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I swear under my breath and decide to get out of my car and get going. No amount of fiddling with my jacket or the slacks is going to make it look any better or any less ill-fitting. And I’ve got bigger things to worry about this morning.
Like my interview with one Ms. Joan Vanacore, one of the new lawyers around here at McKenzie Tech. She’s been brought in to form the new legal department. It’s something bigger and more formal than the legal assistants’ group I’ve been part of for the last few years.
I’ve heard she’s a recent transplant from Missouri. I also heard she ran a pretty big law firm over that way and was well-liked in the community and among her peers.
I got the lead about the job through the grapevine on the legal assistants’ floor here at McKenzie Tech. Originally, I wasn’t going to even bother with it. I’ve been trying to get out of being an aid for at least over a year, since I got my law degree, and each time a job opening has come up, it’s been taken by someone else.
So, when I originally heard about this inter-office opening, I wasn’t that interested. Except for when my “coworkers”— I prefer to think of them as co-conspirators in my pain and suffering — rode my ass again about always being in the assistants’ pool and never climbing the corporate ladder.
Plus, I needed to make some more money. When you have a father like mine — an old guy who doesn’t seem to realize that it’s the twenty-first century and that no, that latest lottery ticket isn’t going to make all your worries go away — you learn to keep trying to move out of the house.
I climb out of my car, grab my file folder full of resumes and letters of recommendation, and start the long journey across the parking lot to the main building of McKenzie Tech.
“People give you a ton of shit once they see anything different about you, and the guys I have to work with down on the legal assistants’ floor are no fucking different. I have no allies there, so I need to leave them behind,” I whisper to myself, holding the folder close to my chest and picking up my pace.
“I need to leave them at their level if I’m ever going to get anywhere.”
I don’t have time to waste, trying to catch my breath.
Focus on getting Ms. Vanacore to like you. She’s picky, I’ve heard. Not one to just take anybody for the job, so you’ve got to show her that you’re somebody. That you are not just another run-of-the-mill aid, and that you’ve actually spent time gaining skills and knowledge.
While everyone else sits around doing the bare minimum, you’ve been taking over the work they’re too lazy to do or don’t do correctly.
Finally, I make it to the main building. I stop for a moment, deciding I should catch my breath. Ms. Vanacore isn’t going to want me collapsing the minute I get to her interview or being so out of breath that I’m gasping out every answer. That’s going to make her send me right back down to the legal aids’ floor.
After a moment or two of catching my breath, and of trying to get rid of some of the sweat, so it doesn’t soak too much into my clothes, I walk inside the main building. Jog is more like it, but whatever.
From the main entrance, I make my way as quickly as I can to an elevator, hoping and praying that I don’t have to wait around for one to come to get me.
Thankfully, I don’t have to wait long at all — no more than a minute or so. I quickly get on, ignoring the looks of some of the people already in the elevator. I’ve seen that look before. The “what are you doing trying to get ahead; you belong stuck down in the assistants’ pool forever” type of look.
I ignore it, reminding myself that I have something more valuable than their perfect bodies. I have a brain. A valuable one. One that’s going to be worth a higher, more well-paid position.
Though it’s still hard not to feel their eyes — their stares and their judgments about me. Those are blaring loud and clear throughout the whole elevator. I even hear them whispering about how sweaty I am or how disheveled my clothes are, and I have to ignore this too.
I hold more tightly onto my folder of important papers and hope that, come this time tomorrow, I will be riding up to one of the partners’ floors, serving an actual partner and doing actual legal work as an associate lawyer and assistant, not just heading to my regular swamp.
I get out at the executive’s floor at the top of the building. I move swiftly and decisively, knowing that my interview time is quickly approaching and that it’s being held in one of the conference rooms on this floor.
