Too much money, too fast, with no prior work experience. Makes summers think they can get away with anything. It's just like professional athletes. My guess is if you looked at the summer stories, almost all of them went directly from undergraduate to law school.

I think this sort of thing might be more prevalent in other industries; maybe it's the relative rarity of it in the legal market that draws comparatively more attention to the incidents that do occur.

12:56, why do you think this only happens in the law? I think these mishaps are mostly a function of all the booze the summers get and the pressure of being in a new job.

Screw summers, how about insensitive partners... my firm's building was next to the steampipe explosion and was closed for a week. Suspiciously, no partners seemed to be around at 6pm on a Wednesday (including the one I work for), although all of the associates on my team (including myself) fled for their lives. We were all very traumatized.

Yesterday was our first day back and my partner came in to say not that he's sorry for what happened to us, not that he hopes we're ok (which by the way, he never attempted to find out - and by the way, we aren't), but rather to tell us that we must stay until at least 10pm every night to "make up" for time lost due to the explosion. When I explained that the explosion wasn't my fault nor was the building closure, he seemed uninterested.

legally chocolate - you sound like an incredibly whiny bitch. good luck with that.

"Can't stop me": Yes they can. It's called banning your sorry-ass IP address, and it takes them two seconds.

Sure, you could rove from Kinko's to Kinko's or public library to public library, leaving your annoying comments. But that would be a waste of your time.

Then again, your comments already are. So keep it up!

And you seem like an dickhead douchebag...but it's not about us is it?

Sorry I meant, "a" fat fuck. I got a little carried away!

There have to be better, funnier SA stories out there......

People who make racial slurs & are unable to later appropriately apologize, or make demeaning comments to someone based on their gender should not have the "luxury" of blaming their conduct on "too much too fast" or "over consumption of alcohol." Individuals like that are ignorant & will continue to act like that in whatever area they choose to go into, no matter how much money they make or don't make. You'll find them everywhere and it most likely stems from attitudes they have formed well before their college/graduate school days.

to legally chocolate:

How were you associates not okay, other than being mildly traumatized from something that happened a week ago? Also, did you not work the whole week (I mean, not even from home?)? Do you have work to keep you busy "until 10"?

Personally, I would be happy to get a week off from work due to a random event, but would have probably ended up working from home anyway, and would understand working extra to make up the lost time. Have to hit those bonus targets, you know?

I see the problem with calling someone a wetback, but don't women actually make less on average than men in the same job? Or is this different in biglaw?

We are not ok because we actually thought we were going to die. All of us. I don't know if you've ever felt that way, but I've never felt it, and it's a very tough feeling to just "get over." We're very shaken up and every single noise makes us jumpy and our heartbeats race (and it doesn't help that the cleanup is going on directly below our windows). I'm speaking for everyone in the building at the time, we ALL thought we were going to die.

I would be happy to get a week of work off as well, if I wasn't due to the worst experience of my life. Surely if I was not in the building I would have been overjoyed with the prospect of no work...but instead I was faced with continiously thinking about the event and flashbacks.

And yes, I actually did work. I still went to Court and wrote reports, but clearly I did not put in a full 10-hour (billable) day.

As for targets, I'm not elgible for a bonus because I came in too late in the year. Also, I don't work for BIGLAW, so they don't pay me enough to work that late.

Point of clarification re: speculation. Is speculation about "where are they now" also prohibited?

They do not, 1:59. That's why the headlines didn't say "Biglaw to 160 for men, 150 for women."

Legally Chocolate should go to therapy. Seriously. It might help.

1:59, it sounds like the summer was gloating, like "hahaha, I'll make more money than you because I have a penis! Suck it bitch!" Which obviously is not an appropriate or professional attitude. A smart person would at least pretend to care about gender inequity.

2:19, um, talk about taking the short view.

One summer (long before a legal career or law school), I worked as a temp secretary at a GP paper mill. The steam plant blew up right next to my office. It blew out the window of my office. I couldn't believe it, but there were only 4 minor injuries (and I was unscathed).

I actually went back to work a day or two later. No big deal. They boarded up our windows and that was that.

