Bash your Boss Forum

[Anonymous User]

This sounds awful. My ego is way to big to every work for another junior. Are you assigned to this particular team or something? Dang, I'd be really upset. And the fact that a person with like a year more experience is degrading you. That is truly scary.

Not justifying at all how anon was treated, but I'm not sure you're going to like biglaw very much.

In other situations the juniors would give me a lot of help along the way. In hindsight a lot of this junior's orders were meant to embarrass me. For instance I was asked to ask a question I asked her to one of the partners in e-mail, and then ordered to follow up once they didn't reply in a half hour. I thought it seemed annoying, but they insisted it shows drive and determination and was "their strong opinion that I should respect". The optimist in me would like to think if I didn't in some way indicate I didn't respect their seniority, they wouldn't have sat down and plotted how to harm my career. I'll get passed it and be professional through and through, and still am confident that at the end of the day people will prefer working with the associate who smiles and is nice at 4 AM to a vindictive sociopath.

you sound sort of insane?

I wish because then I'd have a good excuse for my shenanigans, and get drugs. Nobody would ever diagnose me, because supposedly my oddities are constructive and not destructive and destructiveness is a necessary condition to falling under the DSM V. However, I think I participated in this discussion because I had a need to vent and that need has been fulfilled so I'm going to cut off the participation henceforth.

[trbrny]

I had confused the names on a document I wrote at 2 in the morning on a Friday night, which resulted in a bad typo. I'm not making excuses but I had been working 15 hour+ days for 2 weeks straight which was mostly spent doing work that I realized from looking at the shared drive had never been opened. Between the hours, feeling I was waiting for Godot and being subjected to the tempers of one overzealous associate, I was starting to burn out.

Anyway, I get a call when I'm trying to find my way home. I had got the flu a few days earlier, but had no time to see a doctor and was so overtired I forgot what block I lived on so was basically circling around Manhattan walking like Frankenstein because of the approach-avoidance conflict on whether to just sleep on a park bench for a few hours.

So yeah, the phone rings and the associate asked how I could be so negligent to make the typo. I had also made a bunch of similar errors that same week all on work completed after 10 PM. Even though I printed and proofread, I had never worked so hard so consistently before that I would miss typos until about a week into the madness when I had trouble reading or coming up with words in conversation (if any conversation went deeper than "how are you?" I'd be at a loss).

Anywho, I apologize about the typo and explain I'm really exhausted. When I get pressed about knowing if there's any more typos, I had said I'm really tired and will look at it tomorrow (I had to wake up at 6 AM the next day). Because it wasn't face to face and I had used a euphemism to basically say, I am not doing this now but will do it tomorrow, this was interpreted by the junior senior to me to be evidence of disrespect for their authority.

I got the full on yelling with cursing the next day, and they wound up complaining to the partner about the perceived disrespect, which led to a sit down meeting in which I took full responsibility for my lack of seriousness, because I thought that was the smartest play. Since then I've gotten much less work. Although i accepted full responsibility and kowtowed, I don't really think it's possible for normal people to be as effective between the 100 and 110th hour of the work week as they are during the 10th and 20th hour, and so much of when this gets exposed boils down to luck. I don't blame anyone for any of it nor do I blame myself because I tried my best. It's just unfortunate I got thrown onto something under a person with a reputation for being cruel when they're stressed.

This sounds awful. My ego is way to big to every work for another junior. Are you assigned to this particular team or something? Dang, I'd be really upset. And the fact that a person with like a year more experience is degrading you. That is truly scary.

It was confusing because it was a very important matter with very little time so stress was high. When I reflect on what went wrong, I think it's really the following:

There was a ton of data that nobody wanted to pour through so I volunteered, and it got put in my office and I basically read through and organized it over 30 casual hours or so. The when it got staffed a week later shit was hitting the storm, and we had to move fast. Because I was the only person who had skimmed the documents at this point, I had more value than a first year one month in would normally have. The senior associate who was on it wanted to get off so gave his role to the other associate who came in, and had to catch up to speed.

The conflict started because at the beginning, the partners would call me if they wanted a particular document or an overview of what was important because I had a week long head start. This upset the other associate who felt I was going around their back, that they're responsible for me and I therefore have to e-mail them before any partner. It seemed strange but I figured whatever, clearly their sensitive about this and I might as well make them happy. In hindsight, I should have jumped off the project then and there.

I had misinterpreted what was going on as being a product of poor communication on my part to not make it clear I respected their authority when in retrospect the obsession with authority is probably rooted in sociopathy ad I should have had the wisdom to jump off once it was evident the person wanted to fuck me. For the record I think they are a tremendous lawyer and are brilliant. My only gripe here is that once you harm a sociopath's ego, intentionally or unintentionally, you are setting yourself up to get fucked. because harming their ego would be like someone harming a non-sociopath's children - they gotta go.

I don't mean to offend -- just trying to be constructive. Your multiple posts are somewhat hard to read and are rife with grammar mistakes and typos. I understand that I should not be the grammar police in an online forum, but I certainly hope that your written (and oral) communication skills are better at the office. If not, WORK ON IT. Improving on that may go a long way to helping you gain some respect.

Also, screw the junior drill-sergeants. They are worthless people that attempt to make up for their lack of skills and talent by projecting their worthlessness onto others.

Yeah, I should have proofread that, too many run on sentences. However, there wasn't any writing on this except for e-mails that were all proofed and made as concise as possible. That said, I'm sure there's some overlap between always having good grammar and being great at doc review as both require a lot of attention to detail.

