Three Strikes, You’re Out: An Elevated Establishment
This is part one of a three-part story about a 27-year-old adult’s first few days working at a real, grown-up place of employment. At four, asked what my parents did for work, I famously informed my interlocutor that my dad “goes to work” and then proceeds to “work there” (my mother, by then a stay-at-home mom, did “bills.”) From that point until this summer commenced, this was my impression of what grown-ups did at corporate jobs. I had, after all, worked primarily at the sorts of neo-communist grassroots organizations that I suspect grounded one OCI* interviewer’s derisive reference to my “bleeding heart”—the sorts of places with names like “Planting Justice,” where “allies,” commonly known as unpaid interns, grow turnips for the urban poor.
On the morning of my first day at The Firm, I lied awake, wired, staring at my iPhone’s lock screen as the time crept closer to my 6:00 alarm. At 5:59, I jolted out of bed and commenced my morning routine, taking extra care to curb my tendency to abuse contour powder so as not to appear whorish. Since The Firm emphasizes casual attire as part of the firm culture, I wore plain, black jeans and a gray blazer, to signal that while I, too, am super chill, I also own a suit.
At 7:40, twenty minutes before my orientation was to begin, I stepped into a brutalist behemoth of a downtown San Francisco skyscraper. The pretty, sharply dressed receptionist greeted me politely and showed me to the 20th floor office lobby—impeccably sleek, with floor-to-ceiling windows showcasing panoramic views of the bay. Politely ignoring the fact that my jaw had dropped all the way to the 19th floor, the receptionist handed me my key fob and explained that it would be needed to pass the turnstiles in the lobby and to access each floor of the office. She then took me to my desk on the 22nd floor and told me to make myself at home until my orientation began. The 22nd floor was deserted, so I took my time settling in: I sampled every position for my massive wide-angle monitor, toggled my desk back and forth between “sitting” and “standing,” and, when all else failed, swiveled around in my desk chair until I felt slightly ill.
At 7:55, it was time to make my way back down to the 20th floor. I called the elevator and stepped inside. The doors shut behind me. As I had been shown, I held my key fob to the “Business Access” scanner in the elevator, and pressed “20.” Nothing happened. I tried it again, and then probably upwards of ten more times. Nothing. No problemo, I thought, and pushed the “open doors” button. The elevator was unimpressed.
Ignoring my rising panic, I pressed the lobby button. Nope. I looked for the little button with the telephone icon on it. There was none. In fact, there were only two non-numbered buttons: The first had an alarm bell on it. Oh hell no, I thought. The last thing I wanted to do was cause a ruckus. But the second button had a fire hat on it, and the notion of calling the San Francisco Fire Department to my rescue on my first day on the job immediately replaced “causing a ruckus” as the last thing I wanted to do.
It was now 7:59 and I, a known sufferer of claustrophobia, was stuck in an elevator having a full-blown panic attack: my breath came hard and quick; I could barely make out my flushed face in the gleam of the stainless-steel control panel. I sat down on the floor of the elevator, pressed my freshly contoured face against the cool marble wall, cried, and waited for death to arrive.
At 8:10, my cell phone rang and I became aware for the first time since I entered the elevator that it existed. But my embarrassment was tempered by my enormous relief: the kind receptionist had called me to inquire as to my whereabouts. “Oh thank god you called,” I cried, breathlessly, “I’m stuck in an elevator.”
*For non-law school readers, OCI (“On Campus Interviews”) refers to a grueling process of awkward, rapid-fire interviews during which rising second-year law students peddle their souls to corporate law firms. It is quite a lot like sorority rush.
