How not to get a job offer

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Just a little background for the non-lawyers in the audience: Every year, big law firms crank up their summer associate programs. For 2-3 months, they have law students who have just completed their second year of law school come to work at the firm in a sort of audition for an offer of employment after graduation. It’s a sweet deal for the “summer associates,” who pick up a pretty substantial paycheck for the summer, get constantly wined and dined, and have to do relatively little actual work.

Anyway, the following email purporting to be from one such summer associate was forwarded to me recently. I haven’t been able to find anything disputing its authenticity, and plenty of people have asserted online that it’s real. What’s more, there appears to be a real Jonas Blank at Harvard Law. So, without further ado, here’s the message (with phone numbers and such appropriately redacted):

A few hours later:

I’m thinking he probably shouldn’t plan on spending that signing bonus quite yet. :smiley:

2

Bwahahaha!

So the tremendously valuable law school experience didn’t train poor Jonas to do such insignificant things like check his address line before hitting send. I guess he figured he’d always have a minion to perform such tasks for him.

3

Such a public screw up. Make sure to give Jonas our love.

Do ya feel it Jonas!? Do ya feel the corporate loooove?!?! Do ya feel tha burnnnnnnnnnn?

4

O shit. How embarassing. It happens a lot with mailing lists I’m on - it’s a simple error to make, but oh so awful.

chuckle.

5

I’ve known a couple of summer associates I WISH this would happen to…

6

Shouldn’t there be an “ex-” or “former” in there somewhere?

7

What was so bad about it, really? It was a personal communication, after all. Does every respectable lawyer always talk about the job and the firm in tones of reverence? It’s not like he said “I want to shove my briefcase up my supervisor’s ass” or “I’d like to bang all the female associates”.

8

Hey! No lawyers in MPSIMS!

Scat, the pack of you!

9

It was a personal communication on company email. That’s what’s so bad about it.

You have zero expectation of privacy regarding work email – a lot of companies, including the one for which I work, scan everything that comes in and out.

10

And somebody involved publicized the thing? Yikes. That’s pretty rough.

I don’t think our poor friend Jonas really did anything that most of us haven’t done at some time or another.

11

His parents are so proud. That hard earned money they put up for is tuition was really put to good use.

12

I wouldn’t say how I’m basically doing nothing for a company that’s paying me to audition for them on company email.

13

Contrary is right. This guy gets no sympathy. Harvard? He’s supposed to be intelligent.

Sounds like valedictorian Blair. “It was an accident, I didn’t know” doesn’t cut it. :rolleyes:

14

The email I received indicated it was passed on by one of the recipients to a couple attorneys working for the same firm. From there, it made its way to somebody at Columbia University (presumably the law school) and then hit the law firm circuit. Harsh, but hardly unexpected given the spectacular nature of the screwup with the original email.

15

I’ve written plenty of emails on company email complaining about my job, bragging about slacking off from time to time, talking trash about my employers, etc. I’ve never accidentally sent any to anyone in my office, and I always delete anything personal immediately after it’s sent, but I’ve sent them. The guy just fouled up and made a big mistake.

I’m surprised that everyone passing on the email is evidently willing to do so much damage to this guy’s career.

16

But the ultimate responsibility isn’t theirs; it’s his. To be fair, though, he apologized within hours of sending it. Still, once he sent it out, all of the consequences are his own doing.

After all, he’s in deep trouble now, but would it have been any different had he not apologized right away? If the email had been read by a hundred more people, he’d be in the same situation.

17

I thought it was a pretty good apology. Sadly, just plain out saying you’ve done wrong and apologizing for your actions is becoming a rarity. For you lawyer types, if this hadn’t been put on the net, would this really keep him from getting hired?

18

In all likelihood, it would prevent him from getting hired. Hard to recover from such a big, public “Screw you!”

19

Luckily this has never happened to me but I know many people who have made the same mistake.
I have had two friends fired. One for simply writing personal e-mails and the other for talking about her boss negatively in a personal e-mail. In both cases the e-mails went to the appropriate person but were intercepted/read by the company. Work e-mail can be dangerous.

20

I’m developing an Outward Bound-style boot camp. It will intensively train young corporate wannabes to survive. It’s called “How to Kiss Ass for your First Year on the Job”.

The five-day course is in an office building complex in the middle of the Nevada desert. You are in training 24 hours a day, with a pager, cell-phone, PDA, laptop, briefcase, and gym clothes. You have 4 bosses, each working 8-hour shifts, which means you sometimes have two bosses to answer to.

You will be dined, wined, asked to get coffee, told to photocopy the boss’s stamp collection, take the VP’s wife’s laundry to the dry-cleaners. As you’re leaving the office to go to the barracks, you will be “asked” to finish a report by your supervisor who just talked to you about her vacation for the last two hours. This task will take you at least another 6 hours to do.

At arbitrary times your work will be ridiculed or ignored. Meetings will be held and you will not be invited, especially if it’s your area of work they’re discussing. People will come by to chat and waste your time. Other people’s bosses will shout at you. The boss’s teenage son will screw up your computer. And you will take it. You will take it all and smile.

You will be awakened at 3:00 A.M. and told to get to the office and reboot the server. It doesn’t matter that you’ve never done it before. You will arrive by 3:30 A.M. and find the door locked. The suspicious security guy will not authorize you to enter the office until 5:30, and only if you grovel, beg, and leave your wallet with him.

All emails will be read. All phone conversations will be monitored. You will be observed at all times by video. Yes, even the washroom is fully wired. You wanne be an executive? Soon we’ll know if you have what it takes to shit in an executive toilet. You from Connecticut? Vassar? Yale? You won’t last two days in this hell hole.

One refusal to work, one snide comment, one whiny “aww, do I hafto?” will get you kicked out of boot camp, and you will forfeit the $50,000 deposit. At all times, you will kiss ass, look happy, and take abuse beyond belief. Only then, will you be ready for the real world.

I am taking applications now. Space is limited.