Andrea “Andi” Burns opened her emails and was amazed, maybe shocked, by what she saw. It was a positive response to the job application she had sent months ago to a criminal law firm, located in Richmond, California, about 16 miles from downtown San Francisco.
How else could the 32-year-old Andi react after mostly never getting an answer from the 250 CVs she had emailed out for a position as a lawyer?
This firm was recognized for its corporate social responsibility platform. It prosecuted cases and defended the country’s dispossessed population who couldn’t afford the huge legal fees of powerful law offices that held sway in courts of law.
A local magazine had rated the company as one of the 25 top criminal law firms in the San Francisco Bay area. Her interviewer was a 30-something attorney named Jen Stevens who came from Andi’s hometown of Sacramento. If Andi was hired, Jen Stevens would be her immediate supervisor.
The first question Jen asked Andi was why she wanted to work in this firm when there were so many other places where she could apply for a job.
Andi thought of answering with a snarky response or with a suck-up rejoinder that she had practiced repeating in front of the mirror at home that maybe was at least half-true. “I want to belong to a firm like yours that I hear does good works for people less fortunate,” said Andi. “It’s not all about money. It’s like that old saying, ‘you do well by doing good.’”
Jen laughed. “If you say so, madam. Where I come from, you can do good by doing well. It’s fine to be a humanitarian. But if you don’t have money and live under a bridge in a cardboard box or something, you don’t feel like doing good. Agreed?”
Andi was unsettled by that statement. Was this Jen Stevens implying that she could see right through her B.S. Andi might be laying down? Andi could respect her for that, which led to telling herself to stop with sounding holier than thou.
After several other pro-forma questions about Andi’s work in the lawyering profession, Jen rose from her chair, indicating the interview was over after these quick 10 minutes, and said, “We’ll let you know in a few days. Thanks for coming in.”
Ten minutes? That was all she was allotted to make her case?
Silence. “Crickets,” as is said when you hear nothing. A week and a half passed and the firm hadn’t even bothered to send her that form rejection letter. She could at least earn a slice of humble pie by calling in and hearing with her own ears she had been rejected. Maybe it was for the best. Who would want to work for a company, even if it supposedly did noble work, that treated its own people this way?
This firm should have been impressed by her credentials. She was a Rhodes Scholar earning a postgraduate law degree from the University of Oxford in England. Five years working for a London criminal justice firm as a defense attorney before she moved across the pond and the U.S. to another law firm in San Francisco where she successfully won cases as part of a team and individually. In that last instance, she miraculously won a stay for an illegal immigrant from Central America to prevent government authorities from deporting the poor woman to some failed dictatorial state in West Africa.
She had willingly sacrificed any personal life to be a workaholic for the good of the job and the world. Breaking up with several boyfriends who could see she was more dedicated in advancing human rights than getting married and having children. That could come later if it was meant to be, Andi thought. Maybe like U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez announced she would do, Andi could freeze her eggs. Like the New York Congresswoman, Andi believed that would give her “more control of my life.”
It wouldn’t be long, Andi had believed, before she was on the road to making partner. That was 18 months ago when she was suddenly and without warning laid off, with the San Francisco law firm saying that its dire financial straits required “downsizing.” That meant she and a number of her fellow talented lawyers were unceremoniously let go.
Since then, with the job rejections pouring in, she had scraped by on unemployment insurance, her savings, and on scut jobs that had nothing to do with being a lawyer but rather prioritized knowing how to make coffee for the big boss. On one of those crummy jobs, for a company whose political orientation went opposite to her core convictions, Andi’s male supervisor said she looked a lot like a younger version of the actress Meryl Streep. It was supposedly meant as a compliment, although Andi hated anyone commenting on her looks. Even if she knew she was plenty good looking.
It wasn’t long before she couldn’t stomach any longer working for that company. She handed in her resignation and returned to the ranks of the unemployed.
She called in to the Richmond law firm and asked for Ms. Stevens. The receptionist who worked the front desk put her on hold. Five minutes later and after hearing that same sleepy, inoffensive “on-hold” song repeated over the line, the receptionist said Jen was still in a meeting. Could Jen call back? What else could Andi say other than “but of course.”
