First Day

NEW YORK MOMENTS:

I.
After breakfast, I walked with One-Armed Maggie to 96th Street, where I got on the downtown express. At 72nd Street, a seat opened up and I took it, only to be sandwiched between these two ladies:

"What choo said, that was rude."
"What?" (lilting Caribbean accent)
"Choo tell me to move over and close my legs because there ain't enough space? That was rude, and choo need --"
"What? You want to take up all de space, den rent your own train."
"Choo need to shut your mouth!"
"You want to take de space, put a 'Reserved' sign on the seat! Or hire your own train!"
"Choo sittin' there, reading your bible, and choo telling people to close their legs -- choo need to learn -- choo need to --"
(hand to the face)
"Choo need to shut your fucking mouth!"
"No, YOU need to shut your mouth."
"Whatevah."
"No, whatEVAH."
(hand to the face)

Because I was trying not to look at them, I kept my eyes straight ahead and only saw their hands gesturing at each other. The (Long Island?) accent came from the hands with metallic magenta finish; the Caribbean accent came from hands with light blue lace-patterned press-on nails. I came THIS CLOSE to laughing out loud. But I didn't. 'Cause they probably would have hurt me.

II.
Saw a woman playing a saw in the Times Square station.

LAW FIRM MOMENTS

I.
Partner on the recruiting committee: "Just to put your minds at ease, we expect that every one of you will get an offer at the end of the summer."

But seriously? What if someone really, really sucks?

II.
Among the advice given on how to have a good summer:
"This is the start to your professional career.'
"You should ask questions."
"Try to be reliable."
"If you have something due in the afternoon, it's probably not a good idea to go to lunch for two hours that day."
"You'll be able to enjoy New York on a lawyer's salary."
"Return your phone calls."
"If someone is calling a second time and leaves a message saying 'Did you get my first message?' that means 'You should have called back earlier.'"
"We have a $70 limit per person per meal."
"You should try to bill 20-25 hours per week."
"We won't give you assignments til Wednesday. And it may take us longer, so don't worry."
"You can go back to your offices and just try to process all this information until it's time for your 15-minute meeting for assignments." (Note: the assignment meeting took 15 minutes -- with SIX summer associates! I mean, you take 45 minutes to tell us to be reliable, and then you take about 2 minutes per person -- less, because first the assigning committee talked about possible assignments -- to ask about preferences? Because it's not like we're here to, you know, WORK or LEARN about the work or anything.)
(at 4:45): "If you don't have anything else to do, you can head out. And you shouldn't have anything to do."

Are you frigging serious? You're gonna pay these people $140,000 a year, and you feel the need to remind them to return their phone calls? In what fucked up reality are you all living in?

The really horrific thing was that there was nary a smidgen of a sense of irony about the whole thing.