Saturday, June 25, 2005
There's a story going around about a British partner who demanded reimbursement for his dry cleaning from a secretary who spilled ketchup on him, and sent a somewhat distateful e-mail to her asking for the money, despite her dealing with the more pressing issue of her mother's funeral. This is why e-mail is so dangerous. All he wanted was his reimbursement, and it gets forwarded around to the whole world as if he's a monster. It's not like he's making her buy him a new suit, and it's not like he demanded she miss the funeral. Sure, it's distasteful, but if this is the worst treatment she's ever received, I'd say she's fairly lucky. At least she didn't have to launder the clothes herself.
It reminds me of when a summer associate was mindlessly fidgeting with the plastic cockroach I was sent by a client (the client was a leading extermination firm) and accidentally snapped the head right off of it. He was thoroughly embarrassed as it flew halfway across the room, hitting the fourth-year associate in the office with us. I laughed it off at the time, and no one ever made another mention of it. What he never figured out was that when he came back after graduation to work for the firm full-time, that incident was the reason why he ended up with the office by the bathroom. You see, sometimes we pretend something isn't an issue, but we never really forget. It all comes back around eventually.
They sent me a new cockroach, incidentally, but I kind of prefer the headless one. It's a much better conversation piece during interviews.
It reminds me of when a summer associate was mindlessly fidgeting with the plastic cockroach I was sent by a client (the client was a leading extermination firm) and accidentally snapped the head right off of it. He was thoroughly embarrassed as it flew halfway across the room, hitting the fourth-year associate in the office with us. I laughed it off at the time, and no one ever made another mention of it. What he never figured out was that when he came back after graduation to work for the firm full-time, that incident was the reason why he ended up with the office by the bathroom. You see, sometimes we pretend something isn't an issue, but we never really forget. It all comes back around eventually.
They sent me a new cockroach, incidentally, but I kind of prefer the headless one. It's a much better conversation piece during interviews.
# posted by Anonymous @ 8:43 PM 
