Pls Hndle Thx: High Anxiety

Ed. note: Have a question for next week? Send it in to advice@abovethelaw.com.

Dear ATL,

So I got Lathamed from my job last year.  It was tough but I eventually found a job that I like.  However, I live in constant fear of being Lathamed again.  I guess since it came out of nowhere last time, it really has me on edge (received great feedback on my work product, but things were SLOW).

Other than keep a spare cyanide pill handy just in case, what do I do?  My Lathaming has taught me some lessons about playing politics, but what else can I do other than that and good work?

Also, do you think I may have an IIED claim against my old firm?

– Lathamed

Dear Lathamed,

People expect the world to function in certain predictable ways. If you look good on a date, you expect a call back. If you work hard, you expect to keep your job.  If you do well in law school, you expect $160,000, 0% balance transfer offers and a completely amazing life. Until you get dumped by someone less attractive than you or fired for no reason, you won’t realize that the world is actually made of quicksand and that guts are meant to be sucker-punched.

In this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad world, some people manage portfolios; others manage anxiety.  The fact is, there is nothing you can do to prevent an employer from firing you. Even Bill Clinton was fired and he was the damn President. So you have a choice: have diarrhea for the next few years, or get over yourself and learn to cope with uncertainty. Lucky for you, I’ve spent the past 29 years paralyzed by fear, and I’ve compiled a comprehensive list of the most effective strategies I’ve found for managing anxiety.

Here they are:

  1. Nordic Naturals Omega-3 supplements (stops feelings)
  2. Owning dog
  3. Patron
  4. Finding physical flaw in self and harp on it
  5. Purchasing and reading copy of  The Courage to be Rich: Creating a Life of Material and Spiritual Abundance by Suze Orman
  6. Overeating
  7. Ouijia boards
  8. Icelandic tarot cards (more effective)
  9. Reciting The Canterbury Tales general prologue in Middle English into voice recorder and then playing it back to check for pronunciation accuracy
  10. Criticizing people

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I hope this helps.

Your friend,

Marin

P.S. Don’t bother with yoga, Pilates or all that other crap where you have to buy special pants.

P.P.S. No, you don’t have an IIED claim against Latham. Er, maybe you should be scared for your job.

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It sounds like you have a touch of post traumatic stress disorder. Let’s see how bad your case … oh my God the partner is RIGHT BEHIND YOU.

Just kidding. How are you feeling? If you’re just waking up from a panic attack, you might want to check out our In-House Counseling series. But hopefully you just have a minor case of shellshock.

You are actually on the right track: the way to stave off additional Lathaming is to become a master of inter-office politics. Your work is irrelevant. The perception of your work is all that matters. If I may express myself in song:

Smile a rented smile, fill someone’s glass
Kiss someone’s wife, kiss someone’s ass
We do whatever pays the wages

Every day you should be looking out for ways to ingratiate yourself to the people you work with. Ass kissing is the lowest form of office politics, but it’s a prerequisite for intermediate level courses. Once you get your basic skills, you’ll need to start self-promoting. It’s difficult to do that without coming off like a douchebag, but if you’ve mastered ass kissing, you’ll be able to smooth over any hurt feelings.

Finally, you’ll get to the master’s level of colleague sabotage. “Here’s the brief you asked for. Jimmy? Oh, I don’t know, he said something about a baby mama.” Trust me, you co-workers are already trying to make you look bad.

Throwing friends and enemies under the bus while promoting your own work and kissing the managing partners ass is how you’ll never be Lathamed again.

And if you don’t have the stomach for all this, don’t worry. The world needs plenty of bartenders.
— Joe Gillis

And if you still get canned after Ph. D.-level ass-kissing, just remember: there’s daggers in men’s smiles.

Do you have a question for next week’s Pls Hndle Thx? Send it to advice@abovethelaw.com

Earlier: Prior installments of pls hndle thx