Went Home, Won’t Be Back
High-powered law. A brush with evil. A small mistake
In my twenties, I had a series of temp jobs and ended up in a temp-to-hire situation with the law office of a criminal defense attorney. The work was mostly pretty boring, and I was alone in the office most of the time except for the personnel of other lawyers and their staff sharing the office suite. The lawyer looked a lot like Sam Waterson from Law & Order. He marketed himself as a defense attorney to the stars and had represented a few minor celebrities. And maybe major ones too. I don’t remember so well.
He was an interesting guy. He had worked at some point with Cesar Chavez and the labor movement, he told me proudly, on more than one occasion. And in the next breath explained that he was good friends with the then President of the United States and would sometimes go to the White House. They had met in college. No big deal. He even brought me back a breakfast menu from the White House as a souvenir. I still have it somewhere, in a box of random papers and pictures and journals from decades ago.
My work there consisted of basic things — typing up letters, adding documents to files, large mailings that required more advanced knowledge of Microsoft Word. This was not what I thought off as a career, and not perhaps a very wise stop for someone who received a rather expensive liberal arts education, but it was something to show I was earning a paycheck while I figured out what it was that I really wanted to do.
The lawyer was a nice guy, and the office was a pleasant place to be when he was there. His wife, who doubled as the office manager, was not. I knew enough to know I needed to humor her, and so when she went on and on about the dress she needed to find for this or that gala I listened and mustered as best I could some sympathy: oh yes, a good dress is so hard to find!
When she yelled at me for failing to purchase enough stamps from the post office for a large marketing mailing, I apologized and said nothing more. I guess she felt bad about the verbal abuse, because next thing I knew she invited me to get ice cream with her and her children. And so we took the elevators down to the level where the shops were — a McDonald’s, a Starbucks and a soft serve place, and I trotted behind her, one of her ducklings. It was all very strange. I sensed she yelled at her children too.
The work crossed into personal assistant territory when I was asked to pick up her daughter’s locker assignment at the tawny private school she attended before school was set to start. The daughter was not going to be in town to do it herself, and the mother, well, she apparently couldn’t be bothered. This was a task indeed for the hired help. I don’t know if I did it because I was afraid to say no or if I really didn’t mind. Today, I would most certainly mind.
I had to drop papers off or pick them up at their residence a few times. The door would open to reveal a grand chandelier over the entry way and fancy winding staircase. I tried not to be obvious about checking it out. This was a made-for-the-movies home, made for the impression of it all. Fair to say business defending criminals was good.
I did also get out of the office to go file papers downtown, and once got to speak with someone held at the central jail. I think I needed to get a paper stamped or get something signed and when I got to the window for processing, was asked if I wanted to speak with the guy. Suddently, l found myself talking to a man who had committed a crime through plexiglass, like they do in the movies. I suppose I don’t know if he in fact committed a crime, but he was for some reason or another in jail.
I had spoken to this man before. He would call the law offices collect and I would forward his calls to the lawyer. He had sounded like a normal guy on the phone. But there standing in front of him, well that’s the first time in my life I have looked another human in the eye and had shivers go down my spine. Something was very off about him. He smiled at me in a leering sort of way, like he would have eaten me if the plexiglass had not been there. He may not have yet had his day in court, but I could tell he was guilty of something. He had a large tattoo of a big breasted woman on his shoulder, which his wife beater did nothing to hide, greasy black hair and sickly-looking skin. But it was his eyes, those portals to the soul, that were off. I have no memory of what was said, only the memory of knowing I have looked the Devil in the eye.
Back at the office, the lawyer was upset he couldn’t find an important filing. He was furiously looking in different files strewn about the office. He finally found it, buried and not in the chronological order it should have been. He was furious. He yelled. Getting yelled at by him, by the person who I looked up to and was proud to work for, was a bridge too far. His wife was bad enough, but I could suffer her wrath. Not his. That he was disappointed in me, for not paying attention to a boring little detail like a date (I cringe now), well that was way uncool in my book.
When he was calmer, he tried to talk to me about the incident, but I was still livid, and unclear why life was marching me through what had at this point been a series of rather humiliating work situations. Surely this, keeping order for someone else’s papers, was not meant to be me life. “Well, I guess God didn’t intend for me to be a secretary,” I said finally. He was a religious man so maybe that’s why I brought God into it. He couldn’t argue with God.
An understanding that I didn’t consider this a fit (or was saying it before he could) dawned on his face. He lifted his eyebrows and nodded. He then reminded me he had paid the temp service money to hire me and I just stared back at him. Did he think I was an indentured servant? “Well, let’s take some time and talk about this tomorrow,” he said.
I left his office and returned to my seat in the hallway alcove, the pit of my stomach churning. Sitting there feeling small and worthless and humiliated wasn’t working very well for me, so I wrote a note and taped it the computer. It said, “Went home. Won’t be back.”
His wife called me later that day. “You stole our parking pass, that belongs to us!” she hissed. I let her know I had left it with the guard at the parking station, but she still felt I had stolen it. “But it belong to us!” she repeated.
I was glad to be out of there. All these years later, I think often of the time I so nonchalantly quit work. I have wanted to tape a note to my computer many times since, but with bills to pay and a reputation to keep, I’ve refrained from Ferris Bueller-style antics. Ok maybe not Ferris Bueller-style exactly, but the closest thing I have to it. And definitely the action of a young person who hadn’t yet realized they in fact have something to lose.
