GUEST COMMENT: If you are asked you to bark like a dog and enjoy it, you must always do so

'When did it all go so horribly wrong?'

These were the words of a former boss, bemused when the latest grad (seemingly fresh out of potty training school) refused to get his lunch.

He told me that if it was 10 years ago, he would have slapped him; if it was 15 years ago, he would have burnt his cigar into his arm. (Yes, it is strange to think that it was not that long ago that smoking was still permitted on the trading floors.)

This boss was a 'left school when I was 9 to pay the bills' type. He had seen it all and some more. When he talked about the recent debt crisis, he wasn't referring to Europe's, he was talking about Latin America's. When he talked about the economic depression, he was talking about... ok, 2008, he wasn't that old, but you get the point.

He could have called it a day on his career long ago, but he remained. Not for the money but because this was what he did with himself.

As a junior, he got himself noticed and heard not by wearing a flashy jacket like the others, but mostly by being 85kg (just over 13st for imperialists) overweight.

In those days, he and the others were treated like the naïve post-pubescents they truly were. Before the first big client trip it was totally cool to replace the clothes in their suitcases with weird desk objects and toilet rolls. It was also ok to call their desk and pretend to be the local police department investigating an incident wherever they had been out the night before.

My favourite story was about his friend who told his junior to literally get down on all four knees, bark like a dog and enjoy it. This sort of stuff was normal. It had happened to people on surrounding desks, people who were no longer juniors, but heads of desks and heads of heads of heads of desks.

Sure, for the nasty few, they found it difficult to know where to draw the line, and this kind of hazing quickly turned into bullying. In this respect, it is surely a good thing that this behaviour no longer exists in its extreme form.

But for many of the bankers growing up 10 and 20 years ago, the light-hearted side of these practices were character building. It instilled a notion of hierarchy (not to stifle personal innovation/growth/development into a fully fledged adult, but to demonstrate respect). It fostered team spirit.

As these practices have disappeared in the past decade or so, so too has respect for some of these people with it.

This story is not about getting one man's lunch, but rather to highlight the end of an era and the changing times of trading floor etiquette.

These old-timers were real bastions of capitalism. They'd experienced so many bull and bear markets they had unique insight into economic patterns and market psychology. They made global markets what they are today.

So, if you look around your trading floor tomorrow and manage to find one from this group of almost extinct, nearly-dinosaurs, show them due respect because you could learn so very much from them. They are the true daddies; fetch their doughnuts when asked.