Boss' Dick Not Going To Suck Itself

I read this off The Onion a year ago and thought it was both hilarious and sadly true. They say we're all shaped by our first job experiences because it's usually so traumatic that it forms the backdrop for the rest of our careers. I think that's true for me.

A senior lawyer in a previous firm who was in a position to decide if I stayed or went once had a lunch appointment cancelled on him last minute. So that he would not have to dine alone, his secretary called me and 2 other juniors, five minutes to lunch hour, to join him for a group discussion over lunch. Which resulted in us immediately and unremorsefully ditching our respective lunch partners, putting on another layer of makeup and stepping up.

I remember this lunch because the levels of disgust, both at myself and at my colleagues, reached fever pitch. There we all were, barely 2 months out of law school, shamelessly sucking up to this man like our lives depended on it. Which, to an extent, they did. We praised his wife, his daughter (both of whom we had fleetingly glimpsed at an office party), his career achievements (which we had each quietly researched), his confident manner with clients and his amazing ability to absorb and assimilate vast and varied amounts of information (he told us once that he liked to read and we were flogging that horse for all it was worth).

He absolutely loved it. He just sat there, ate his lunch, smiled and nodded encouragement and loved every minute of it. We barely touched our food - we were too busy with the animated praises, smiling, nodding, laughing uproariously at his jokes and thinking hard about what else to say. I am almost positive that it was the whole reason why he had asked us to lunch and not some other more senior colleague. Anyone older and more cynical could not have put so much heart into it.

I looked at my 2 colleagues, whom I had known through law school, and thought These people make me sick. They really make me sick. How can they stand to live with themselves.

Later that day I asked one of the 2 what he had thought of the lunch. He told me point blank that he was utterly disgusted with me and with the other junior and we both made him sick.

A couple of days later, the other junior went up to him and told him that she was still completely grossed out by the 2 of us and she could not believe what kind of apple-polishing, brown-nosing, ass-kissing sycophants we had become.

But we were all offered jobs with the firm.