Some 25 minutes later, the receptionist was on the line asking Andi to wait a minute. Jen would be on the phone as soon as she finished with her other call.
Another 10 minutes after that, a woman, not named Jen, said “sorry about that. We’re so swamped today.”
“I understand,” Andi said, even if she didn’t really believe that. Talk was cheap. If this place really wanted her, they would have shown it by their actions and not empty words.
“Anyway,” the woman named Paula Price, continued, “are you free to come in for an interview? The boss likes to see his potential hires face to face.”
Before Andi could respond, Paula said, “This Friday might work. We can squeeze you in around lunch-time.”
Andi knew for this second interview to dress conservatively and businesslike in a black printed dress, buttoned up black suit jacket, and sensible brown pumps. Even though the firm promoted itself as progressive, liberal-minded, and worked tirelessly for the underdog, they wouldn’t hire someone who looked freaky-deaky and radical.
“Have a seat, miss,” the firm’s managing partner, Alexander K. Tompkins instructed her as Andi was shown into the large conference room by the Tompkins legal assistant, Rayanne Franklin.
Tompkins sat at one end of the conference table, 20 feet or so from Andi’s seat at the other end.
Tompkins didn’t exactly fit the stereotypical image of a suave, leading man managing partner. At age 40, he was totally bald, somewhat overweight, and short, about 5’8” But he had an engaging smile and didn’t seem arrogant and obnoxious like Andi had expected to confront based on the rumors about how he treated his underlings.
In a minute of chit-chat, Tompkins talked about how he had just arrived at the office from his usual Friday morning golf game playing nine holes at a country club with one of his clients, a California State Senator. Was he trying to impress her? Then he said he would dispense with the usual “stupid” questions asking Andi why she wanted this job. Rayanne Franklin, the legal assistant, brought in two cups of coffee, one for him, one for Andi, along with a platter of brownies still warm from the oven.
“It’s my policy to meet the applicants in person,” Tompkins said. “In this firm, it’s all about performance. We don’t B.S. or screw around here. You’d be on probation for the first three months, and if you’re up to snuff, we’ll proceed from there. Agreed?”
Andi nodded. This interview wasn’t going how she expected. She had so far said exactly five words, “hello, nice to meet you,” and already she apparently was being hired.
Tompkins’ smartphone rang. Tompkins said he had to take it. “Good to meet you, Ms. __? Crap. Forgot your name.” He looked down at her CV. “Yes, Burns. Now if you’ll excuse me.”
That was her invitation to leave already. If she hadn’t taken the hint, Rayanne Franklin came in to escort her out. Not knowing definitively whether she was in fact hired, Andi took it upon herself to take charge. When should she expect to be starting the job?
“Oh, I didn’t know Mr. Tompkins had finished with all the interviews,” said Rayanne. “If you can wait a few minutes, I’ll let you know. You can finish your coffee in the waiting room.”
Andi sat and waited a good 25 minutes. No sign of Rayanne Franklin and the final verdict from the big boss. She watched as one client after another were ushered into different conference rooms, apparently for consultations. The office was bustling with activity. A good sign that it didn’t lack for business.
She perused the company brochure saying it employed 65 lawyers along with 25 associates and a support staff of 10 with the firm also having branch offices in L.A. and San Diego, and a Congressional affairs office in Washington, D.C. to represent clients before the U.S. Congress and federal agencies.
Andi approached the front desk where Paula Price was handling the phones. Every time Andi started to ask whether Ms. Franklin had forgotten about her, the phone rang again.
Finally, Andi retreated to her seat and finished her coffee. Most importantly, she wanted to act busy by writing a message on a company notepad with its insignia on top that she had to run because of other commitments to attend to. But she could be reached at the email address and phone numbers listed on her business card attached to the notepad. Then, still hoping that she might run into Rayanne Franklin at the elevators, she made her way outside through the two double front doors of the mid-rise building. Whether she heard if she actually had the job or not, it didn’t matter. She’d report for work the following Monday morning.
