10 years of Marathon Training experiences: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

While I’m not training for the Chicago Marathon this year, I have run it a dozen times since the noughties  began.  That means Marathon Training has consumed most of my summers over the last decade.

This part of the season known as The Taper, was always my favorite part of the training season.  Because when I was training  I wasn’t just focused on the marathon. I was also trying to be social, enjoy the summer weather and activities and yes,  pursue the opposite sex.  I probably stayed out late way too many Fridays and always wondered if I wasn’t sacrificing a BQ or a PR for a piece of…good time.

The Good is that once the the Big 20 mile run was over,  these last few weeks always seemed easier to map out my running/work/social calendar.  Luckily, The weather has also cooled enough so that running midday isn’t very different from running in the morning or evening.

The Bad is that at this point, the summer is over.  This is the part of the season known as the Post-Labor Day Blues. That’s because around this time you start to feel the urge to rebel. Squeezing in the week day runs during the hot summer.  Giving up all your Friday nights so you can get up at the buttcrack of dawn in order to run your LR starts to get old. It’s a little harder to get out of a comfortable bed, especially if Autumn Sleeping Weather has arrived.

The Ugly is that I use to beat myself up about staying out too late before LRs and not staying out and enjoying my summer.   At this stage of the game, there isn’t a wide latitude of room for improvement. Sure if you slack off now, you’ll pay for it on Race Day.  But as long as you continue to do most of your weekday and all your remaining LRs, you will likely finish the marathon.  But if you have a  competitive nature and wanted to BQ or PR, you might have an inkling that it isn’t gonna happen this year.  So why did you sacrifice your entire summer?

Ugh!  Some more tidbits that hopefully help you tame your Marathon Demons:

The Good

• is Sex Before the Marathon okay? Truthfully, I would have liked to have conducted more research into the area back in the day.
• Set some reasonable expectation

The Bad

• Don’t forget your shoes or get injured because
• You cannot transfer or defer your entry to the Chicago Marathon

The Ugly

• People suck.  Runners are people.  Ergo, ipso facto
• some runners have an inflated sense of entitlement.
• Don’t let Post Marathon Depression get you.

Most importantly, remember your training and you will cross the finish line.  Have fun and good luck runners.

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Being neutral in a Friend Cold War isn’t always the right thing to do

Have you ever had two friends who had some type of blowout and now won’t speak to one another? Maybe it’s over something really stupid, like liking Coldplay or maybe it is a friendship breaker, liking balking on reimbursing someone for Coldplay Concert Tickets.  Either way you might be caught in the middle. Sure all the pundits say to play Switzerland and stay out of it. But sometimes you cannot remain neutral because it does affect you.

Let’s say you are planning a big event, like a special birthday party, a trip to Vegas or even your annual holiday party, and your friends don’t want to come because they don’t want to run into each other. You’d think they could suck it up for one night for the greater good but one friend might think well he’ll understand if I skip this birthday party and besides, there will be others there, no one will notice my absence. The other friend is thinking the exact same thing.

And so the 10th anniversary of your 25th birthday is not as awesome as it could be because two of your besties couldn’t put aside their differences for one night to help you celebrate. And the best part? in 4-6 weeks they kiss and make up and all is right as rain with the world. Except you cannot hop in the DeLorean and go back to the night of your Bday bash and have that Night of Awesome that you were destined.

Hopefully, by the time you hit the 2nd quarter of Life on Earth, you have eliminated these Drama Llamas types from your MonkeySphere . But the reality is that life is about conflict and people tend to be selfish at least two times a day: AM and PM.

The other side of the coin is that whatever your friends are disputing may seem petty to you but it is valid to them. it is important not to dismiss their feelings while trying to navigate this delicate situation. And if they have had conflicts in the past, it’s possible that they are keeping score. Maybe you have always inadvertently sided with FriendA and this one time it really is FriendA’s fault. You playing the Switzerland Card comes off like a copout. FriendB sees it as oh you were willing to pass judgement all those other times but now when FriendA is being the WeenieHead you suddenly don’t want to take a side.

As a friend, you have a fiduciary duty to do the right thing and not be an asshole. When you play the Not-Getting-Involved Card, you are basically dismissing the validity of your friends feelings. And while it isn’t your job to play judge and jury on every little trespass, you do have the power and with that the responsibility to create a level playing field.

