Before Vlad became Vlad with the power of being in management having gone to his head, so he could cause widespread mayhem, he was merely a partner - a big earning and therefore incredibly important in the big scheme of things partner. Never mind that he was at best politely described as possibly insane and a bit OCD. Or at worst certifiable. His atrocious behaviour was always excused with 'oh but he is sooo brilliant'.
I first met this man - let's call him 'The Hun' - on my first day at work after completing five years at University in order to qualify as a lawyer. But first I met his secretary, who was supposed to be my secretary too, who greeted me with a cheery 'I hate working for women, the Hun takes up all my time anyway, so if you want to get any work done I suggest you find someone else to do it for you'. Fair enough I thought as I looked at the large collection of files on my desk, thick copies of the rules of the Supreme Court, a pad of timesheets by which I was to start recording my working life in 6 minute increments, and a dictaphone. This should be a piece of cake, I thought optimistaclly to myself.
His bitch secretary was gone in a couple of months anyway - another notch on his antique rosewood desk. Those in the know it turns out had a book going on how long each secretary would take to start crying (15 minutes in one case, and the clear winner) and how long they would last in the job. One day was the record. In those early days I was an eternal optimist about the law, being a lawyer, and the innate goodness in people so I always lost those bets being sure that the Hun would surely work out that if he was just pleasant to people they would enjoy working for him, or at least tolerate his eccentricities a little bit better. Stupid stupid me.
The secretaries in the group had a code. The code word was Hibiscus. This would go around the entire group like chinese whispers. It meant he had started to go red in the face which was a precursor to a screaming outburst, and everyone knew to look sharp and look busy lest he vent his rage on you if you made eye contact.
The Hun called me into his office late afternoon on that first day just as the thought of a gin and tonic at the local lawyers watering hole on my first day of work was appealing. When I say office, I mean lair. Every wall was covered with bookshelves - even the windows blocking the view of the river. The bookshelves were heaving with texts and law reports. It was very dim as well. The Hun was not blessed with height in his genes and he looked quite small and easy to manage behind that desk.
He wanted me to photocopy a particular case for him. He didn't look up when giving me this terse instruction. But off I went to the library found the case copied it and brought it back down - in record time I thought. The gin and tonic was looking good. He took one look at it and threw it across the desk at me and shouted 'That's not the authorised report'. Oh dear - In those five years at Uni I mustn't have been paying attention in legal research class about the difference between authorised reports and the other clearly useless reports. So I took my copy of the Australian Law Report and went back to the library to ask ther librarian what the hell an authorised report was, find the Commonwealth (and therefore authorsised) Law Report version and copied that. Back I went into the lair. Sure that I had done a brilliant and worthwhile job of photocopying.
Once again I had it thrown back at me. I didn't know about the 'Hibiscus' code then otherwise I would have shouted it out the door. He had gone a strange colour somewhere between red and purple. This is the exchange that followed:
Hun - 'who stapled this?' (read with angry tone)
Me - 'Me' (proudly)
Hun - 'Well go and do it properly' (read with angrier tone)
Me - 'Sorry?' (confused look on my face with possibly a lip curl)
Hun - 'I like my staples to go vertically adn the pages have to align properly' (said through clenched teeth)
Me - stunned silence
Hun - 'well hurry the fuck up'
Apparently he liked his staples to go vertically not horizintally. How fucking stupid was I not to know that?? I also found out that he liked his filing done every day (fair enough) and that the documents on file had to be absolutely perfectly aligned in the top left corner or as he said to one poor young secretary 'he would take the spike off the file and shove it...' I won't finish that sentence dare I offend readers.
His other endearing qualities included making appointments with lawyers at 5 am as that was the only available time he had to see us, ruling through letters of advice with a red pen and giving them back with no feedback, asking people to hold his drink at functions (said lab rat thinking he was going to the bathroom or something), and then not going anywhere, and saying 'I just wanted to see if you would do it', and throwing text books at the wall in exasperation usually with some poor sod standing in the way. The classic though was his phone not working and as he yanked it out of the wall he managed to pull one of his bookshelves on top of himself (he had had it installed over the phone jack, as you do).
But one fine day the entire group had a good laugh at his expense. It was eerily quiet, everyone heads down, working hard. No one had any warning in order for the Hibiscus code to go down the line. He came rushing out of his office purple with rage, and shouted at his secretary, spit flying from his mouth: 'You forgot to remind me about my fucking stress test!!!!!!!'. We all came to the door of our offices and waited with baited breath, Then his poor secretary started to laugh, a big loud, belly laugh, picked up her bag, handed him her security key and said 'I am not your fucking mother, thankfully', and walked out. Then one by one we all started to laugh and he just stood there looking at his downtrodden bullied staff laughing at him and he slunk back into his office, slammed the door, presumably to make another appointment to have a stress test, all by himself.
I think it was at that point I decided I didn't really fancy being a lawyer and while it took a while to change careers, in my head I was already thinking
Adios Motherfuckers, you're on your own