Andi never was contacted on that same Friday or over the weekend by the firm and she didn’t call back to inquire either. Maybe its personnel office automatically had assumed to put her on the payroll. In any case, she bought a new pantsuit to wear on her first day on the job. Trying for the official lawyering look. While not ridiculously expecting to be given a corner office, she wanted to come across by her clothes and demeanor that she belonged in the corporate suite with no questions asked. One major question that needed to be asked was what would be her starting salary at this firm. She expected somebody would let her know post haste.
“Good morning,” Andi greeted the receptionist 8 o’clock that Monday morning. “Andrea Burns. I’m supposed to start work here today.”
“Oh yes,” the receptionist said, her nameplate reading Jerri Johnston. “You’re assigned to the Blue Team. Ms. Jen will be with you shortly. Have a seat. Coffee?”
Andi congratulated herself. She did have the job. All this fretting and unable to sleep over the weekend debating whether in fact she had been hired. Still, it left her with misgivings that this firm had left her out on a limb. Unprofessional? For sure. Rude? Without question.
Andi, along with five other new hires, was herded into a small meeting room for a half-hour “orientation” on the firm’s dos and don’ts. A facilitator by the name of Jeremiah Johnson warned that “your actions reflect our company’s mores and values. Don’t say or do anything that would make us look bad because we have our sterling reputation to protect. Any questions?”
Andi raised her hand. “I’m sorry. What if a newspaper reporter calls asking about one of our cases. We’re not allowed to talk to them?”
Johnson frowned. “Absolutely not. You should refer all questions from members of the press to our public affairs office. Under no circumstances should you speak to a reporter. Understood?”
When the orientation was over, Andi was approached on her way out by another new hire, a 40-something tall, slim attractive lady. She wanted to thank Andi for raising the issue of confidentiality at this firm. Her name was Shelayla Jackson-Barnes, a fellow lawyer who said she was also assigned to Andi’s Blue Team.
“You must have heard?” Shelayla asked.
“Heard what?”
Shelayla seemed to have a lot of ambivalence in her mind. She obviously wanted to tell someone in confidence what she really thought about working here.
“This place has lots of staff turnover,” Shelayla said. She looked around to make sure no one heard her and continued. “They run the company like a dictatorship. You step out of line, you’re gone. You’ve heard that expression, ‘loves humanity, hates people.’ In this case, people means people like you and me. On the bottom of the totem pole. I tried to get a job somewhere else but this was the only law firm that would hire me. I guess sometimes in life you have to make compromises. You could call me a sell-out.”
Andi didn’t really want to hear that. It already put a negative thought in her mind. She figured that with her pre-judging bad attitude, Shelayla wouldn’t be long for this firm. Andi hoped she wouldn’t be assigned to work with Shelayla as misery loves company and with being considered guilty by association. Speaking of idioms, Andi remembered the saying that one bad apple spoils the bunch. In this case, Shelayla was the apple. Andi was the bunch. Or was it the other way around?
“Why don’t we give it a chance?” suggested Andi. “How bad can it be?”
Shelayla smiled at that supposed optimism but said nothing. She already had said enough.
Andi was assigned to a small windowless office next to the doorway where every time it opened a chilly breeze passed through. On top of that, she felt a draft overhead. Better not to complain about the in-house weather conditions on her first day or she might be regarded as a malcontent and troublemaker. Give it some time. Like tomorrow.
The Blue Team leader, Jen Stevens strode to the front of the conference room where Andi sat as far away from Shelayla Jackson-Barnes as possible among the five fellow lawyers that were part of the Blue Team.
“There’s no I in the word team,” Jen reminded the group. Paraphrasing what Benjamin Franklin asserted, Jen added that “we either hang together or we’ll hang separately. Understood?”
Andi was assigned to work with fellow Blue Team member Rosanna de la Piedra, a short Hispanic brown-eyed brunette originally from Mexico. Rosanna had previously been employed as an immigration lawyer in Georgia before moving to the San Francisco area and taking on this new position.