Two thoughts come quickly to mind:

1. Whenever two parties are in conflict, rarely is one party solely to blame. It might be 60-40 or 70-30, but rarely is it 100-0. Sometimes Person A said or did something and Person B felt slighted. a) PersonB is too sensitive, b) PersonA was being a DBag, c) both a and b.
2. While it is easier and sometimes appropriate to play the Switzerland card and not get involved, As a friend, you have a fiduciary duty to do the right thing and not be an asshole. When you play the Not-Getting-Involved Card, you are basically dismissing the validity of your friends feelings. And while it isn’t your job to play judge and jury on every little trespass, you do have the power and with that the responsibility to create a level playing field.

Back in college a couple friends were not getting along. Cindy was pissed at Linda because she made out with Jane’s boyfriend. Cindy gave Linda the cold shoulder for the entire Spring semester. She did everything she could to make Linda’s life uncomfortable and unpleasant.

I was thinking about Linda’s story the other day. I wasn’t there when this occurred, but according to her, Cindy put her through Hell for 16 weeks until school was over.  A lot of people in our group knew what was going on but they opted to stay out of it.  Perhaps rightly so.  But I also wonder if a gentle influence from mutual friends could have pressured Cindy to behave more graceful and treat Linda more kindly.

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Being caught in the middle when friends fight is awful

A long time ago, in a Liberal Arts College far, far away, a couple friends were not getting along. Actually to say they weren’t getting along would be like saying Russia and Ukraine are having growing pains.  What they were fighting about isn’t important, but it is amusing so I’ll share. Cindy was pissed at Linda because she made out with Jane’s boyfriend. Jane and Cindy were BFFs and felt Linda’s indiscretion was, I don’t know what exactly since a few years later, Cindy and Jane’s ex-boyfriend did the horizontal mambo themselves.

When I went there it was called NMSU. It changed when Missouri discovered one of the Presidents was from there.

Also, although they broke up, Jane’s boyfriend got off (no pun intended) relatively Scott free. That’s right, Girl Power hadn’t been invented yet and instead of holding Jane’s boyfriend accountable, he was rewarded with sex with Cindy a year or two later. The make out session occurred in late December and Cindy gave Linda the cold shoulder for the entire Spring semester. She did everything she could to make Linda’s life uncomfortable and unpleasant. We were members of Alpha Phi Omega a service fraternity and the requirements — besides the whole In Friendship, Leadership and Service thing — would force them to be together on various projects. The funny thing is, Jane didn’t really care especially since she was gone. She transferred to another school because she completed her program at NMSU.

Then at the end of the semester, Cindy had an epiphany or something because she apparently apologized for how she treated Linda. I wasn’t there so I don’t know if it was one of those fake apologies or a sincere one.

I asked Linda about it once, and she said something like — keep in mind, I’m going off more than two decades of old memories here:

It’s nice that Cindy apologized but it doesn’t really undo the sixteen weeks of hell she put me through to get here especially since that was my last semester..

I was thinking about Linda’s declaration the other day and the story that goes with it. Over the years I’ve had perhaps more than my fair share of falling out with friends. At the time, I was angry at the other person, but looking back through the lens of time, I can see that they had as many reasons to be pissed off at me as I did to be angry with them. Sure, I’m the common denominator so that’s my demon and I face it more often than I like. Still, in most conflicts, rarely is one side 100% to blame. Perhaps someone is more to blame or perhaps someone has a better PR campaign and mutual friends pick the wrong time to either take sides or stay neutral.

Today there doesn’t seem to be a point in the future where a former group of friends and I reconcile our differences.

Still with enough time, anything is possible.

This post is a re-post from an old blog/column I wrote for another medium a long time ago. I’ve tweaked it a little to bring it up to date while hopefully keeping the content intact.

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Marathon Training: Group Leader Confidential

Every summer thousands of people train for the Chicago Marathon and many of them join running clubs like CARA. Although I’m not doing it this year, I’ve group leader since 2003 and have trained for both fall and spring marathons, so I’ve led a lot of different groups of runners over the years.

Two of the biggest scandals we group leaders get accused of are

1. pushing the pace and
2. too many water stops. 

