Square Pegs insertion- Flashback: it was 20 years ago today (more or less)...

[captainsblog]

One thing in my missive from the other day that I promised an explanation of was this line:

During the week, I must dress within the bounds of the "profession" at almost all times.  One of the key breakdowns within my first professional partnership, 20 years ago, was over just such an issue.

That's something I hadn't thought much about in ages, and while the clothes didn't make the man in the dispute, they certainly went a long way toward ending it.

I'd been with my original law firm for almost 10 years, a partner for the last several. (A fourth guy was also brought into the partnership after I was, but he and I were not "equity"- we just shared in the profits and the liabilities.)  After Emily was born, I began to see, and feel, resistance from the two "equity" partners about the way I was mixing my professional and family lives. They were not happy having a crying baby come in with me on Saturday mornings (never mind EVER thinking of such a thing during the week). They did not like it when I was late arriving or early leaving on account of daycare pickup requirements.  In short, that was women's work- and both of their wives had, by then, birthed two babies and done it from the comfort of their own homes, either not working at all (in the older partner's case) or by working much more limited school-day hours (in the other's).  They were totally uncomfortable with Eleanor being an equal within our own household if it had any effect on them.

Which, one not-so-fine day, it did.

----

At the time, Eleanor was working in customer service, with a sales component, for a regional home security company. These were, as now, a mishmash of national outfits like ADT, regional like hers then was, and local like XYZ was.  XYZ happened to be a client of ours, and had the systems at the big boy's home.

I honestly don't remember if the other partner had an XYZ system or not, but eventually he reached out to Eleanor to do a consult on installing or upgrading one at his home.  She worked hard on it, made several visits, did sketches and quoted the job. It wouldn't have made or broken her year,  but it would've been a nice affirmation of what she did from someone not generally known for respecting it.

And, in the end, he didn't. He basically used her as what negotiation lawyers call a "stalking horse;" he took her work to his contact at XYZ and used it to get the same work (supposedly) at a better (or, hey, maybe the same) price. Eleanor was crushed. This was before she'd gotten her depression under control (and long before I did so with mine), and I remember a horrid night of her crying and being incredibly upset about being used in this way.  It was the last all-nighter I can ever recall pulling, as I spent the night trying to talk to her, console her, try to find a way out of the mess that this stupidity had gotten us into.

By the time work rolled around, I hadn't changed out of the jeans and t-shirt I'd gotten into after getting home with the bad news the night before, and I was in no shape to get dressed up for these idiots now- so I went in as is, in hopes of getting something that would save the situation.

The conversations with the stalking-horse-stalker aren't what I remember much of (Eleanor didn't remember the incident at all when I brought it up last night); I know he was condescending about her feelings about it, figured that a gift certificate to a nice restaurant would have been adequate compensation for her time and trouble, and why was I making such a big deal about it?

None of this had anything to do with our other, older, partner, so I had nothing to say about it. But I remember him being positively freaked out that I had come into the office in (and this may be the only time I'd heard this word used in the 20 years before or since) "dunagrees."

How dare you?, was the essence of that message.

I knew at that moment that I would not, could not, finish out the rest of my professional life under the same roof as these two, and that set the process in motion that, in May of 1994, brought us here to Buffalo.  I'll probably add some posts about that over the next few weeks about how that played out and how, despite some things being sacrificed, that change was probably the best one I ever could have made for how our lives turned out since then.

Finally, the coda: although Eleanor didn't remember That Night, or the Following Day, she remembered something that I didn't and still don't: that years later, I wound up having lunch with the partner whose home security decision started this whole debacle.  It must have been early oughts, because Eleanor had begun her landscape lighting business by then.  Not only was he (as she recalls me telling it) incredibly impressed with how she was able to do all that work, and on her own yet; he was actually thinking of having similar stuff done around his own house.

I don't recall if he tried to get her to bid on the job. That would have been immensely amusing.

So I guess it's okay with them to be a lawyer's wife and not act like one, as long as it's not one of their lawyers.  And that sentence, as much as any above, sums up why I am, and am happy to be, here, and not there.

Comments

[plantmom.livejournal.com]

I love you so!

[tilia-tomentosa.livejournal.com]

If I had such a husband, I would love him too!

*hugs for both of you*

[thediva-laments.livejournal.com]

"Dungarees" = Asshole. That is all.