I'm not saying everyone would have the same reaction, but really, Legally Chocolate, buck up. The GP experience was hardly the "worst experience of my life". If it had been, I would have to say I was living a charmed life.

If the experience was truly that stressful, I think you should get some counseling. Maybe you need to take some time-off to process whether it was the explosion or the crappy work environment that is getting you down.

um, in the past 2 weeks, there have been at least 3 shootings (in broad daylight, more crimes including a home invasion/sexual assault) within a 3-block radius of my office.

we keep coming to work. and if the office were closed, we'd stay later another night--because court dates and deadlines and our clients' needs don't stop just because bad things happen in the neighborhood. Legally Chocolate, your clients are PAYING you to do this work--how entitled are you, to think after a week off that you wouldn't have to play catch-up?

2:30 - Just a guess, but perhaps 9-11 had something to do with Legally Chocolate's trauma (and your explosion experience happened pre-9-11 so you didn't think that you were being attacked by terrorists). I wasn't there, but I could see how someone would be traumatized and I certainly wouldn't make fun of them for it.

"can't stop me": You're so right. No one has the right to judge whether irrelevant and boring posts are "annoying," ever. EVER, I say. Please, get back to us about whether Mr. Testosterone from Whogivesafuck is still around, and make sure to include such fascinating details as whether he enjoys Mah-Jongg, and whether the filth on his cheek resembles anyone famous or holy.

in defense of legally chocolate, having something like that happen post-9/11 is different than having it happen pre-9/11, when your story presumably takes place.

Ok, everybody give the NY chocolate guy a break. I don't care if you were near a factory explosion or a shooting or at the Atlanta olympics - none of us (outside of maybe a soldier who has been through a tour) knows what it is like for the people in Manhattan.

NPS - I appreciate your point, but it is not grounds for belittling someone's feelings about the trauma they experienced in thinking that they were running from another collapsing building. 3 people died near you - not 3,000.

Also, LC's original point was that his (noticably absent) partner should have been sympathetic to the physical and emotional well-being of his subordinates. You can argue that's not the reality, but I defy anyone to state a valid argument why it should not be the ideal.

So put your giant, lawyer-sized ego down. He's been through more than you. Get over it.

Hey, Legally Chocolate: Have you thought about lodging a workers' comp claim? I don't know about the compensability of mental-mental claims in NY, but perhaps there was some physical component of your trauma that you could point to to make it physical-mental. Of course, something tells me that your firm might not take kindly to that, but you would most probably be protected from discriminatory employment action on that basis (yeah, right). Of course, whatever compensation you would earn for lost time would likely be peanuts next to actual salary. Again, I don't practice in NY, I am not providing legal advice, insert additional disclaimers here, but if you're seriously having some post-traumatic symptoms, just wanted to try to offer some options.

I work in NYC, and maybe I'm just incredibly thick headed (awaiting the obvious 'Yes, yes you are' comments ...), but what's the difference between thinking you could be killed in a factory explosion and could be killed in a terrorist attack? Is it that people who live in Manhattan post-9/11 are more jumpy about the possibility of a terrorist attack then your average factory worker would be about the possibility of explosion? Is it that the factory worker think he's more likely to get out alive? Neither of those explanations are particularly convincing though. I mean, I can understand perhaps the reaction that you think you're less likely to survive a building collapse, but let's be serious, I'd be a hell of a lot more agitated about my impending death if I worked at an oil refinery than I am going to my BigLaw job in NYC every day. Which is not to say that the partner shouldn't have had some understanding for your reaction; it's more to say that "Can't stop me now"'s post @ 2:39 is wrong.

2:29 - the short view is what is called for. The guy "[a]sked a female summer how she felt about the fact that since she was a woman, she'd always make less than him." The guy didn't say, "doesn't it suck that when we're 65, I'll probably have made more than you." She, in fact, would make the same as he did when they started, and pretty much continuously thereafter as long as they stayed full-time at the same office of the same firm (again, assuming Biglaw). His maleness would not entitle him to a maleness bonus, much he might believe otherwise.

lol. Maleness bonus! Let's have a perk post on that. :D Hahahaha

3:08

The difference is that your initial thought during a factory explosion probably isn't "I'm going to die." It's "what the heck was that?" And you might figure that the explosion is the end of it -- no further destruction. And you can probably pretty quickly assess that it was indeed a factory explosion.

