ARE YOU HAPPY?
At the
University of Colorado Law School, my resume opened a lot of doors; my GPA
quickly closed them. For that reason I interviewed all over the country -- San Francisco , LA , and Washington New York City
My dad had
grudgingly lent me the money to fly into New York so I felt even more pressure
taking the elevator up to a top floor of a magnificent old building. The firm’s
reception area had a tasteful Asian décor; it looked like a firm that did mergers
and acquisitions for Samurai. There were beautiful window frames, but the view
only went out to the building across the street. The secretary told me the
partner would be right with me. She let me peruse the Wall Street Journal as I waited. Reading the Wall Street Journal while on Wall Street itself -- I had finally
arrived.
After an
anxious hour, the hiring partner ushered me into his office. He was a dour man
in his late forties, and had a stack of half-opened files on his desk. Each
stack was meticulously separated by yellow, blue and pink post-it notes.
“We don’t
get many people from Arizona who want to work here,” he said with a slight
sniffle, barely looking up.
“No, I’m
from New Mexico. I went to law school in Colorado.”
“I see.”
“Tell me
about what you guys do here.”
Had I
really used the word “guys” to describe these masters of the universe? My
innocence made him smile; I was clearly not the barracuda lawyer to be who
usually sat across from him. He smiled a real smile as he began his favorite
part of the interview.
I quickly
grew mesmerized by the international litigation the firm handled. The size of
the deals, the reputations of the participants, the travel, the excitement, and
of course the money staggered me. His
war story covered the near calamity of crossed cultural signals in a Tokyo
deposition. I almost told him of my only international experience--searching
for a drunken buddy in Juarez, Mexico who had gone to the wrong bar and then
hitched a cab ride up to Las Cruces.
After about
twenty minutes of tales of Rotterdam, Kuala Lampur and those bums over at Baker
and McKenzie, he glanced back at yellow post-it notes on his desk. His world
tugged him back.
I needed to
say something. Something innocuous, that would keep him smiling, and keep me in
this magic place.
“Anything
else?” he asked, picking up the yellow file.
“One more,
an easy one,” I said. Imagining myself as a great lawyer, I wanted a question
that I thought I knew the answer to. “Are
you happy?”
For some
reason that question hit him like a ton of bricks. He actually sunk in his
seat, stunned. “No one’s ever asked me that before.”
He avoided
my eyes and turned instead to the pile of documents and files on his desk. He
made a few attempts to talk, but thought better of it each time. He glanced over at the door, and at the
window, as if his cohorts might listen in to some attorney-client privileged
information.
Finally, satisfied that the coast was
clear, he spoke in hushed tones about his crushing work load, the trans-Pacific
travel playing hell with his immune system, and how he somehow wanted something
else. He didn’t say what, almost as if he’d forgotten.
He was
especially distraught today. An impending merger might cost him his job. And
then as I sat there in amazed silence, he told me about his divorce and how
much he missed seeing his children grow up. He stopped exactly fifty minutes
later, as if a light had flashed indicating the end of therapy. He shrugged his
shoulders. “I guess the answer to your question would be no.”
There was a
buzz at the door, and his secretary rushed in. His 4:30 was waiting outside. He
nodded to her and then nodded to me. It was time to go. I noticed that he was
filling out a form marked “INTERVIEW WITH CANDIDATE ____”
I’ll always
remember the last words he said to me on the way out “By the way, what were
your grades again?”
Good story. Very touching. And you're a good non-fiction writer. What firm did you finally go with?
ReplyDelete