white collar workers be fulfilled? These men and women worked hard and under daily pressure of the Market, some of them for a lifetime. And what about the shareholders, who have seen the value of their shares drop like the proverbial rock?

We were told that "greed is good," that "government is the problem" and that large corporations could safely be left to keep their own playground in order. Apparently, neither of these assertions have much to do with reality, at least as it is for the middle class rest of us--those who aren't top executives, and who will, through taxes or more directly through unpaid pensions, be left to foot the bill left behind by this latest crew of robber barons.

And the worst part for me is, corny and soft-headed though it sounds, is that Merrill Lynch, where I was so proud to be an employee, Merrill, which awarded my son a college scholarship, is gone. In those days, I was a faithful, loyal servant, who followed that Bull ensignia like My Lord's battle flag.

To change the metaphor, venerable companies have been run on reefs by men who were trusted and paid big bucks to be far-seeing captains. Instead, they bilked employees and shareholders, and concentrated on creating a plain, old-fashioned the-first-guys-in-get-rich pyramid scheme, with a wink and a nod from the "regulators." Now, as was inevitable, the pyramid has fallen. A few people abscond with the money, and the entire economy--from the now utterly intertwined world of brokerage, bank and insurance--totters.

Well, I worked there a long time ago, and I was young, impressionable and drunk on my closet of Brooks Brothers suits. The excitement and the pressure, the great day I passed the Broker's exam, the stories of the rich geezers who lounged in the office and watched the tape all day--all of it returns as a mostly good memory. What a cast of characters! Good-bye, Merrill Lynch, and good-bye to all those dignified, honorable Customer's Men for whom I worked. On their best days, they were the kind of businessmen who wanted us all to get rich together.