stories

Here's a story about one of my coworkers, just because I feel like telling it. Let's call him Chunk. Chunk is an oaf. He's been working here since last summer and my opinion of him has slowly (very slowly) improved. I was talking to Dreadlock a few days ago and suddenly remembered the reason my opinion of Chunk was lowered in the first place. Amazing that I could've forgotten.

The day I first met Chunk, I was making the chit-chat with him down in the Drop-In-Center downstairs where we do most of our exciting work. I was asking him the usual questions (ie: "where did you work before here?" "where'd you grow up?" etc, etc.), and answering those same questions from him. He asked about my schedule and I explained that I wasn't working much because I was in school full-time. What school? I told him my school, but left out the law part.

"Oh, that's my school," he said. "I go there." Really?

"What's your program?" I asked.

"Well," he said. "Right now I'm just studying general law."

Ok. Now's when the redflags started to flutter, but I still had no reason to disbelieve him. "General law??" In terms of a course of study, "General law," at my school, does not exist. I thought maybe he meant something more like "Pre-law," at the undergrad campus. I asked a few more questions, to try and make some sense of what he was saying. First, I outed myself as a law student. Then I started digging into his story. I wasn't trying to catch him in a lie or confuse him, but because he was talking about my particular area of interest, he'd unwittingly attracted my deep curiosity.

Finally, he explained that he had not yet matriculated, but that he was going to be studying law at the law school and he was going to be starting in the "winter term."

Ok. Here we go again with the red flags. There is no "winter term" -- we have semesters. Fall and Spring. I suggested that he meant "spring" term, as Fall term had just begun.

"No," he insisted. "Winter."

By this point, I just didn't understand what was happening and I was too ridiculously invested to back out.

So I started educating. I said, "Ok, I promise. There is no 'winter' term at my school. We have semesters, Fall and Spring. Not quarters." Then I realized something else -- even if he *did* mean Spring, he couldn't *start* in the Spring. Unless he was transferring. So I asked, "are you transferring from somewhere, have you studied law already?"

"No." He said.

So I started educating more. "Ok, even if you mean Spring instead of Winter, you can't start in the middle of the year. Law school is very regimented, especially first year. In virtually every law school across the country, the first year cirriculum is identical and for several subjects (Contracts, for example) the second semester class builds on the first semester class. You absolutely CANNOT start in the middle. It would be impossible."

He tried to hold on. He said, "No, I'm pretty sure I'm starting in the Winter term." But his conviction was gone. I asked if he'd taken the LSAT. The LSAT is the law school admission exam, like the SAT for college. Law schools evaluate a combo of your LSAT score and your undergrad GPA to decide whether or not to let you in. You can't go to law school w/o taking the LSAT, unless some kind of miracle happens.

"No," he said. "What's the LSAT?"

Amazing. Finally, he said, "Well, I guess I'm not *technically* admitted yet." Not "technically" admitted? How about, you have not *technically* even started the application process. What a fucking jack-hole. He went from "That's my school, I go there!" To, "I guess I'm not technically admitted yet." Turns out, the most he'd done toward enrolling in law school was chatting up a lawyer he met downtown. That's it. One conversation with a lawyer.

Wow.

Then, about two weeks later, he volunteered to pick me up some coffee while he was on a coffee run down at Stumptown. I gave him my plastic mug (so as not to waste a tree). When he came back, my mug was completely jacked. Coffee had oozed between the inner and outer insulation, leaving my once-white mug a sloshy brown, and there was a huge abrasion across the lip where you drink from. It looked like he'd dropped it off a bridge or something. I said, "Hey, what happened to my mug?" And he said, "Oh, sorry. I guess I owe you a mug. I dropped it." Yeah. You dropped it alright. Off a bridge. Jesus. I didn't make him buy me a mug, I just wrote him off and stopped interacting with him. I don't have time for complete fucking oafs. He *knew* my mug was broken when he handed it to me. All he had to do was lead with the apology. He could've said, "I'm sorry, I dropped your mug and I think it's broken." That's all it would've taken. Instead, he handed it back to me w/o a word, as though I might not notice how completely jacked it was. Ridiculous.

The end.