FIRST CALLBACKS OF THE SEASON

This is the way it was: after my second callback on Friday, which was right around the corner from the World Trade Center site, I spied a fellow smoking outside, and practically sprinted over to him to bum a cigarette. It was that kind of day.

The callbacks consisted of four 30-minute interviews: two associates and two partners.

The first Mighty Big Firm callback: I arrived late, having been caught off guard by the dearth of taxis. Man, cabbies must love rainy days. I ended up walking to the office, and arrived in a light sheen of sweat.

I was directed to a conference room where 15 other interviewees in their dark blue or black suits stared at sweaty, brown-pantsuit-ed me. Hi, fellow drones!

Partner 1: married white guy, late 30s. A newly minted litigation partner. He started out by apologizing for the state of the office, complaining about the sea foam carpet. Dude, I spent the summer in a fucking library with no windows, where attorneys met with clients all the time. Having an office with a door I can close is like heaven. Despite this difference in perspective, we had a nice conversation.

Partner 2: married white guy, late 30s. He’d worked at another firm until recently, and in their DC and London offices, until they didn’t offer him partnership, at which point he jumped ship. We had a pretty decent conversation as well. Anytime someone has spent some time overseas, there’s usually some connection I can make, and making the connection is what it’s all about. I found myself thinking of mediation principles and tools: emphasize commonalities to bridge the gap!

Associate 1: a woman, from the name I have on my card, but I have no fucking memory of her whatsoever. Must’ve been a really great conversation, eh?

Associate 2: white guy, late 30s. In litigation, just like the first partner. I was pretty tired by this point, so I babbled about this and that and said at the end, “You know, they say never to say you have no questions, but I’ve been talking to people for the past two hours, now, and … yeah.”

I fled the building and bought a Chipotle burrito on the way back to the hotel, and ate blissfully while watching TV.

I chose to go with the safe and boring navy blue skirt suit for my second callback. I headed out of my room at 1:45 for my 2:30 pm callback, but was dismayed to find that the wait for a taxi was possibly as long as 30 minutes. So I sprinted back to my room, pulled on my sneakers, and hustled over to Grand Central, where I got on the 4 train, got off at Wall Street, and asked about 3 people where the heck Mighty Big Firm #2 was.

I changed shoes in the lobby of the building, and went up. I was late. The receptionist was on the 48th floor. The rain and mist made the office a cloud city.

This time, I didn’t have to walk into a room of other interviewees – someone from personnel came to meet me with my schedule in her hand. She first took me to see the guy I’d seen on campus, who mistakenly thought I was finishing my interviews and so didn’t bother getting off the phone quickly. He walked me over to the first associate’s office.

Associate #1: a soft-spoken and gentle third year female associate, who’d gone straight through from college to law school to Mighty Big Firm and clearly had simply fallen into this job without really knowing why. A bit bland, but very nice.

Associate #2: a young black female associate the same age as me. Blandest of the bland. I ended up talking to her for twice the allotted time, because the partner I was supposed to see next was MIA.

Partner #1: see above. Apparently in a meeting. Way to make a good impression, Partner Dude!

Partner #2: the most interesting of them all. Asian man with a Taiwanese or Hong Kong accent, stains on his rumpled white shirt, his subway pass visible through his shirt pocket. He took the interview seriously, going over my resume and looking askance at me when I asked him politely, “And what about you? Where did you go to school?” He answered curtly and went on with his questions. At one point, we had this exchange:

“And what were you thinking when you took these jobs? Did you have some plan in mind?”

“Well,” I said, preparing to launch into my story, “I have a friend who is fond of reminding me that life cannot be understood forward, that it only makes sense when you look back upon it. And that’s what I –“

“That’s not an original thought, you know.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Your friend – she's quoting Kierkegaard.” He wrote down the name on my resume.

“Oh!” I said, trying to recover, but simultaneously thinking that I never claimed it was an original thought. “I think she dated it back to the Romans, or maybe the Greeks.”

“Well, maybe,” he said, “but Kierkegaard also said it.”

“Yes. Well.”

We then went on some tangent about trusting your gut and putting Humpty together again, and I remember thinking that it was an appealing and interesting analogy, but that the guy was brusque and rude, because he actually grabbed my notes from me at one point and read my spreadsheet of info about the firm. As he did this, I was trying to remember if I’d written anything revealing about the firm, or the partner I’d met with on campus. What had I written about him? Turns out it was pretty bland: “Keeps emphasizing how they only take high level clients – what up with that?” Partner #2 read that aloud and answered, “Oh, because we charge them very high amounts."

Damn, Partner #2! Way to be intrusive and rude!

After all that, I collected my shit from the closet in the reception area, took the elevator down, changed my shoes, and walked outside into the rain. I hadn’t gone 5 steps when I spotted a guy in a retro button down shirt and glasses smoking by the exit. Yay for smokers!

Exhausted, I wandered around in the rain for half an hour, trying to find a bloody Citibank where I could deposit some checks, before giving up and going back to the hotel.

Ah, the hotel. I woke up today in a far better mood – a combination of sunny weather after a week of rain, and the feel of Egyptian cotton sheets under a thick down comforter. It was quiet. It was cool. I opened the shades and looked at the little patch of blue sky above the backs of all the buildings. A wispy white cloud rapidly floated by. Someone had tied strings from their window to the roof for their ivy plants, and a "V" of green punctuated the brick walls. This, I felt, was worth selling your soul for.