Enter the Rainman

The firm had decided they were getting serious about getting rid of some people. And at the top of their list was my boss. For almost the whole time I was working at the firm, we had been operating in the blissful absence of “compliance attorneys”. Prior to my start at the firm, there had apparently been some other compliance attorney who had lasted over a year before pulling the ripcord. But since that guy had left, the firm had chosen not to hire a new one… until now. The firm took on a full time compliance attorney about 3 months before I quit. He was a short, angry little man who looked (and sounded) a bit like Dustin Hoffman if you squinted. The recurring thoughts about Rainman aside, he was a rather poor attorney and seemed to survive by getting angry and hoping it made people uncomfortable enough that they would back down. (In fact, I’ll just continue referring to him as Rainman… it is oddly fitting actually).

Rainman’s angry demeanor didn’t work so well when it came up against my crazy boss. Angry just made him stronger, like the Hulk, or maybe tequila. It didn’t work so well with me either, angry doesn’t really do anything to apathetic. The compliance attorney would yell at me (literally) for something, and my response was usually to sigh, or shrug, or generally ignore him. This in turn actually made him actually angrier and he would eventually storm off to his office, no doubt to write angry interoffice messages. The pure inviolable feeling one has when you don’t care if you get fired is truly amazing.

The compliance attorney had been given marching orders to try to get my boss fired. He came to me very early on and specifically told me “they” were trying to fire my boss. The problem was, by this time, I had already turned the corner and now I liked my boss. Hang around someone long enough and you start to see things from their worldview, and his was actually pretty interesting, and in a strange way how he operated made much more sense compared to the rest of the attorneys working there.

Initially I did nothing with the information Rainman told me. But this particular conversation would be the linchpin which ultimately made everything fall apart. (much more on this later)

At some point shortly after the first few interactions with the compliance attorney, the powers that be decided I was not being helpful, so I must be part of the problem. This didn’t help matters because the more Rainman pushed and prodded me, the closer I ended up getting to my boss and those of us working directly with him.

My boss started having very contentious ‘conversations’ with Rainman. Many of these conversations involved Rainman second guessing the litigation maneuvering  we were doing on cases. The problem was, Rainman was a crappy attorney. He had recently moved to the state and had waived into the bar, and had no idea about why certain things could or could not be done because of his poor understanding of the local / state rules. Rainman had come from New Jersey, one of the easiest bars in the country (I can say that with confidence having taken and passed it as an afterthought) and he hadn’t been a litigator there. His advice was uniformly off the mark, but he stated it with the confidence of the truly ignorant and self assured.

At a certain point, my boss got tired of dealing with him. So he didn’t. What do I mean? Well, from my perspective, he just stopped showing up… for a few weeks. The armchair psychitrist in me wants to say this was just part of his manic / depressive cycle; first he’d be there 14 hours a day, then no one would see him for days at a time. But I think he just figured out he didn’t have to deal with the crap if he didn’t show up, and let’s be honest, a lot of what we do as attorneys can now be done anywhere given a laptop and internet connection. During this period there was veritably no communication; at best, I would get cryptic text messages which may or may not be deciphered. I would however get near daily visits from Rainman yelling at me for my boss not being around. Because that is obviously within my power to alter. At this point I would always drop my boss a note saying Rainman was wandering the halls looking for him.

This was punctuated by the amusing game which was being played outside my office as well. Rainman garnered a particular dislike for our paralegal. So when Rainman would ask if my boss was in, the paralegal would make something up just to fuck with Rainman. “Yes, he was just here.” / “Isn’t he in his office?” / “He just walked that way (down the same small hallway Rainman had just come from), I can’t imagine how you missed him.” / “You just missed him, he went to lunch.” It became hilarious. Eventually Rainman knew she was lying, but couldn’t prove her wrong on most occasions. Especially when the boss would do a fly through to show his face to one of two people who would verify he had been in that day. It drove Rainman insane.

Unfortunately, Rainman decided the best way to get to my boss, was to create problems for the people working for him. (more to come)

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