The pace groups are split in 30 second increments, e.g. 8:00, 8:30, 9:00, 9:30, etc. and the goal is to run the LR (Long Run) distance no more than 5 seconds off pace per mile.  As we go deeper into the season and the LRs increase, stopping for water becomes an issue. We’re encouraged (or is it required) to stop approximately every two miles or so for a water break. CARA and Fleet Feet have set up Gatorade stations along the lakefront as well. The issue is that stopping and waiting for everyone to get water takes time if your group is large and it’s sometimes hard to start back up again, especially once the LRs get into double digits.

For years these two scandals were things I’d hear other group leaders talk about but really didn’t experience first hand. I use to lead the 8 minute per mile (8mm) group at the newly established downtown site and usually only had 2-3 runners at that pace. Between our egos and low numbers, it was pretty easy to get along. Water stops didn’t take very long and pushing the pace was rarely an issue as we were already running as fast as we could.  Once I started getting slower, I switched to leading  an 8:30 mm group and the griping has increased a bit.

A few summers ago, one runner in particular was a Problem Child from the beginning and let us know about it. She was complaining about pushing the pace, and running extra miles, and water being wet. Wanting to do my due diligence as a group leader, I dropped back and ran with her, listening to her gripes. Apparently we were guilty of pushing the pace for the first mile of our LRs over 30 seconds too fast. This winded her for the rest of the distance and “it wasn’t enjoyable.”

I seriously doubted we snuck in an 8 mm but even if we did, it shouldn’t wind a person for the rest of the afternoon. I apologized that our pace might not always be on target but pointed out that our average pace was coming out to be around 8:35 each week, which meant we were actually running some of those miles slower. She didn’t want to hear it. After talking with her for a while, I could tell we were not having a meeting of the minds. I spoke in English, she spoke in Total Disgust, a cacophonous dialect of F-You.

Problem Child opted to train at a different site for the rest of that season.  I hope that she found a group she can run with and a group leader who can hold pace better.  But something tells me she’d just find something else to complain about.  To be sure, one winter I was taking a workout class at my company’s gym.  I was sitting on the floor stretching when I heard someone talking to their friend, complaining about the pace of the workout, the temperature of the room and the size of the class.  I looked over and sure enough, it was Problem Child.

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The ups and downs of keeping your baby names a secret

About seven seconds after we shared the news that we were pregnant, people have been asking all sorts of questions. When is Nightingale due?  Are we going to learn the sex of the children? Do they have a favorite cognac and preferred smokes? You know, the standard FAQs.

Like an episode of Lost, every question led to another question, and eventually people would ask if we picked out names yet. Most were just making conversation. Others, closer relatives and friends, were lobbying for their choice and/or to be the babies’ namesake. A small minority were just trying to be in the know. We were advised by friends who went through this to keep our choices to ourselves because everyone will have an judgement opinion on your name choices.

We definitely want our kids names to be slightly unusual and not mainstream, but not wacko out there either. We are trying to avoid names that have multiple common spellings (such as Steven and Stephen) or have an icky nickname. I looked though a list of Polish names and found that most of them are simply derivatives of other names so there really isn’t much point naming our daughter Kasia if she’s gonna end up being Katie anyway.

These were used in the Infant Care Basics for Multiples class given by Sharp Mamas.

 

So we agreed not to share any names or ideas and would answer the question: Do you have names picked out with “We have a shortlist.” My Sister-in-Law was pissed that I wouldn’t share with her. She accused me of already having them picked out (we did) and was more and more frustrated whenever I would say “Moose and Squirrel” or “Boris and Natasha.”

Another couple, who is also having twins, shared in our dilemma. Katniss and her husband were really being pressured to name their kids after family members. Their only saving grace was that they had a large enough family that 1) many had already had kids and knocked off many of the available names and 2) they could argue that they didn’t want to pick sides of the family.

We found solidarity in our twin pregnancy and our name secrecy.

Last Saturday we got a text message with pictures of two gorgeous babies introducing them into the world. And wouldn’t you know it, one of them has the name we picked out for our son.

Momentarily forgetting that Katniss had obviously gone into labor or was induced 4 weeks early, Nightingale’s first thought was: do we need to find a new boy name? Her second thought was: wow Katniss is so lucky to be done with being pregnant and has her babies! Eventually, she realized that coming a few weeks early for a higher risk pregnancy than ours might be the thing to focus on.

I know some people would get wigged out that this name sharing occurred.  But the truth is ultimately it’s no big deal, especially since we didn’t have any way of knowing that the other couple was considering the same name.  And I like to think our friends are pretty level headed. We’ll get teased over the years that we copied them but only in a light-hearted good-natured way.  It’s not like our kids will be roommates at Hogwarts or anything.