If there is a massive explosion in NYC these days, the instant thought among many is, "I might die." And you also think it might be the first of several explosions. And perhaps, if it's raining asphalt all over the place like it was last week, that a building might fall on your head. And, if you're running down 45 flights of stairs with a lot of people who are freaking out, the fear is probably intensified.

I live and work in NYC too. Thankfully, like you, I deal with stuff well and have been virtually unscathed. But I also was not in the immediate vicinity of WTC or GCT during either event.

Legally Chocolate -- do what you need to do; hopefully time will help. Not to get to cheesy but... maybe focus on the positive. (You ARE alive). And it sounds like the partners are jerks. Try to find a new job. Best of luck.

chocolate needs to get over herself

I don't really expect people who weren't in the explosion to understand how I personally felt, or the other thousand or so people felt, but I think it's incredible that some of you would tell me to "get over" it. What goes around, comes around, dickheads.

As for the other comments, I personally saw the explosion from my window, and to me and my colleagues it looked like a building had just collapsed or a gigantic bomb had gone off. Try seeing that from your 35th floor window...and try imagining the debris shooting up towards your face. The entire building was shaking and the noise was deafening. Never in my life will I hear something as terrifying as that noise. People were screaming, "WE'RE GOING TO DIE! GET OUT OF THE BUILDING!"

We had to run down all those flights with the building shaking and it sounded like the explosion was actually building into something actually worse than what was already happening. We all thought the building was going to implode from the pressure. We also didn't know if more bombs were going off outside. And most upsetting, we also knew that buildings in Manhattan CAN and WILL collapse under duress from...explosions.

When we got out of the stairwell, we found that the emergency exit was directly next to the explosion. We had to run next to the explosion, while the debris hit random people beside me. The streets were littered with abandoned shoes, purses, and the like. It was the eeriest thing I've ever seen.

We ran over a half a mile to the east river with HOARDS of people screaming and crying. So, yea, it was just like a window shattering in a factory.

Legally Chocolate, you sound like a p*ssy. Even if you thought it was another 9/11 (in mid-town, yeah right), it wasn't. Get over it. And get back to work.

mmm, chocolate.

Since everyone now knows it was "just" a steampipe, how about throttling back the victimhood and getting back to work? What next, that car almost hit me, I need a week off?

Why do any of you assholes care whether LC gets over it, gets over herself, or gets back to work? What's the point of belittling her about this?

I'm sure you're all battle-tested bad-asses, but not everyone has to (or should) be one. Just go back to your masochistic doc review (which is like the Marine Corps, only tougher) and forget all the weak little nobodies who can't shrug off this kind of thing in real life as well as you can in your imagination.

What is it with summers making racist and sexist remarks? Who are these people? And how do they not know it's a bad idea?

They should really stick to things like getting wasted at a firm event, calling the managing partner a pussy while rubbing his bald head, splitting their pants wide open, passing out by the river, being woken up by a cop, telling the cop they work at [name of firm omitted], and having the police call a partner at the firm in the middle of the night to find out where the summer lived.

There were some errors and omissions from the original tipster's account. Slur-man was at Shearman's NY office. I don't know whether he made those remarks to fellow summer associates. I heard that the reason he was fired was for the remarks he made at an affirmative action discussion sponsored by one of the firm's (prosepective?) clients. The tone of the speech and the remarks of the audience had been along the lines of "Is Affirmative Action great or is it wonderful," and Slur Man proceeds to cite an article which claimed that 911 was caused by affirmative action. He was fired a few days before the summer program was slated to end. He ended up with an offer to work at McKinsey as of graduation in '05.

"I personally saw the explosion from my window, and to me and my colleagues it looked like a building had just collapsed or a gigantic bomb had gone off."

It looked like a building had collapsed? If you saw it, and the building didn't collapse, why would you think it did?

Also, what did you want the partner to do the next day? Hold you in his arms?

And lastly, I don't think anyone believes that part about the firm telling you to stay till 10 to make up for lost time. What, you work for the one firm that admittedly cares about face time? Please tell us which firm if that's the case.

36 = LC