Rosanna and Andi were to work together on a voting rights appeals case in the South involving an older Black woman who had been turned away from the voting booth for lacking proper identification. Their job was to prepare a legal brief that the firm’s trial lawyer would use before an appeals court judge. They had to work fast, because the hearing on the case was scheduled in two days. That might mean pulling at least one all-nighter for what was needed to get the brief ready in time.
The Black woman’s original trial had found her guilty of fraud, and perhaps would be thrown in jail for misrepresenting herself as a legal voter. Whether or not she was legal was still open to question. The firm’s immediate job was to keep her from being imprisoned. It was a clear-cut case of racial discrimination against a poor Black woman. The firm was taking on the case pro bono, arguing that it was a prime representation of blatant prosecutorial overreach. Andi was proud of herself to help those in most need. What could be more important than fighting for what was right?
But before she could start work on the case, Andi still had to settle the small matter of learning what her yearly salary would be. She wasn’t going to work here for free, no matter how righteous the cause.
She poked her head into the corner office of Jen Stevens, who it turned out was in a day-long meeting with her fellow trial lawyers about a case where the firm was suing a large manufacturing company for denying salary raises, stingy on not paying for overtime, and for not giving vacation time to their factory workers.
“Ma’am, could I steal just a moment of your time?” Andi asked.
Jen looked over and sounding annoyed, said brusquely, “What do you want?”
“It’s rather personal,” responded Andi.
“If it’s that personal, perhaps you should report to the personnel office.” The two men sitting with Jen at the conference table laughed. Jen wasn’t known for her humor. But that line sounded funny to them. To Andi, it sounded humiliating.
“Whatever you want,” Andi responded, cold as ice. She shut the door and rode the elevator up two flights to the personnel office. On her way off, the big boss, Alexander Tompkins, was getting on. He offered his hand to shake and said, “I like your pants suit. Accentuates your figure.” He immediately covered his mouth before saying, “My bad. I was trying to make a compliment. Came out wrong. No offense. Sorry.” He headed into the elevator. In Andi’s estimation, he didn’t really sound sorry. But was she overreacting to an obvious objectification of her body?
Maybe Shelayla Jackson-Barnes was indeed right about what it would be like working for this company.
The personnel officer said there must have been an oversight. No salary was listed by Andi’s name. The officer said she’d check into it. Be patient. She’d get back to Andi when she could get back to her.
That answer didn’t satisfy Andi. It wouldn’t have satisfied anybody in her position. She rode the elevator up to the top floor office suite of Alexander K. Tompkins. Two executive administrative assistants sat before desk-top computers outside the office’s double doors.
Andi told the two assistants she needed to speak to Mr. Tompkins. This was an urgent matter.
“You have an appointment?” one of the assistants asked.
“I’m here about a personal issue,” replied Andi. “It involves my salary.”
“That’s handled by the personnel department,” replied the assistant. “Besides, Mr. Tomkins is out of the office. Would you like to make an appointment to see him?”
“I’ll come back later,” asserted Andi. “If he gets a chance, please have him call me. He knows where I can be reached.”
All afternoon and into that night Andi and Rosanna de la Piedra worked on the brief that the company’s criminal lawyer would present to the judge regarding their client’s discrimination suit. Rosanna proved to be a diligent lawyer and very easy to work with. Andi was impressed by her zeal and ideas on what should go into the brief. She and Rosanna made a good team. Andi felt lucky that Rosanna had been assigned to work with her.
During the course of the evening, Rosanna revealed to Andi that when she had first arrived for an interview at this firm, despite being well dressed, a higher-up she met on the elevator had asked her, perhaps also because of her Spanish accent, if she was the company’s newly-hired immigrant cleaning woman. Rosanna said that even if she didn’t like being judged by her Spanish looks and her accent, she was used to being underestimated.
For different reasons, Andi also felt slighted. Mr. Tompkins had never gotten in touch about her “urgent” matter. Maybe she should have tried harder to get “face time’ with her immediate supervisor, Jen Stevens. But Jen claimed to have been tied up all day.
