SPEED IT UP!

"Tom,

Someone recently said that Simpson Thacher was one of the better employers in the city to temp for. I beg to differ. When I read that this morning, I nearly spit Cheerios out of my nose.

The atmosphere of fear and paranoia that was generated in that place was extreme. The woman that staffed many of the projects, Kathryn McCarthy, must have been geneologically related to Joseph McCarthy, in that people were constantly being purged and blacklisted, left and right. When a new group arrived, only about a 1/3rd would remain after three weeks. She certainly must have kept De Novo busy with all the hiring and firing that was going on.

Mickey was a jerk. As a woman, I felt very uncomfortable. As someone alluded to in an earlier post, he maintained a close cadre of boys (a true old boys network, in every sense of the word) to fully brief him on the environs and ins and outs of other temps. Everything became a weird, twisted masculine-defined large penis contest. People would constantly compete with one another to see who could review the most number of documents. At the end of every 12 hour day, my hand would literally ache, and I would feel dizzy. Those that couldn't keep up with the extreme review #'s were fired. I felt like I was living an 'I Love Lucy' episode where the documents were being pushed on us, faster and faster."