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My thought process on how I tip

Every so often the When to Tip or When Not to Tip debate comes up. “Should one tip when you pick up Chinese takeout? Should you tipped the guys who delivered your new gas range? What about a hotel bellhop? A parking valet?”

Wash. Rinse. Repeat. What I’m gonna do instead it share my thought process of how I tip what I tip.

Sometimes I simply round up or down. Let’s say my bill at a restaurant came to $18.74. Twenty percent would make that $22.49. No I don’t whip out a twenty, two dollars and two quarters. I simply round up to $23 since I’m likely charging it on the credit card. [Interestingly I totally pulled that $18.74 from thin air but how cool that it works out to $22.49 and I can use the alliteration twenty, two dollars and two quarters.] However, there are times when I will round down too. Let’s say it with tip it works out to $25.49. Guess, what, I’m still writing $25 in my credit card. So you get a 19.98% instead of 20% tip. I know, I’m stealing food from your babies mouths.

I also usually don’t fret about the tip on the before tax amount, not the after. However, there are times when I will purposely tip on the before tax amount, specifically when I’m paying cash and do not want to wait for change. It’s usually a situation where tipping on the pre-tax amount works out to leaving a twenty and a five or having to break another twenty to leave another buck. One time I was in this exact situation with a couple of co-workers and Abdul insisted we get change from the waitress. That took over 10 minutes and complimented extremely poor service to begin with.

I saw a write-up once, written by a bar tender or waiter, who suggested that you always tip in cash because it is better for him.

Hey Chester, I’d like to just take this moment to point out that I’m likely to do what is best for me way before I’m likely to do something that is best for me and you and certainly well before I’m likely to do anything that is best for you but not for me.

A long time ago, when you paid with a credit card, there wasn’t even a way to add the tip. You had to leave cash. When that changed, a bar tender friend once told me that if you ever have a choice between leaving 20% on the credit card or less than 20% but giving a cash tip, wait staff would appreciate the later. It takes too long to get squared up and ruthless managers will stiff staff or you could even get fired before all the receipts are reconciled.

There are only really two times when I get downright conservative. One is if I have spent a lot of money that month, that week or even that day. Then I have to be honest, I might round down instead of up and shortchange a buck. Don’t judge.

The other time is when I’m going to submit my receipt for reimbursement. Bean-counters Accountants are very weird about things and there are some regulations that are subject to interpretation of said accountants and since many of them didn’t get laid a lot in college, they want to get back at the world.

Level of Effort versus 20 percent

How did tipping even get started? I’m pretty sure no one sat down with a fountain pen and abacus and said: it should be a percentage of the total. more likely, someone simply said Keep the Change. and back in the day a nickel off a dollar was the equivalent of keeping $20 off $100 today. Some transactions really don’t merit 20%. As fellow CN blogger Jeremy Reed points out, “I’m always a five dollar guy for pizzas. I don’t care if the tab was $60 bucks – I’m giving the delivery guy five bucks. Just feels right.”

The truth as I see it is tipping has really gotten away from the original purpose. As fellow CN blogger Laurie Levy wrote:
“A tip should be like a bonus in business, extra money given in appreciation of excellent work or service. It should not be factored into people’s wages.”

I think we need to get back to that original model.

Welcome to “This Blogger Life,” where each week ChicagoNow bloggers are given a broad theme from which they can write a blog post interpreting the topic in any way they want. This week’s topic: “What’s your tipping policy?”
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Seven things to expect when dating someone training for the Chicago Marathon

So you met that special someone this summer, perhaps at a street festival, a sporting event or even a friend’s annual 4th of July Party. You hit things off and everything is going great except you are starting to notice they have this hobby which borders on addiction.

It probably started out as a minor inconvenience. First you have to leave a Cubs game in the 7th inning because she had to get up early (no big loss), then you had to miss Sixteen Candles at Retro on Roscoe because tomorrow is Long Run Saturday, and then you found out you have to plan a weekend get-away around the infamous 20 miler.  Now that you’ve been sharing time and space on a more ongoing term basis, you suddenly that hardly noticeable hobby-addiction is becoming a third wheel.

Yes my friend, you are dating a runner!

Here are seven things you can expect to put up with when you are dating a runner.

