January started with the realization that I was going to have to get a job. Despite the fact that I thoroughly enjoyed being unemployed, the money was going to run out soon. My initial attempts to find gainful employment through The New York News had proved unsuccessful. I had only one choice left, and that was to network. This meant calling people I despised and asking for a job. This would, of course, lead to the inevitable “no, I’m sorry, but let me look around for you” speech. Eventually, I would be back to The New York News, and sending resumes out to headhunters and bullshit artists, hoping that one of them would call me back, not even necessarily for a job, but just to let me know that someone was actually reading my resume on the other end.
I called a few people that I used to work with, and grovelled a bit, just to get back in the swing of things. They all said they would check around for me, but they also pointed out that, “The market is tight right now.”
It was this type of talk that had me sitting on my sister’s air mattress, petrified to go back into the corporate arena. Phrases like “the market is tight,” “let’s touch base,” “we need to get our ducks in a row,” “gotta make sure we dot all the I’s and cross all the T’s,” make my stomach turn. In my former life, these were some of the phrases I would use on a daily basis. You would know what I am talking about “if we are on the same page.”
A couple of weeks later, I got a call from Valerie Feinman, a woman from my prior life at Hobart. Evidently, she had forwarded my resume to a woman in the legal group at R.J. Smith & Company. She said they were interested in meeting with me and would get in touch shortly. The wheels were in motion.
However, when Valerie presented me with this opportunity to go back to work I felt sick. I didn’t think I could handle practicing law every day, twelve to sixteen hours a day, for the rest of my life. There had to be a better way. But after my conversation with the bartender at Jon’s party, I wasn’t so sure anymore.
Eventually R.J. Smith & Company called and we set up the meeting for the following week. I had to go on this interview. The reality was I was living on an air mattress at thirty.
In order to see Constantine Beeka on the thirty-eighth floor of the R.J. Smith & Company building, I had to sign in with security in the lobby. Once I was cleared, I got a paper ID tag that I had to place on my upper-right lapel. I tried to place it on my left, but security was all over me.
“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to place your identification on your upper-right lapel. Preferably, in the upper quadrant,” he said.
Thanks, Mr. Security. These guys were top-notch. Once I negotiated through security on the ground floor, my next step would be the ‘elevator meet and greet’ on floor 38. This is where I would first meet the head of the compliance legal group.
Constantine was waiting for me right at the elevator bank as the doors opened onto floor 38.
“Hello, David. I’m Constantine. It’s nice to meet you. Please follow me.”
Constantine looked as if she had stepped straight out of 1987. Shoulder pads are out, Constantine. And so is teased hair. Just a heads up. And one more thing, just because you’re a lawyer doesn’t mean you have to look like a fucking mess. I should have hit the “close door” button and returned to the ground floor.
We entered an office of sterile air and cubicles. The cubes were all arranged in a frighteningly, orderly, symmetrical pattern. I heard nothing except the pounding of my heart as I contemplated my future here. I didn’t know why I was shocked by what I was seeing. I had been escorted out of a similar office less than six months ago.
I sat across from Constantine in her cookie-cutter office. Desk in the middle of the office, one green plant in the corner, book shelf behind her and another off to the side, computer on the right of her “L” shaped desk. I was sitting in a typical, leather, guest chair, one leg crossed leisurely over my knee. I was repulsed by this whole scene, though I was not sure why. Sure, Constantine looked straight out of an 80’s movie. And yes, her hair was some sort of friz fro incapable of being brushed neatly in any direction. And, of course, it struck me odd, that she was as pale as a glass of skim milk with a slightly blue hue. But that wasn’t it. Constantine was just part of the problem, there was something more that was making me sick.
“So David, you’re a lawyer,” she said.
“Indeed I am,” I said, still staring.
“I am looking at your resume, but I don’t see where you are admitted to the Bar.”
She seemed confused, but it was hard to tell. Her eyebrows weren’t moving. Botox? I don’t think so. I looked a little closer. I think her eyebrows were drawn on with some sort of makeup. Can you do that?
“It’s there,” I said.
She flipped over the resume, cursorily scanned the reverse side, and then looked at the front of it again, “Nope. I don’t see it. You must have accidentally left it off.”
“No. I don’t believe I did. It’s there,” I said.
“Well, if I can’t find it, it must not be there,” she said, with a little attitude.
“It is definitely there. I’ll point it out to you.”
I reached over and pulled the resume out of her hand, put it on the desk between us and pointed to the first line. Experience: Member of State Bar.
“Well, it is in the wrong place.” She mumbled.
At this point, the interview was not starting off with a bang. Besides that, I was confused and I could not figure out why. And what was confusing me the most was my complete lack of interest in getting the job.
“Let me tell you a little something about the position,” she began. “We are looking for an attorney to work with . . .” Bla, bla, bla.
I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. I was mesmerized watching her ‘eyebrows’.
“I’m highly organized and I expect everyone in my group to be, as well. We have an online database that keeps track of the entire work product being created by the attorneys. That way we know where each document is at any time and what stages of the negotiations they are at. I personally invented this system.”
Who gives two shits?
“My boss, the head of legal here, is a patent lawyer,” she said, throwing this line out there
hoping, perhaps, that I would be impressed.
“Wow, he must really be organized.”
I shut down at this point. At first I didn’t know why, and then it dawned on me. I hated corporate America, and everything about the stifling, soul-stealing, time-robbing, greedy, life-destroying philosophy it represented. Constantine was the just the messenger; the corporation was the culprit.
“Oh, no. No, no, I’m just as organized, if not more so. He may be the boss, but I’m organized.”
This was the moment of my epiphany. I could never work in an office again. Life had to be about more than just getting a job, or telling potential employees how organized you are. I didn’t want to be Constantine when I was forty. Hell, I didn’t want to be her now. I stood up, thanked Constantine for her time, and ran out of R.J. Smith & Company as fast as I could.