Great Blog Discovered

I just found another great blog through a link from somewhere, Opinionistas. This is the blog of a 27 year old associate at a Manhattan law firm. Well, former associate because she just quit her job to write full time after her blog became a huge hit (a million hits in 9 months) and got a ton of media attention. This is really good writing and the stories she tells will look recognizable to anyone who has worked in a law firm (I haven't, but have enough friends who have to know the archetypes by heart).

Most of the writing revolves around the absurdities of life at the law firm, sprinkled in with posts about her boyfriend and her mother and life in Manhattan. On the latter, and just to show you how good the writing is and how biting the sense of humor, she writes:

To the thirtysomething blonde woman I met standing on the corner this morning, your chapped face gradually turning purple in the polar wind after spending over 2 hours sojourning from Jersey to the Bronx to get to work caring for physically disabled children, I salute you.

To the twentysomething lawyer churlishly shoving her aside to hail a $20 cab to his midtown corporate palace, bitching loudly into his cell phone about how the MTA workers should have their homes incinerated and their families flogged for putting him through this ordeal and costing him billable time, feel more than free to protest the strike's grave injustice via seppuku, self-immolation, rat poison in your latte, or any other means of agonizing death. Preferably immediately.

Ouch. Harsh, but funny. And quite realistic as well. This should be fun to read. Oh wait, I found some more. I'll post a few really funny things below the fold.

This is really funny stuff. Here's a report on a conversation between the author and her friend, who is apparently having difficulty meeting men while working 100 hours a week as a young associate. In particular, it's the report of one particular date:

"Yeah really. And that leaves me with almost nothing. Here's an example that'll sum up the entire experience. Last weekend I went out with this guy, I met him at a law school alumni event, he's a senior associate over at X firm. He was cute, decent conversationalist, he asked for my number, I figured why not."

"Sounds promising."

"Ah, just wait for the story. So he picks me up, we go to dinner, and I'm literally inhaling my entree just to try to get the meal over with as fast as possible. O, I kid you not, he's God awful, a complete egomaniac, called the waiter a cretin when he mispronounced one of the specials, he even asked me whether I was on law review and laughed in my face when I said I decided not to do the writing competition."

"Yikes. Ok, I stand corrected."

"So we get to the lobby of my building and it's the classic cliche scenario, I'm trying to extricate myself from the date as smoothly as possible, he has no concept that I might not be madly in love with him and thinks it's going fabulously. I say thank you and good night, and tell him I have to work all day tomorrow so I need to get to bed."

"Ok, so it was a dud, but I'm sure there are -"

"Oh no, I haven't gotten to the good part yet. I start to turn away and head inside, and in all seriousness his face instantly transformed into something out of Dante's cantos. Standing in the street, he starts yelling at me, 'I cant believe this, I invest 3 hours of my night only to get the cold shoulder at the door!'"

"Oh Lord, one of those."

"Just wait, there's more. So then he launches into, 'Christ, what the hell is the matter with you! Do you know how much those three hours I just wasted would be worth to my firm? I could have been billing this whole time, and now you won't even hand out so much as a fucking good night kiss.'"

"You have got to be kidding me!"

"Not in the slightest. And, for his coup de grace, he calls me a frigid bitch, remarks that I 'wasn't as hot as I think I am,' and stomps away to hail a cab."

"Well, at least he ends his closing argument with a bang."

Funny stuff. Here's another post on the trials and tribulations of moving in with her boyfriend, again reporting a conversation she has with a friend about it:

"Not just the move, all of it. Living together, commitment, what it 'means' in the future. Everything. He suggested that we do it in the first place, and now, at the witching hour, he's losing it."

"How do you know?"

"It's been blatantly clear the past week or so, he gets this dodgy evasive look whenever I bring up moving logistics, furniture, closet space, the cat. Then there was the handsoap incident."

"Handsoap?"

"We got home from dinner the other night, he went into the bathroom and I heard this frenzied yelp. He marches into the living room with this wild-eyed expression, points to the bathroom sink and says 'What the hell is that?' I looked and said, 'It's Pumpkin Spice handsoap, we needed it in the bathroom, the other stuff you had in there was gross and congealing.' He literally shuddered and put his face in his hands, as if I had somehow desecrated his sacred Man Temple with my unholy girly soap."

We exchange looks that may as well have been scripted, and simultaneously begin to chuckle. Cue the laugh track in the background.

"I guess at that point it hit him that he couldn't just stash me in the closet behind the porn and snowboard equipment, I would actually be moving in, occupying real space in all my girly splendor, as it were."

This is funnier than all the episodes of Sex and the City combined. It reminds me of the hilarious scene in "How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days" where the woman shows up at the guy's apartment and, without saying a word to him, puts a pink fluffy toilet seat cover on and a frilly bedspread and stuff like that. And here's a very funny post about surviving the daily grind at a major law firm:

Ah the wonder of face time at law firms. It's a universally accepted doctrine, worshipped by all associates with mute recognition. Denial of its existence is the single greatest fib told during that subsidized gong show that is 2L recruiting. Picture the well-scrubbed, eager young law student perched erect on his or her chair during the interview lunch, nodding attentively as a slightly anemic associate delivers the following oration, while sucking down as many Diet Cokes as the allotted firm lunch budget will allow:

"The great thing is, there's really no face time here. As long as you bill your hours and get your work done, no one cares when you're in the office. You can leave at 5 to go to the doctor and no one bats an eye. It's great."

The candidate may as well be handed a pamphlet at that moment entitled "Translation" stating: "Don't be a dunce, of course face time is required here, as it is in every large law firm in this country. The partners look at you and see only walking dollar signs - since the skyrocket of associate salaries in the '90s, they harbor nothing but resentment for the ridiculous amount in paychecks and bonuses they have to shovel in our direction, all in the name of staying competitive in the market. They want to see your ass cheeks rubber cemented to your desk chair, your eyes locked in a tractor beam to your computer screen, each and every time they happen to stroll past your office. And if your door is closed, they'll automatically assume you're napping, shopping online or looking at porn."

It's the primary unspoken rule: Don't ever let a partner see you leave the building. Sneak out the back stairs, head four flights down and catch an elevator rather than risk standing in the lobby of your floor clutching a purse and coat like a wandering woodland creature during hunting season. If actual departure is necessary, be sure to march confidently through the halls exclaiming loudly that you're "just running out for coffee, does anyone else want?" Bluffs such as this, however, are thwarted if a naive counterpart actually takes you up on the sham offer.

WIth necessity inevitably breeding invention, the associate ranks go to inordinate lengths to create the appearance of omnipresence at their desks. There are the basic moves - computers and office lights left on, screen savers removed to create the illusion that you unglued your face from the laptop only moments earlier, decoy purses and coats left in conveniently prominent locations around the office, emails routed from your Blackberry through the firm system at midnight. B, an associate friend, recently informed me of his plan to leave the overhead lights on, shut his office door and play sufficiently loud recordings of his "phone voice" so passing partners would think he was speaking to another partner, or perhaps opposing counsel.

And those are just the first few posts I read.