My point was not only with regard to your work product (which will certainly benefit from careful attention to grammar and spelling) but with regards to communication skills -- good skills can help to forestall some (but not all) of the tougher situations.

[trbrny]

This sounds awful. My ego is way to big to every work for another junior. Are you assigned to this particular team or something? Dang, I'd be really upset. And the fact that a person with like a year more experience is degrading you. That is truly scary.

Not justifying at all how anon was treated, but I'm not sure you're going to like biglaw very much.

In other situations the juniors would give me a lot of help along the way. In hindsight a lot of this junior's orders were meant to embarrass me. For instance I was asked to ask a question I asked her to one of the partners in e-mail, and then ordered to follow up once they didn't reply in a half hour. I thought it seemed annoying, but they insisted it shows drive and determination and was "their strong opinion that I should respect". The optimist in me would like to think if I didn't in some way indicate I didn't respect their seniority, they wouldn't have sat down and plotted how to harm my career. I'll get passed it and be professional through and through, and still am confident that at the end of the day people will prefer working with the associate who smiles and is nice at 4 AM to a vindictive sociopath.

you sound sort of insane?

I wish because then I'd have a good excuse for my shenanigans, and get drugs. Nobody would ever diagnose me, because supposedly my oddities are constructive and not destructive and destructiveness is a necessary condition to falling under the DSM V. However, I think I participated in this discussion because I had a need to vent and that need has been fulfilled so I'm going to cut off the participation henceforth.

Umm ok, not even sure what to think at this point.

[Dcc617]

This thread sucks now.

[trebekismyhero]

Yeah, can we get back to good stories about horrible bosses?

[Lacepiece23]

I don't like it that much.

Ah, gotcha. Sorry to misrepresent.

No worries, at my firm, however, juniors do not even delegate to other juniors let alone disrespect them like that. This was just a little surprising to me. I've never even become close to being yelled at or even reprimanded by anyone, although I'm sure it will happen. Having someone who has literally one year more experience than me doing it would make it such much worse.

I'd probably cuss them out and never work for that team again without a second thought. But that is just me.

[Anonymous User]

I don't like it that much.

Ah, gotcha. Sorry to misrepresent.

No worries, at my firm, however, juniors do not even delegate to other juniors let alone disrespect them like that. This was just a little surprising to me. I've never even become close to being yelled at or even reprimanded by anyone, although I'm sure it will happen. Having someone who has literally one year more experience than me doing it would make it such much worse.

I'd probably cuss them out and never work for that team again without a second thought. But that is just me.

Between the summer and as a first year, I've probably worked with somewhere between 30-40 lawyers, and never experienced anything like that. I was also warned about the person's temper when they're stressed, which is why I stand by how I played it. One important partner thinks I'm immature and careless, and probably wouldn't want to work with me, but that should pass if I go through the motions correctly. Explaining what happened from my perspective would have likely escalated the conflict, and office conflicts are generally lose-lose but against someone whose probably pushing a 160 IQ and is clinically intense, there's way too big a risk. I also think this same pattern will play itself out again with another junior at some point in the near future, and would rather the partner deduce everything on their own than complain about bullying. I doubt this is as common with partners, because bullying is a symptom of anxiety, and I don't know how much business anxious lawyers are bringing in.

[Anonymous User]

I don't like it that much.

Ah, gotcha. Sorry to misrepresent.

No worries, at my firm, however, juniors do not even delegate to other juniors let alone disrespect them like that. This was just a little surprising to me. I've never even become close to being yelled at or even reprimanded by anyone, although I'm sure it will happen. Having someone who has literally one year more experience than me doing it would make it such much worse.

I'd probably cuss them out and never work for that team again without a second thought. But that is just me.

Between the summer and as a first year, I've probably worked with somewhere between 30-40 lawyers, and never experienced anything like that. I was also warned about the person's temper when they're stressed, which is why I stand by how I played it. One important partner thinks I'm immature and careless, and probably wouldn't want to work with me, but that should pass if I go through the motions correctly. Explaining what happened from my perspective would have likely escalated the conflict, and office conflicts are generally lose-lose but against someone whose probably pushing a 160 IQ and is clinically intense, there's way too big a risk. I also think this same pattern will play itself out again with another junior at some point in the near future, and would rather the partner deduce everything on their own than complain about bullying. I doubt this is as common with partners, because bullying is a symptom of anxiety, and I don't know how much business anxious lawyers are bringing in.

I'm sorry she's being such a dick. She's acting like she feels threatened by you which might sound weird but it is not uncommon for, say, a first year to be more valuable to a team than a second year. I just did a deal with a first year and a second year and the first year, despite having a month on the job, was outperforming the second year and soon I began giving most of the work to him/her. It is also not uncommon IME to have a first year and second year on the same deal. ..I was a second year staffed with a first year on about 5 deals, but I never treated the first years like you're describing! Of course there are some sociopaths too....

Anyway keep your head down and get through this deal and then work extra hard on your next few deals. I'm not going to lie - jrs do get repuatations really fast so you likely have some damage to overcome here. Your reputation can change over time, though. I know you know, but do try to be as careful as possible with the errors because (even though everyone makes them when they're dead tired) they do affect your reputation a lot as a newbie first year. Hang in there! Hope you get some rest over the holidays!

ETA: sorry accidental anonymous - somewhatwayward