Note:  I’m writing this from the POV of training for the Chicago Marathon where you typically start your training in June and it culminates on the Sunday before Columbus Day when you finally run that marathon.  However, this applies to other marathons and runners in general.

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What to say about September 11th that hasn’t already been said

Today is the 13th anniversary of the biggest Al Qaeda terrorist attack on the United States of America. It’s one of those days that will forever have significance in my life. In the category of  Unexpected Tragedy and Senseless Death, it ranks right up there with Pearl Harbor, the Kennedy Assassinations and the shuttlecraft explosions.

September 11, 2001 started out like any other day for me. I was at work starting my shift in the call center of the No-Name Software Company. My team lead walked over and said “an airplane just flew into the World Trade Center.”He found it amusing and as I write this now, I realize that he was quite a Sociopathic Waste of Human Life (the signs were actually there all along).

Live streaming was nothing like it is today and social media was in its infancy (Plaxo anyone?)  So we probably just pointed our browsers to CNN or whatever news source we could get.  It didn’t take long to find some type of video showing the destruction.  Honestly I don’t remember the minute details.  Eventually word came in that other planes were involved and we realized this was bigger than we thought.

That week many churches opened their doors more than just on Sunday,  with quickly but well planned services of remembrance and reflection. Remember the campaign to have everyone stand outside with a lit candle at a specific time?  We all tried to carry on as close to normal as we could, but the devastation was all anyone could think about. That and speculation on what might come next.

Winnetka’s 6th Annual September 11 flag-planting ceremony attracted a crowd of volunteers Wednesday who joined forces in placing 2,977 American flags on the Village Green. (Source: Chicago Tribune)

Today there will be posts on Facebook about what they were doing when they heard the news.  News outlets will run the obligatory photos, video clips and special interest stories like the pilots who would have had to ram United Flight 93 because they went up without any ammunition.  And over the next couple of days there will be calls to remember and never forgetting what happened.

It won’t be quite the fanfare of the first couple years when the experience was still raw and new.  And it won’t be like 2011’s 10th year anniversary because for some reason people put more emphasis on an anniversary divisible by five or ten.  [I imagine 2016 will be significant because it will be the 15th Anniversary and a presidential election.  Cannot wait for that party to start.]

I’m not saying anyone is ignoring or purposely downplaying the significance of today. What I’m posing is that collectively, we have shifted our focus a bit. From Never Forget to I Still Remember but Look Upworthy Videos.

My Facebook feed is not nearly as inundated with 9-11 posts and pictures as it has been in years past. And while I was out driving to lunch, a couple of emergency vehicles had their lights on and while everyone got out of their way, the speed in which people moved their vehicles — on this of all days — was more indicative of annoyance that they would miss their light than WTH! is ISIS up to something?

On a personal note, I don’t feel any safer than I did before 9/11 nor do I feel any less safe.  I feel that all the hassle we go through at airports, the cost of the TSA and the No-Fly lists that cannot distinguish between a 4 year old boy* and a terrorist are just a colossal cluster fuck that we could really do without.

*Yes, I realize that kid is now eleven and I read somewhere they use these things called pictures to alleviate some of the No-Fly issues.

We put up with it because opposition is met with refrains of “for your safety and security” and if you push too hard, you are accused of being unpatriotic. Maybe in some small way, the terrorists did win.

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One Bears loss does not end the season…yet

Wow judging from all the chatter around Chicago, you’d think the Bear’s season officially ended last Sunday, 15 games early. Relax people. see if your ObamaCare can spring for some Xanax or something. Yes there were turnovers and missed tackles and mental lapses. It certainly wasn’t as bad as last season, we have a lot of mediocrity to achieve before that happens.

In fact, let’s look at how last season ended.  ( Bears fans should watch this video every Sunday just before the game. The players and the coaches should have it running on auto-repeat throughout Halas Hall):

 

Some common rants across the Blogosphere:

We Were Supposed to Win This One

Uh there’s a reason these games are played instead of just letting Madden NFL decide who goes to the Super Bowl.  As the saying goes, on any given Sunday any team can win in the NFL.  Sure, last year’s Buffalo Bills team underachieved and they haven’t been much better in recent years.  Still, teams vary from year to year which brings up….

