depressing news of the day

i have to confess that i listen to "wait wait don't tell me" every week. i know, can you believe that isn't the depressing news of the day?

in case you don't prefer to learn about the news in a nerdy quiz show format, wait wait don't tell me is...well, a news show in a nerdy quiz format. to give you an idea of how nerdy, you don't win money or even an npr tote bag--you get an answering machine message recorded by carl kasell. each week they also invite a famous (or not so famous, in the case of stefan fatsis--who? yeah, c4ts, you've read his last 5 books. i know) guest, and this week was kim deal. whoa.

well, this confirmed that i am probably not their only listener under the age of 50, much to my relief. but the interview was so depressing. first, she revealed that she lives with her parents in dayton, ohio. ok, so according to her wiki entry she's taking care of her mom, who has alzheimers. yes, that is admirable. no, that doesn't make it any less depressing. second, she tried to make some joke about how nobody wants to see an old rock star...haha...ugh...

wow, geez, let me try to make it up to you. how about...this? or this?

The Slow Descent

Tomorrow or the next day, I will addend this post with photographs, but for now I will try to say with words what corporate carnage mine eyes have beheld these last several days.

October 15, 2007 -- My first day of work.

October 15, 2008 -- I am now officially the senior ranking attorney on my floor. A law firm in dissolution may still be a law firm, but a law firm in dissolution without attorneys is something else altogether. Virtually everyone else has left for greener pastures -- all pastures are greener than the barren slate gray of capitalism's unvacuumed carpets. Some of us have no pastures to leave for.

On Monday, I returned from my trip back east to find that my neighbor no longer exists, at least, no longer exists in the form that I knew her to. We were friendly, but a post-it note attached to the boxes sitting outside her door and mine informs me that she has accepted a position at another law firm.

Today, the vendors in charge of coffee seized the coffee machines. They took with them the cups. The packets of sugar. Apparently, also the hand soap. The fridge remains stocked with unopen half-gallons of milk, but the expiration dates are marked for Friday. Perilously close, and I am lactose intolerant.

Yesterday, other vendors seized the printers. I sent documents to be printed, but the request dissipated into ether(net).

At noon today, our key cards stopped working, along with the elevators, and we were all seized with panic. When you've finally made peace with being locked out, it's a little funny to find yourself locked in. A few minutes later the cards started working again and so did the elevators. We noted the dark humor of all this.

I took a walk just now around the deserted landscape of the 32nd floor. Through the windows of the corner offices that were once everyone's envy the clouds burned amber over the Golden Gate Bridge, sailboats lolled in the Bay behind the TransAmerica Building. Things I thought to be immutable--furniture bolted to the walls, for instance--have been removed. In their wake are massive holes in the dry wall. Many offices are strewn with detritus. Many more are empty, save for an orphaned plant. Their leaves fulvous and forlorn. All were once occupied by people; in their place now are their identification cards, turned face up, beaming and full of hope, turned face up on curt letters of resignation, addressed to partners who also no longer work here.

I happened upon the office of one particulary malapert attorney. Her office decor, amusingly orientalist, replete with smiling Buddha, has given way to the hollow left behind by movers. On her desk, a resignation letter, her identification badge, and her business card, inverted with the following words inscribed in green, yes, but inscribed in a sad and unsteady hand:

"To whom much is given, much is expected." -- Luke, 12:48

After the Reckoning

I left you, dear readers/shy commenters, a bit in the lurch on Thursday. Indeed I--and my colleagues--were haled into a meeting in the main conference room later that day. The chairs had been removed, ominously, to fit all the people. We packed in, and spilled over to the smaller rooms nearby. As I stood amidst the nervous chatter, I looked around and saw, with great embarrassment, how many people work at the firm I had never before laid eyes on: IT people, kitchen workers, mail room guys emerged from the lower floors and stood shoulder to shoulder with attorneys to hear the formal news of their termination. I suppose when the executioner's blade falls, there is no class, there is no creed, that separates us. The chairman appeared and wasted little time in announcing that the firm was taking steps to dissolve (with a formal vote for dissolution scheduled for the next day).

