The Joy of Complaining (and why work is my biggest complaint)

There is something beautiful and fun about complaining. I find this especially true when the complaints are essentially about inconsequential bullshit.  There are people in this world with real problems and tragedy - they deal with poverty, war, sickness, famine, assault, worries about losing their homes, missing loved ones, etc.  In the grand scheme of things, I am lucky - I have problems, yes, but they are minimal compared to some of the tougher things going on in the world today. I try to remember this when I'm whining about my job, being pissed at Sephora; for no longer carrying my brand of foundation (jerks!) or not having enough time to sit on my ass and play Super Mario on the Wii for hours on end.  

And yet, I still like to whine to my friends (and now again, to the intertubes) about the various minor injustices that I have to face daily.  Like work. My favorite thing to do is to refer to work as "prison", my office as my  "cell" and the various goings on at work as "bullshit."  I work very long hours (usually 6:30 AM to 6 or 7, 5 days a week + some hours on weekends and every once in a while on holidays), and about 60% of what I do is not interesting. This is not unique to me, this is the curse of most associates everywhere who work in law firms with more than 20 lawyers.  For private sector lawyers, the irritation in your life caused by work (i.e. the amount of boring and bullshit) increases in direct proportion with the number of lawyers who work in your firm.  This is why there is camaraderie and interesting work for associates at small firms with less than 20 attorneys.  Here's the formula:  (amount of boring +  amount of bullshit) x #of lawyers = Life Irritation Factor.  And here's the telltale number as it relates to me: my firm has well over 1000 lawyers.  Add to that that I am a litigator who never sees a courtroom and the red tape wrapped around this place and my life irritation factor is very high.  The irritation factor drops very low on payday (I like money a lot) and immediately goes back to normal after that 24 hour period has lapsed.  For me, there's a number of ways to tamp down the irritation: complaining (see how I tied it this post together?), shopping (too  much), Wii (not enough), and movies.

The simple fact is that, prior to and during law school, I had all of these dreams about being a public defender and actually helping human beings and seeing a courtroom on a regular basis.  Despite having  a freakishly high GPA and a winning personality (and modesty!) the PD offices with which I interviewed told me to beat it  (one even asked why I would want to work there when I could go to a big firm - how stupid is that?).  My back up plan was to work at a smaller (250 attorneys) big firm and so interviewed with a bunch of those (every one of which offered me a job).  So when my dream job called me late in my third year of law school to tell me personally that they were not interested, I chose a job at a smaller big firm in a metro area that was not my cup of tea.  I actually mostly enjoyed my career there but could not stand the area in which I lived.   And so 18 months later, I decided to high tail it back to D.C.  Again, the PD offices were not interested, so I joined the massive firm for which I now work.  And while I technically practice the exact same type of law that I did at the old firm, the current work that I do is not nearly as challenging or  interesting (see the formula above).  In other words, when it comes to career, I am firmly entrenched in my back up plan.  I have thought about leaving but for a number of reasons (like I still own a house in the old metro area and the legal market is really bad and I have a shoe addiction to support) and I have remained stagnant. No one likes to be relegated to his/her back up plan and I am not different. Eventually I will have to make a change, but I'm not ready yet, so I will keep complaining and keep shopping until that is not enough anymore.