Ho-rrendous.

There’s a “Your Turn” exercise on page 190 of the GWW text that asks me to “find an annoyingly dry and difficult piece of writing, preferably a legal document…” I’m then supposed to rewrite it.

Man. There is nothing drier than a piece of legal writing.

In fact, legal jobs are fairly dry, in and of themselves.

Or at least, some legal jobs.

That is, some legal jobs that I’ve had.

I have worked in the litigation departments of two very large law firms. I did some white collar defense, SEC investigatory work, trademark infringement, and ethics laws stuff. If you look at my résumé, my time spent working at these places actually looks like it was pretty cool.

That’s the trouble with a résumé. Even when it tells the truth, it may not be giving the whole story.

The whole story about my two big firm jobs is that they were, by and large, really boring.

But. That’s not to say there were no good times to be had. Indeed, I have some really fond memories of those years, and especially those years at my first firm.

That firm occupied six floors of a skyscraper in downtown Philadelphia. The floors were basically segregated according to practice: Real Estate on 51, Business and Finance on 50, etc. The Litigation department was on 46.

Well, most of the Litigation department. We had the largest group, and did not all fit on the same floor. So, while they tried to keep everybody sort of together, inevitably, they ended up stashing a few junior associates in various places around the firm. This is how I ended up on the north side of the 47th floor, tucked among three other female junior litigators.

Coincidentally, we all had the same aspirations, that is, to pay our dues professionally, pay our loans financially, and move on to greener pastures. Hence, not one of us minded our stomping grounds. Conversely, we loved it. Our offices were located alongside of those belonging to blue-haired retired partners and tech people who were never actually there. Nobody cared if you didn’t change out of your sneakers all day or rolled in a little later than you probably should have once or twice.

But by far, the best perk of working on 47 North was the fact that there were no big guns around. All of the important partners were down on 46, where the lifeblood of the department ran. Up on 47 North, we could freely bitch about who was making our lives miserable and not worry that anybody would overhear. We could ask dumb questions, loudly, without worrying that a bad review would follow, come bonus time.

In essence, being on 47 North turned an annoyingly dry and difficult job into something a lot more digestible. We rewrote the job, if you will.

In fact, we, the four lit associates on 47 North, came to be quite good friends. Come Christmastime, I even received a small gift from one of them. It was a scented holiday candle, and it came wrapped in “Ho! Ho! Ho!” paper, appropriate for the holiday.

But I can never leave well-intentioned actions alone. Instead of thanking my friend for her thoughtfulness, I decided to make an annoyingly drawn-out joke and continually gripe about the wrapping paper: Why was my paper adorned with “Ho”? Neither of the presents given to the other girls had this paper. What was she trying to say? Did she think I was a ho? I was offended!

Blah, blah, blah.

Needless to say, the bearer of the gift was really tired of me after about 10 minutes of this mock-pout.

Faced with the fall-out from my own bad pun, I decided to flog it. Why let a perfectly bad joke die?

My friend who had graciously given me the candle was in the midst of planning her wedding during this time. As a result, her mom was calling her on a regular basis. And by “regular basis,” I mean “every twenty minutes.”

Thus, when she left for lunch that day, I took a pair of scissors to the wrapping paper, and cut out the word “Ho.” I then taped this word to the mouthpiece of her telephone receiver. I knew that her mom would be calling, and relished the idea of her lifting the phone to answer it, only to find herself looking at the word “Ho.”

The clock started to tick.

Her mom must’ve been trapped under something heavy or something, because for the first time since the proposal, she never called. In fact, I started to forget that I had even planted that “Ho.”
It got to be early evening, and we, the big firm lit associates, were all still at work. Both my gift-giving friend and another of our quad of colleagues were slogging through a huge, huge document review as part of discovery for a monstrously nightmarish case. Each of them had at least fifty or sixty boxes of documents overflowing her office and spilling into the (almost always un-traveled) hallway. It was a mind-numbingly dull task that monopolized all of their time, but it was for one of the firm’s most important clients.

It just so happened that on that night, the Chairman of the firm stopped by their offices to see about the document review’s status.

Now, consider this.

Not the partner-in-charge of the case. Not even the managing partner for the Philadelphia office. The Chairman of the firm stopped by.

He’s an amicable guy. When he came by, he noted the pyramids of boxes exploding out of my friends’ offices and inquired whether there was anything he could do to help facilitate the review.
My friends peered out from behind their box towers and nodded vigorously. They had tried to secure the conference room across the hall to store their boxes, but their request was denied. They were told the tech people needed it for a weekly meeting.

“Ridiculous,” declared our Chair. “Let me call the conference room coordinator for you.”

You see where this is going.

With purpose, the Chairman strode into my friend’s office and behind her desk.

The desk of the friend who had gifted me the “Ho” paper.

Of course, she knew not of my little wrapping paper caper. Imagine her confusion when one minute, the Chair was lifting her phone to make a call, and the next minute, he had “Ho” paper stuck to his cheek.

Right. Because it wouldn’t have been enough for him to lift the receiver and discover the “Ho.”

He didn’t notice the "Ho." That is, he didn’t notice the "Ho" until he was wearing the "Ho."

Frankly, I’m not sure how the transfer from phone to face happened, but suffice it to say, it did.

Now, all the while that this is going down, I had my rear firmly planted in my desk chair, and my eyes glued to my computer. Nobody of import ever lingered in our hallway; I was sure as hell going to appear to be working my ass off when the Chair of the firm did. Hence, I didn’t notice anything was amiss until I heard the accusatory proclamation of my colleague.

“Actchy did it!”

During the next few minutes, I attempted to explain my silly joke. Unfortunately, I couldn’t seem to stop using the word “Ho.” I must’ve broken the record (to the extent one existed) for the number of times that term has been used at once:

“Um-she-gave-me-a-present-wrapped-in-ho-ho-ho-paper-but-I-called-it-ho-paper-like-ho-the-prostitute-not-ho-like-Santa’s-laugh-and-I-cut-a-ho-out-of-the-ho-paper-and-taped-the-ho-to-the-phone…”

Ho-no.

To his credit, the Chair never used the term “Ho” throughout the entire uncomfortable situation. Which is probably why he got to be Chair…and I left the firm nine months later.

But, you know. At least I added some adrenaline to an otherwise long-ass day. Even if my pun was . . . “ho”pe-less?