Anonymous Lawyer

I tagged along on the summer associate event last night, with two other partners and a half-dozen associates -- we like to have a few people there, to mingle with the summers, and to make it seem like we do things like this all the time. I picked this one because dinner was at one of my favorite restaurants, plus a couple of the associates who were going were ones that I can tolerate, as opposed to most of them. The event ended up with everyone heading to a somewhat rowdy bar -- on the firm's tab of course. It was interesting to watch the summer associates -- who've known each other now for three weeks, or two if they started late -- interact with each other. One girl, about whom there's already gossip that she's interested in finding a husband more than a job -- she's one of the few female summers who doesn't have a ring on her finger (it's strange -- the vast majority of the females are engaged or married; the vast majority of the men, the same age range, are certainly not... which, from what I've heard, has been a little disappointing to some of the guys, but it's not as if it's different at our firm than anywhere else) -- was literally hanging on a couple of the guys, doing everything she could to get them to notice her and flirt with her. Frankly, I think the guys she was picking, from what little I know, illustrated a profound lack of good judgment on her part. Even so, they couldn't have been more obviously ignoring her. And she got more and more bold as the night went on -- and she got more and more intoxicated -- it was really quite pathetic to watch. She was still there when I left at around half past midnight -- pretty much begging for attention. I had a voice mail on my phone this morning when I woke up from one of the associates who was there, and watching this all with me -- he hung around later than I did, and said that she eventually ended up heading out alone, not looking too thrilled about that. He also told me he thought he saw two other female associates making out with each other -- but he said he was pretty far gone by then, and it might have just been his imagination. And the summer associates think the partners and associates don't gossip about them. In this insular world we exist in, what else can we do but gossip about each other? We know more about them than they think we know. We know which girl is borderline anorexic, which guy has a kid, and which summer associate was masturbating in the bathroom late Wednesday. We know everything.