I traded in the pit and every possible role around the floor. Traders would be out drinking until sunrise and between the smell of sweat, alcohol and gas, it was difficult to breathe next to someone's armpit in your face. You're only reprieve was when someone was spitting all over you trying to take the other side of your trade. That was 1989. The big order flow favoured big players like Tom Baldwin in the bond pit. He would be willing to take any size order 15 seconds before a big number would come out. You could say he earned the right to have priority for big order flow. Smaller guys like me would trade with just a few other locals/Brokers to avoid the risk of making mistakes with counterparties. The prices could be trading at different levels across the pit being such a large size(30 year bonds). The exchange had video coverage and would monitor activities for potential violations. So when one guy agreed to eat a live cockroach from the floor for $10,000 and disrupted bond trading as everyone ran in disgust, he was fined by the exchange. But it was okay if a beautiful girlfriend would walk across the trading floor and the market stopped trading for half a minute to whistle at her. So in summary, there were plenty of mistakes made in executing orders. Some of the mistakes were real and some were not. You want good relationships so the counterparty who is down big would not be sore and renege on the trade. There was a manual process where you meet with the guy a bit later and confirm that you both acknowledge the trade. You could pick who you want to trade with and trusting the party went a long way. If the guy brought you to Canada in his private plane for fishing over the weekend, you're going to trade with him. The brokers would be holding stop loss orders and the various levels would get circulated around the pits. That's where the market would head first. No surprise, I never use stoploss orders today! When orders were signaled into the pit, everyone else watching on trading desks would pick up the phone and call clients to tell them who's buying and selling. There was a real art, when I traded on a desk, to disguise orders and act as though the order was filled when I had many contracts left. This could be as simple as walking off the floor to take a break, which normal people would never do if they have a 1000 lot order pending execution. The market always reverses once everyone is convinced that the big orders have been filled. Then I would flash my order in from a dark corner of the room and catch everyone off guard including my own broker. This was definitely a young man's game!
What about the clerk that was challenged to eat as many Big Macs that he could in the exchange cafeteria, I think it was like 1k per .. got up to 12..
We had an office manager walk with 2 crates of beer from supermarket to office... one in each hand... 500m without putting them down for 200 Euro. He was a bit skinny.... dropped one crate 10 mtrs before he got to the office. We had a good laugh, but were short 1 crate of beer!
A bookie I know was challenged to drink a bottle of Tabasco when he just started. Ended up in an emergency surgery.
there was a clerk trying to eat 10 or so fish sandwiches from cbot. puked. people would light a match to cover other's gas