Anonymous Lawyer

At the end of the year, I delivered evaluations to a number of associates under me. It's a fun process, on this side of the desk. I always make sure to include one sentence that can be read either positively or negatively ("She's very capable, perhaps too capable"), and one comment about an unrelated personal attribute, just to see how much power I have to change people's lives to fit my own arbitrary whims. Yesterday I saw the first concrete result of that. I mentioned to one associate, for no particular reason, that I thought his beard made him look a bit sloppy and that it wasn't the kind of image we want to portray. Yesterday, he showed up clean-shaven for the first time, he said, since law school. Turns out he's not a handsome man. Too bad.