As You Wish - Part 1

Silliyak - I haven't started up fucking yoga again yet - I don't have the money for it these days. I am sorry you had to walk out early from your class - sometimes it's hard to breathe in compassion for yourself and out compassion for others without laughing. And Scotty, I applaud your individuality.

I need to do this in installments. There's so much to this story that I'm not even sure where to begin. So I'm going to start with disclaimers. There are people of different races in this story, and I'm going to mention some of them. I thought about leaving it out, but decided that for one person race was a very big issue. So race is in. Let me save you some time - you can google until it snows in Miami - you'll never find the people I'm talking about.

The Beginning:

I'd been out of work for over six months, almost a year, really, and was desperate to start working. Not just for the money, although that was a big part of it, but for the sanity working brings me. Letting me feel connected to the world and all that.

So when I was offered $10K less than what I'd had at my last job, I took it anyway. Because it was better than nothing. It was so little that I didn't sign up for health insurance, because I couldn't afford to have the company taking the $35 out of my paycheck on a regular basis. That's how close I was cutting it, and how desperate I'd become.

It was the legal department of a company - not a law firm, and there were three lawyers, and two secretaries. One of the people I'm calling a lawyer was really a kid who had finished law school but hadn't passed the bar his first time around and was about to re-take it.

One of the first things I was told when I started working was that I needed to stay each day until the job was done. My response was, "Great, I love overtime!" Oh no. Poor Green, you must have misunderstood. There's no overtime. "But I'm non-exempt. Legally I qualify for overtime for any work over 40 hours. That's the law." Sorry dear, we don't pay our other legal secretaries that way, so we can't pay you that way.

I needed this job. And quite frankly, things are kind of corrupt out in South Florida - you just accept that and deal with it. So I said okay, and told myself I simply wouldn't work outside of my normal hours.

A few months in, the kid re-took the bar and passed. He was given a bonus, something insulting, like $250, and a raise to less than $50,000. He'd just found out when I happened by him one day, and that's the only reason he told me. I understood what he wasn't saying, and brought it out in the open. "Well, it's been great knowing you!" He nodded and asked me not to say anything. I didn't say anything. I'd have left also.

When he gave his notice, my boss, one below general counsel for the company, was
furious. He pulled me into his office to rant. "After all I did for him! I can't believe he's doing this to me! What a shit!" Remy took everything personally. He believed there were tons of office politics at our company, and believed any time someone wouldn't do something for him, it was politics, and personal, all wrapped into one rejection. Remy had taken and passed three different bars, and just because I thought it'd be funny, I got him admitted to practice in D.C. (as long as you're admitted and in good standing in any state, D.C. will take you).

Remy came to work at 10:30 or 11 a.m. every day. Wearing old jeans, old sneakers, and even older metal band t-shirts. We never saw clients. I wore khakis and a t-shirt and sneakers every day to work. Remy didn't mind the low pay because he appreciated being able to dress like an extra in Wayne's World. He was into music, and thought of working for a law firm as selling out. He believed he was a good guy who was always willing to help people.

Remy pushed to get a new attorney to replace the kid who was leaving. Meanwhile, the company fired people left and right for nonperformance. For looking at porn from work computers. For coming to work late repeatedly. Whatever the issue was. The unofficial policy of the company was that we never paid unemployment. Any time someone was fired for cause and filed unemployment, we fought it.

That meant the legal department, not the HR department, got involved. There'd
be a phone call between the unemployment office, the person who got fired, and a lawyer. Except, the general counsel wanted Remy to handle this. And these phone calls were first thing in the morning, like 9:15.

When we'd first get the notice, I'd contact HR and ask them to send me the personnel file on the employee who'd been fired. I'd go through the file, creating our defense. The six times in two weeks that the person had come to work late without calling first, the eight times they simply hadn't shown up at all in one month, all the warnings they'd gotten - both verbal and then written.

And then an attorney was supposed to call in to defend the company from having
to pay unemployment. But Remy didn't want to get to work early. And the kid had left for a better paying job. And hadn't been replaced yet. So Remy told me to call. And we got in a closed-door fight over this. Previously, when I worked in New York, I once got hauled into a partner's office because they overheard me say to someone, "I'm not a lawyer and I can't give you legal advice. But if I were you, I'd call a lawyer." I was given a stern talking-to about what constituted legal advice. Advising someone they needed a lawyer fell under that category. Ever since I have always been VERY careful about making it clear that I am not a lawyer, that I can't give legal advice. But in Florida I needed my job. So I called in. And let them believe I was an attorney.

Even though I could have gotten in a lot of trouble. And even though when that trouble came down, I knew the company would deny ever telling me to do what I'd done and would fire me. And then, of course, deny me unemployment. Even though the company could lose part, if not all, of their insurance. Even though an attorney can be disbarred for doing this. I did it. Remy never told me to "win" or anything, or actually, to lie. We're going back a few years, but I think the way he phrased it was, "Tell them you're calling from the legal department on behalf of Company." He would go over all the information I'd pulled from the personnel files, and we'd talk about what was strong evidence against the former employee that made it clear they hadn't been fulfilling their obligations. So that'd be ... legal strategy. Yeah.

Honestly, I'd never make it through law school if I tried. Hell, whether or not I could even make it through college to get a Bachelor's is negotiable. But I am telling you, I won... I won't say cases, because we weren't in Court, but I argued shit and WON.
Just sayin.

Remy finally got HR to approve his ad for a new attorney, and one was posted online. And the resumes poured in. Guess who got to review them? So I'd take a few hundred
resumes, go into an empty conference room, and pour through resumes, throwing out any that had typos. Throwing out any with cover letters indicating the attorney wanted six figures.

I was looking for a Type. This was not a position any normal attorney was going to want. I needed some old guy who'd moved to Florida to retire, but found that talking about doctors and playing golf wasn't enough for him, and wanted to work again. Or some female lawyer who'd had a kid and decided quality time with a kid was more important than money, but didn't want to step out of the game completely. Basically, I needed to find someone who wasn't applying because they were hoping for a fat salary.

I kept finding people, Remy kept interviewing and rejecting them. He wasn't clicking with anybody. I even found him people who'd graduated from his law school, but nothing. We kept getting HR to put the ad up over and over. I spent more and more time in the conference room making piles of resumes.

And then I found Frank. He'd just graduated from law school in New England, hadn't yet passed the bar, and wanted a job. Within a month Frank was hired. Less than a month after that, he was making me narrow my eyes at him as he'd walk away from me.