A couple of hours after my college graduation, my parents dropped me off at a job interview downtown Chicago, just a few miles south of my alma mater. I was interviewing for an administrative assistant position at a law firm armed with nothing more than a brand new degree in theatre and a “I’ve got my whole life ahead of me” attitude. My plan was to work in an office for a steady paycheck and benefits (my health insurance ended promptly upon my completion of college). In the evenings, I would pursue my true calling of being an actor. I got the job.
The first, and most important thing, I learned while working at the law firm was how to look busy when I actually had nothing to do. Trying to be a good employee, I would quickly finish all of my work for the day in the first couple of hours. I needed to slow it down. This shit was boring enough as it was without having another six hours to surf the internet. After I got caught too many times doing crossword puzzles in my tiny office, I came up with another way to keep busy. I took to taking walks around the two floors of the Firm to kill time but people started looking at me like I wasn’t doing my job. Or, maybe they were more confused as to why I was doing my job so fast. “What a rookie,” they must have thought.
Quickly, I realized that if I just walked around the office with a legal pad and a pen, no one bothered me. “Don’t mind me! Busy working!” I would say as I headed down to IT to sneak whiskey from a flask with one of the guys.
I would only recommend working at a law firm in your early twenties if you thought that your college frat parties were really awesome. I know a few people who loved getting shit faced with a bunch of dudes in blue button downs and backwards baseball caps. What fun it is to wake up with that “was I kind of raped?” feeling. Those friends all work at law firms now.
I boarded the elevator with two attorneys who pretended to take no notice of me. The younger one, Brett, was finishing his conversation with his newly divorced associate. “I mean, what the fuck? It’s not like I was going to rape her or anything, so you know.” Totally Brett, totally. Girls who loved frat parties, this is your guy.
My boss, Mary Anne, wore clumpy mascara and business attire that was going out of style in 1983, the year I was born. She was a self-involved woman who owned a brownstone in Lincoln Park with her husband and child. And by child I mean her dog. She once asked me if I was alcoholic because I was a half hour late to work. I mean sure, I had been out drinking the night before with my roommate because I hated my stupid office job, but I wasn’t an alcoholic. But I didn’t tell that to Mary Anne. Obviously, the train was running late. I hoped that I had made her feel bad for jumping to conclusions but I’m sure she had seen this type of behavior before. She already saw it in my eyes: the pain, the regret, the sadness that was coming over me for deciding to take a low paying office job instead of landing roles at The Goodman Theatre.
Mary Anne also often told people that I was a “computer major”. Every time that I reminded her that I had, in fact, been a proud theatre major studying acting, lighting design, and playwriting she commented, “Really… I don’t think I knew that about you.” She had been the one to interview and hire me.
Maybe it was because of my “computer major” or maybe it was because I was the youngest person at the Firm, but my boss decided that I would be in charge of the Firm’s website. Sure, I didn’t remember learning html coding in theatre school, but I could figure it out. All twenty-two year olds totally get computers. Once I did figure out how to update the Firm’s website with articles about clients and mergers, I decided it was super boring. I thought that a better job for me was to take over the Firm newsletter, which I quickly turned into a cross between community newsletter and jokes I would have written for my college sketch troupe. It was confirmed to me that office folk were quite dry because only a handful of people noticed the flat out sarcasm and mockery that had been introduced to my version of the Firm newsletter. These people were limited to the employees of the mailroom and IT.
I exploited my new role as Firm Newspaper Editor as if to make up for my crappy job as reporter on my high school newspaper. As the editor of the Firm newsletter, I saw it necessary to take pictures of and document everything in and out of the office that I deemed worthy of publication. I once made a group of employees go fishing in the Chicago River for the Firm newsletter. My mailroom friends liked the outing because they got to get out of work for a few hours and I liked it because it was pointless and I had labeled it “Firm related”.
Later in the year, my boss’s dog became ill. She took off days at a time to see to the dog’s care. I completely understand that your pets often become your family. I wrote her a card and expressed my sympathy. When the dog finally died, she took off a week of work to recover.
Very soon after Mary Anne’s dog died, I got a call that one of my best friends, Jay, had died of a gallbladder infection that turned septic. This was very soon after Hurricane Katrina and my friend had been back in New Orleans helping his family relocate after their home had been destroyed. I was devastated. We had just graduated college and Jay had a bright future ahead of him. Already acting professionally in Chicago, he had agents waiting to sign him when he returned from New Orleans.
I called my boss to tell her that I needed the day off. “Oh,” she said unemotionally. “Well, you just had some time off.” She was correct about the time off, I had just had the flu and could not come into work. This felt very cold. I ended up writing her an email explaining that I would be traveling to New Orleans for Jay’s funeral and if this ended in my termination, so be it.
This really felt like the beginning of the end for me. How could I work for a place that took my friend’s death with so little value, not to mention my own feelings and well being. Perhaps this was how the post college world worked. Either way, I didn’t like it and I didn’t like this job with its mundane tasks, asshole attorneys, and jealous secretaries. I was still bartending on the weekends anyways to make enough to pay my rent. So, maybe even though that I was now a college graduate I might be better off bartending full time. Bartending was fun, I made more money, and I felt better about myself as a person.
I handed in my resignation with little surprise from my boss. I had given it a full year and decided that this was not for me. Mary Anne couldn’t believe that I would rather bartend than work a nine to five at law firm. How embarrassing for me to be a bartender with a college degree!
During my last week at the firm, I moved away from my roommates and into my own one bedroom apartment in a new neighborhood. A few days after that, I got a bartending gig at a fine dining restaurant. This job ended up being the best job I have had to date. And a week after that, right when my health insurance ran out, I got hit by a car while riding my bike and had to go to the emergency room. That day was also my birthday. I guess the universe can’t make things too good for one person.
In the fall, I was at my favorite dive bar with some friends when I noticed a few assholes in suits. “What are these guys doing here?” I said to my friends. We weren’t used to seeing guys like that in our bar. After closer inspection, I recognized them as attorneys from my old firm. Obviously, I had to say something.
“I used to update your attorney bios for the Firm website,” I said to one of them, glass of whiskey in one hand.
“Oh! Right! I knew you looked familiar,” one of the dickfaces said.
The other looked me up and down. “How could I forget those blue eyes—and those lips?” Brett the ‘I wasn’t gonna rape her’ attorney said as he put his hands on my butt and gave it a squeeze.
“Gross,” I said and made my way to the bar for another whiskey. “Gross.”
