My weekend was short. No I was not working. My usually slothful Sunday evening was stolen by a ‘young lawyer’, who is also good friend of mine who wanted me to play Agony Rookie. I wasn’t that upset – what is better than using my Nollywood movie time to save a soul? *insert other beneficent expressions*.
My friend spent the better time of my evening complaining about how he was overworked at his law firm; how annoying it felt to intensively research and yet not get a whiff of the juicy litigation bits; and how he felt close to victimised and bullied by his seniors. Just last Friday, a senior associate assigned a thick file to him to prepare the notice of appeal, which ‘must’ be filed by Monday.
The poor naive child.
I mentally adjusted my halo as I castigated him for being ungrateful of the capacity to complain about a job and even work to do in ‘these credit crunched times’. Besides everyone knows that junior associates are recruited for their ability to work as law-donkeys and far from victimised, he amounts to a mere statistic in the thousands slugging their way up the ladder at law factories over the world.
After about twenty minutes of continuous reiteration of his good luck at being ‘chosen’ to play donkey and making shameless analogies to the clichéd half-full glass; he naively believed me, said ‘thank you’; with renewed thoughts of being the ‘good associate’.
Of course, I felt superior-ly secure in my good deed. I didn’t mention my thoughts - only thick people get assigned files thick enough to warrant charges of torture and cruel punishment to trees. With a little time my friend would learn that expression about working smart not hard should be taken at its literal best and he would hone his expertise of toeing the fine line between hardworking and lazy. It’s a lesson to be learned first hand.