History was on our side

Any financial advisor worth her salt will tell you that Past Performance is Not Necessarily Indicative of Future Results.  It doesn’t matter that the Bills have never won at Soldier Field or that the Bears almost always win their home opener. Never won at Soldier Field? That just makes it more and more inevitable that some day a Bills team would do it. Last year Drew Bees finally won at Solder Field. Even the crappy Bears teams of the late 90s and early 2000s managed to win a couple times in Green Bay.

Jay Isn’t An Elite Quarterback

Neither is Joe Flacco or Eli Manning really.  If you look at future Hall-of-Famer Tom Brady’s numbers to Jay Cutler:

T Brady 29/56 249 1 0
J Cutler 34/49 349 2 2
(Source:  ESPN).

I didn’t watch that game but Brady does well when his team is winning by more than two scores but in closer games he gets rattled and tries to force things just like any other QB who wants to win.   It’s just as likely Brady didn’t have any interceptions because of time of possession. You cannot throw an interception when your team is on defense (right?).  The New England Patriots were essentially out of the game by early 4th quarter. At least the Bears tied it up and took it to overtime.

Looking Ahead…Bearly

This can obviously go one of two ways. I’ve been a Bears fan long enough to know that this could be the 4-12 seasons of 199 and 1998 and 2002. Or the coaches make some adjustments and the team comes out stronger. The first two games of the NFL are considered pivotal because no one really knows what a team is like under the hood.  Most players are still healthy and performing at a high level and there isn’t enough film available to have seen everything a team does. Just as many 2-0 teams end up missing the playoffs as 0-2 teams win their divisions. A stat I totally made up.

San Fran looked elite against a bad Dallas team. The Jets are good but not great and Green Bay is vulnerable. Considering everyone would be glad to just be 2-2 In four weeks, if somehow the Bears are 3-1, no one will remember this Bills game. And if they are 1-3 or 0-4, you know that you have the rest of your Sundays free for yard work, winter maintenance and holiday shopping.

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Crummy Jobs: My former life as a Paralegal Assistant

Every so often, I think back to my first post-college job as a Paralegal Assistant at BIGNAME LAW FIRM.  The PA position was created to offload the non-billable work the paralegals had to do — otherwise known as Things the Paralegals Didn’t Want to Do — so they could focus on the more substantive legal work they were given by the attorneys.

One of the first assignments Eileen gave me wasn’t much of an assignment at all. It had more the makings of something to keep me busy. And slowly kill my brain.  She wanted me to count the number of pages in a copy job.  You read that right.  We make a lot of copies in a law firm and even in the anarchic early 90s, the copy machines had a mechanism to count the number of copies that would be placed on the return slip.  Yet she still wanted me to manually count the pages, one by one, of that copy job.

Eileen was convinced that the Copy Center was padding their numbers to make a little extra money.  I don’t remember how much we charged for copies back then — it was certainly higher than market value — but let’s say for argument’s sake it was a whopping 0.25 a page.  The only way this translates into anything significant is if they make fifty copies but charge you for a thousand.

Having me count each page wasn’t a good use of my time — whatever you catch in their error is essentially offset by my cost.  Granted my time wasn’t being billed back to the client and my hourly pay was rather insignificant too, but I guarantee you Eileen hadn’t considered any of that. She just really wanted to catch the Copy Center overcharging that dollar!

In retrospect, I should have simply done the assignment without complaining and seen it as “paying my dues” and bond with Eileen by agreeing that yes the Copy Center pads their numbers.  Evil Bad. 

Instead, I performed the assignment in what I thought was an innovative, creative manner that should have demonstrate my abilities.  I measured one inch worth of documents, counted those, and then measured the stack and calculated that the number given to us by copy center was indeed within the range we should have.  Eileen was pissed that I didn’t simply do what she asked.  She made me recount the documents.

If any of my former colleagues are reading, I will admit that I was immature and had what would be described as a bad attitude. I own that and admit it freely. Now I ask if you will do the same of your shortcomings.

So as Obi-Wan might say the truths we cling to depend on how you look at it. True I wasn’t showing that I could follow instructions and complete a simple assignment. On the other hand, that assignment was fucking stupid and a complete waste of time, and Eileen should have been publicly flogged for wasting company resources. In a healthy, more nurturing company, a good leader would have recognized the creativity that went into taking a dull assignment and not only making the best of it but also coming up with an insightful solution that technically saved time and essentially achieved the same results.

In hindsight I wish I had been smart enough to keep my head down, use the paralegals as Attorney Shields and go to G-school a few years sooner.

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