One Way to Pad Your Hours: Picking Up Dry Cleaning

I take the 4/5/6 to work every morning. Usually the trip is uneventful by New York City standards  — just a collection of mariachi bands and homeless people who loudly state their intention not to bother me. Occasionally, people break the cardinal rule of subway etiquette and make direct eye contact: but I can’t tell if that’s because people recognize me from Above the Law or if they’re hoping to get to know me, in the biblical sense.

Rarely do people actually talk to me. The other day a man came up to me just after I boarded the 6 train:

RANDOM DUDE: Aren’t you the Above the Law guy?
ELIE: Yes, one of them.
RANDOM DUDE: I’m a paralegal and you’re going to love this story.
ELIE [the only thing I want to love right now is a cup of coffee]: Do you want to email me?
RANDOM DUDE: Nah. But you see that right there? [Points to clothes hanging up on one of the bars.] That is my boss’s dry cleaning.
ELIE: SHUT UP!
RANDOM DUDE: He sent me uptown to deliver some documents, and he asked me to pick up his dry cleaning on the way back.

It sounds like an urban Biglaw legend, but I snapped a quick picture to capture the moment…

Here’s the shot. Note: it’s just some random woman in the foreground; the paralegal is hiding behind the clothes:

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Obviously, I had a lot of questions, but the paralegal was reluctant to get into all of the details. It’s bad enough to have to pick up another man’s dry cleaning; it would be terrible to be fired for something that transpired while you were running domestic errands for your boss.

He wouldn’t say which firm he worked for, but he did say: “It’s a big firm. Very well-known. Your readers know it.” Hmm…. I got off the 6 at Bleecker, but he was still on it. Can we assume that he wasn’t going all the way down to City Hall (or else he would have hopped over to the 4/5 at Union Square)? That essentially leaves big firms that are in easy walking distance of the Spring or Canal Street 6 stops. Unless he was just too lazy to switch at Union Square, which would open most law firms in lower Manhattan to potential inquiry.

The paralegal also said: “Hey, it’s hours.” That’s right, he intended to bill the time to a client. Let’s hope the partner in question writes that time off.

Speaking of this partner who sends firm employees out to pick up his laundry — check out the shirt in the foreground of the picture. It might be a little hard to make out, but it’s a plain gray undershirt. WHO SENDS HIS UNDERSHIRTS TO THE DRY CLEANERS?

And while we’re here, why was this guy sending out a paralegal to deliver documents in the first place? Isn’t that what messengers are for? When I asked the paralegal about this, he said that the partner “doesn’t like messengers.”

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What does that even mean? How do you “not like” people whose job it is to deliver things when you need something delivered? Did a messenger bite him as a child?

My mental image of this partner is of a man who has no idea of how to match the right tool with the right job. His favorite childhood game was forcing square pegs into round holes. He lost his virginity to a belly button. He bought a dog to catch mice and plays fetch with his cat.

How the hell did this guy become a Biglaw partner?