Stop The Presses!

Dear Friends:

I was just pitched the most incredible story from a promising writer.  And the best part is that it is entirely true!  Needless to say, I hired him on the spot to create a spec script before this gem was snatched up by another studio.

The stories all around us are truly amazing.  Our imaginations are divine but if they ceased to exist, there is enough adventure, romance, intrigue, sorrow and excitement in every day life to make a million movies.  This is one of those stories...

My fingers are shaking with excitement such that I can barely type.  So I will abdicate the forum and let this young talent begin to share his story with you directly.  Please allow me to introduce you to Hendrick "Hank" van Rensselaer:

"There is no better way to encapsulate my world view in November of 2000 than to let you know that my go-to website was GreedyAssociates.com... and I checked it often.  I had graduated law school earlier that year and after a two-month trip around Europe, I started working for one of the world's most prestigious law firms.  They paid me a ridiculous amount.  More than a middle-class boy from upstate New York could ever have dreamed of.  Enough that I had money to waste.  And this was in addition to my virtually non-accountable expense allowance.  But it wasn't enough.  No, I had to check GreedyAssociates.com several times a day to see if I was being paid at least as much as the new associates at every other top-tier law firm.

The ironic thing is that this entitlement had been bred into me by the firm itself.  The prior summer, I had been a "summer associate".  I did minimal work but the real point of the "job" was for the firm to recruit me.  And they did amazing work of it.  I ate ridiculously expensive meals nightly, including foods that I didn't even know existed like bone marrow.  I drank wines that cost more than the meals and that my palate was too unrefined to actually appreciate (frankly, they all just tasted like wine to me).  I took trips to places to which I never would otherwise have been granted access due to their "members only" status.  Anything that I wanted (as long as it was legal and a few things that weren't) was up for the taking; all I had to do was suggest it and my wish would be granted.

Did I appreciate all that the firm did to recruit me?  Sure.  But by the end of the summer I also felt that I deserved it.  It was indoctrinated into me that I had earned these spoils from my years of academic discipline and achievement.  That it was owed to me.  All hail king Hank!

But the whole thing was a kind of rope-a-dope.  A sleight of hand.  A parlor trick.  You see, once I was actually hired by the firm, I was paid handsomely but they extracted every penny from me.  The work was endless.  A bottomless pit of menial drudgery.  100 hour or more work weeks were commonplace.  And if you calculated that out on an hourly basis, it probably wasn't much different than your average plumber.  And that is why I checked GreedyAssociates.com.  Constantly.  To know that I was no worse off than anyone else in the Sisyphusian mess that I had gotten myself into.

It was important to the firm that it appear neither as sweat-shop nor Shylock and so it required its associates to do community service hours. The firm didn't care that we barely slept as is.  The public appearance of compassion was more important.  So the firm gave us a list of organizations from which to choose, and choose we must.  By the time the list made its way to me, most of the options had been selected.  Whatever I picked didn't really matter to me.  I don't recall giving it much thought.  This was a cost of doing business that I begrudgingly accepted.  So I moaned and groaned as I made my mark on the page:  United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.  Whatever.  I had no idea then how that careless choice would shape me and my life over the next 10 years.

TO BE CONTINUED..."

Well friends, do you see what I mean?  Wow!  Stay tuned for more to come...

Now, more than ever,

Griffin