Wrapping up their work for the night, Rosanna said as a single mother, she had to rush home to her apartment in Richmond because the teenage babysitter she had hired couldn’t stay there forever. She had high school the next morning. Rosanna said she wished she didn’t need so urgently to have a job. But with her ex-husband back in Atlanta, Georgia, unreliable about sending the court-ordered child support and alimony, she had no choice for the time being but to work.
Rosanna added that she was grateful to this firm for hiring her. Even if the bosses didn’t show much respect to their underlings, at least she was earning good money to keep herself afloat. At least $8,000 more than what she was making at her previous law job in Atlanta.
The topic of money aggrieved Andi. By the next few days, she’d either get her salary issue resolved or she’d threaten to resign. She already was thinking this firm wasn’t the right fit for her. But did she really want to go back on unemployment again? Late into the night, Andi worked on her letter of resignation. “It’s for the best for both of us,” Andi wrote. She hadn’t decided yet whether to actually go through with submitting it.
Early that next morning back in the office, when Andi and Rosanna were finalizing the brief, Andi was surprised to get a call from upstairs. Mr. Tompkins and Jen Stevens wanted to meet with her immediately. Perfect timing. Andi had her resignation letter in the pocket of her suit jacket. She could walk out of this place with her dignity intact. Before they fired her, she could resign.
The Tompkins legal assistant, Rayanne Franklin, escorted Andi into the big corner office with the floor-to-ceiling windows offering a majestic view of the Richman-San Rafael Bridge crossing over San Francisco Bay. Alexander Tompkins and Jen Stevens sat at the conference table, ostensibly waiting for her arrival. The legal assistant, Rayanne, had her assistant roll in the cart with the coffees and Danish.
“Please sit down, Ms. Burns,” instructed Mr. Tomkins. “Coffee?”
The assistant’s assistant poured her a cup.
Andi was reaching into her suit jacket for her letter when Tompkins said he wanted to apologize again for his “indiscretion” on the elevator yesterday. It was a big “misunderstanding.” Andi looked at him and then at Jen Stevens. “There’s a vicious rumor going around this place,” Tompkins continued, “that I came on to you, engaged in sexual harassment with an inappropriate comment. Totally false, of course. But we’re prepared to come to a mutually agreed settlement on the matter. We’re offering you a $15,000 signing bonus on your starting salary if you keep it strictly between us. How’s that sound? No hard feelings?”
Talk about a bribe. This had to legally be a breach of ethical behavior. But then again, could she really afford to turn down a $15,000 bonus?
Andi hadn’t heard the gossip. “Who’s spreading this rumor?” Andi asked, although she could make an educated guess that it was Shelayla Jackson-Barnes.
Tompkins shrugged. “We must keep that confidential. So how about it? Will you accept our generous offer? By the way, absolutely, we very much want you to continue working for us. Ms. Stevens here says she’s very impressed by your work ethic.”
Andi nodded. She was in disbelief about these happenings. Her resignation letter would stay in her suit pocket. Or maybe not.
Of course, Andi still didn’t know about her starting salary. $15,000 added to what?
And about that sexual harassment claim regarding the big boss? Andi might have mentioned in passing to Shelayla Jackson-Barnes, when they were both in the ladies’ room freshening up, what had happened yesterday. About what Mr. Tompkins had said to her by the elevator.
Unfortunately, that same lady Shelayla was no longer on the company payroll. One version of the gossip had it that she was forced out. A second version had it that she had voluntarily tendered her resignation, effective immediately. For all the good things it did, the way this law firm treated and disrespected its people left Andi undecided on whether she should resign as well. Would she? What choice did she have?
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About
Eric Green’s short stories, essays, and news articles have been published widely, including in the Washington Post, Adelaide Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. His piece, The Old Man and The Plea, was published by Penumbra, the art and literary journal of California State University/Stanislaus. His latest published essay, On Track To Ride Amtrak’s Quiet Car, appeared July 17 in the Christian Science Monitor.
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