(Original author unknown)
Some years ago, when I was a third year law student in a major city, I had an internship with a state court. My direct supervisor was a woman named Ann who was a Harvard Law Grad. She was new to the position as a Judge's Clerk. For those who are not familiar with the legal profession, judicial clerkships are highly sought after, very competitive and usually go to those who are politically connected, valedictorians or chief editors of the law review. The Clerks research and write the opinions for the judges.
Ann was from a very wealthy, well-connected family. Her father was a CEO of a major Fortune 100 company that I need not identify. She had gone to law school right from college and landed the clerkship. She had never supervised anyone before and had agreed to take an intern on reluctantly since she was very busy, and looked at it more as having an anchor around her neck rather than an extra pair of hands. She was forced to do so since the Chief Judge had committed to the law school to take on interns. Ann did not have great people skills. I guess she never really had to since with money, connections and two Harvard degrees she did not need them. The thing I disliked most was that she was short-tempered and curt. If I did something wrong, or did not receive enough direction, I would get chewed out, then she would angrily tell me she would just do it herself and I could find something else to do. I think her exact words were to make myself 'useful'. I had to eat this crow though because the way it was set up, the internship supervisor gave a grade at the end and because part of the reason for doing internships was to compile a list of professional references.
Ann had very short brown hair, brown eyes, and was about 5'3". She was not a hard body, but liked to run, and did so frequently at lunch. She was lean and in shape. She was very pretty in a clean, business way. She looked a lot like the short haired brunette district attorney on the TV Show Law & Order, but not quite as pretty. She always dressed nice and did the shoe change at the office thing, wearing sneakers or boots, then peeling off the white socks to reveal hosiery, then putting on pumps. Normally she had a collection of two or three pairs of pumps or boots in on a given occasion near or under her desk. On a few occasions, I arranged to work late in order to inspect and "clean" them when no one was around. I was always careful to try to put them back, but one time I did forget to tuck a sock back into a sneaker that was on the floor. On another occasion, the saliva left a pair of suede pumps in a matted condition that could have been a giveaway, but there were never any comments made.
We worked in an old building that had been renovated but had a lot of character like high ceilings, beautiful wood beams and a lot of small rooms, closets, cloisters, passages, illogically placed staircases, etc. Our office was on the fourth floor, and had big old metal desks and wood desks that you could not see under. It was crowded with too much furniture and boxes of files everywhere. The only nice things in the room were a brand new green rug and crisp new law books lining the wall to wall shelves. Ann's desk was at the very far end of the rectangle facing the door, so her back was to the window looking right out the door. My desk and some other female attorney's desk were further toward the door and were set up to look right across at each other with our backs near opposite walls. It was typical government set up with a real patchwork network wiring job on the computers, which frequently broke down, and for which there was no way to get any kind of support.
Anyway, every week I had to submit a feedback report on what I was doing, what I learned, any suggestions for improvement, etc. A theme I had repeated several weeks in a row, but in a gentle way, was that I was just being given scut work, and that I did not get any real meaningful responsibilities. I used to confide in the other attorney who clerked for some other judge and was coming to the end of her 2 year term. I don't really remember her name or what she looked like but she was nice. She kept encouraging me to ask for more work, and whenever she could she would gently offer Ann suggestions about giving me more substantive work. We could not talk much though because anytime Ann was in the room she would rudely tell us to shut up or stop talking because she needed to concentrate on her work. Ann would then suggest we go the library or the café or just outside. She needed to concentrate. She was one of those stressed out types. I did enjoy the show on those days when I got in early and enjoyed watching her while working on filing projects but I hated the internship otherwise.
Most times, she would have me file papers in the boxes beside her desk or in her desk side file drawer. I viewed this as a little degrading but did not put up a stink because it meant going around behind her desk and kneeling or sitting on the floor to do the task which left me with a great view. She was constantly dipping her heels in and out of her pumps, kicking them off and would do this thing where she made a fist with her toes in the shoe or kicked off the shoe and rolled her toes under the foot. Great toe flexing show. This filing always took a long time. Maybe that's why she thought I was not competent to handle more complex tasks.
One Thursday, during a week that the computers were acting up a lot, Ann was under another tight deadline to get a huge memorandum done for the judge. All week, she had to keep going under her desk and pressing the network jack back into the port and slowly releasing it in a delicate manner hoping it would stay there, because it was sort of loose. It was a shitty makeshift plastic junction box, jerry-rigged together with other such boxes all across the floor with the cables left in the walkways. The cheap CAT5 cable had one of those perma-twists in it and was a little too taut anyway. It regularly got kicked any time anyone came near Ann's desk and that would make her lose her network connection.
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