The news was greeted with a mix of stunned silence and bitter smiles. Something can be a long-time-coming, but still knock the wind out of you. Soon, the smiles began to vanish, the silence turned to sighs, and as the San Francisco office's managing partner delivered his eulogy, a slow dirge about the venerable firm he joined before I was born, the sighs turned into tears: the same secretaries who had been sobbing at their desks before passed out tissue paper and hid their eyes behind sunglasses -- perhaps that is not remarkable. What is remarkable though, at least to me, is this: scores of grown men, luminaries in their field, weeping in the arms of any who would have them. I have seen nothing like it before.

I continue to work. A law firm in dissolution is still a law firm. Business winds down, and euthanization is set for November 28th. I work on cases that will find new homes elsewhere. I work hard for people whose good opinion will have no bearing on my career. I receive emails from partners about job leads. I trip over boxes, heading to the men's room. I sit at my desk as representatives of potential sub-lessees poke their heads in to my office, sizing up the space, but ignoring the human being seated before them. I will be at work tomorrow morning, but yesterday I was having some problems with my computer and called the IT helpdesk, only to find I had reached a disconnected number.

These are strange times.

"One Day We Will All Look Back at This and Laugh."

Today at 1 PM I expect to be fired.

Okay, laid-off.

That is, I expect to be another one of those faceless drones who volunteered to have his hopes and dreams shredded for the advancement of Corporate America (and the advancement of my own pocketbook), but who never expected this.

Over the course of the last one and a half weeks -- the hospice period for the dying firm at which I work -- I have asked myself, David-Byrne-like, how did I get here? But there are few answers. I had a wealth of choices, and I thought I chose wisely, but alas...

Law firms can fall victim to the whims of the economy, it is true, but it is rare for them to dissolve outright. There is a larger misfeasance at play here. Now, I have my own thoughts about management, about greed, about out-sized ambition, but this is not the forum in which to share them. I am angry, yes, I am confused about what lies ahead -- never in the last 25 years have I not been enrolled in school or employed -- but, my election posts notwithstanding, I am an optimist, and I expect that this too shall pass. This job, this strange 11-month odyssey, was in some respects a charade. It's not what I'm meant to do, I know, and maybe now I will be forced to think hard about what it is that I want out of my professional life.

Don't feel sorry for me. Just two weeks ago I was sitting in a financial planning seminar, organized by the firm, listening to a pleasant lady talk about the best strategies for buying a second house or financing private school for your kids. I remember sitting there and having one of those moments of clarity that exist only in facile television programs. This is all just, just so wrong. Then, a weirder thought -- one probably better suited for HBO -- gripped me: If the revolution gathered on the streets below, spilled forth through the lobby, up the elevator, and slaughtered us all, it would be justified. No one needs to be talking about second homes. No one needs to send their kids to private school. When this becomes your everyday reality, maybe, just maybe, you have forfeited that which makes you part of a common humanity. But I digress...

The above quote has become sort of a mantra here. It's the only appropriate thing to say to people who are sharing in this experience with you. I have heard it from many colleagues, but right now, there are secretaries, who have spent 20, 30, years toiling here, but can't manage to find a private place to cry, so they sit at their desks, with tears streaming down their face, trying to check headings on somebody's motion to dismiss. When I look back at all of this, that -- more than anything else -- will be what I remember.

ps -- Should you feel compelled to comment, please do not mention the name of The Firm at Which I Will be Working for a Few More Hours.

separated at birth - the genocide edition

aw fuck it, i can't get the formatting right. you get my drift.

uh-O

did oprah approve of spring awakening or something? what's to explain whiny whinerson jonathan franzen's vitriol directed against duncan sheik's musical? don't get me wrong - as an entire genre musicals are insufferable, but franzen's reaction seems a little over-the-top to me. this guy just seems like he'd be the worst dinner guest, ever. don't invite this dude to disneyland, kids.