A Classic Rant from Hog on Ice

Steve at Hog on Ice is a lawyer/cookbook author/torturer of Nigerian spammers who lives in South Florida and has great insights. Here is a post of his from March of this year that deals with the subject of real friends vs. friends who are basically just "users." Lawyers especially take a well deserved bashing. Enjoy!


I Just Felt Like Saying It

"Pardon me while I pity myself publicly, but writing a cookbook really is a lot of work.

I cooked until after 8 p.m. on Saturday, and from 11:30 a.m. until after midnight last night. Of course, yesterday I was smoking a pork shoulder, so I didn't have to stand over the smoker for thirteen hours, but I was not able to leave the house for very long, and there was a two-hour period where it kept me so busy I got myself a book and a cigar and camped out next to it.

Some of my friends have absolutely no respect for what I do. Last week, one asked me to go to the university and be a moot court judge for a class she teaches. I told her I would not leave her hanging, but that I would appreciate it if she tried to find other victims first, because I write and cook all day and then practice the piano for at least three hours. I usually close the fallboard at eleven. I'm behind on the cookbook, and weekday nights are not good times to pull me away from home.

She sent me an email saying she would not trouble me, as I obviously did not want to help "a friend in need."

I was really offended. I've judged those brats two or three times already, and everyone who knows me knows I do what I can to help my friends. I don't ask other people for favors unless I can't avoid it, and if they turn me down, I assume they have good reason. I would never have sent her an email like that. Never in my wildest dreams would I consider calling a friend selfish over a trivial thing like that. And it is trivial. She and her husband have dozens of lawyer friends they can call on. And lawyers are generally not busy in the evening. Some firms are sweatshops where everyone works until nine, but try this experiment: pick ten law firms out of the firm book and call at five-thirty in the afternoon. I’ll bet you get voicemail seven times. The lawyers I’ve known and worked with were generally out of the office by six, and that includes associates.

Maybe this is the last time I'll be asked. That's fine with me. I have never understood people who graduate from a school and then go back and hang around. Once it's over, I'm gone. I feel awkward running into my old professors. I was never a brown nose who brought them cookies in their offices and pretended to enjoy hanging around with them; it wasn't until several years after I left that I realized other people had done that. That’s how foreign the concept is to me.

I liked some of my professors just fine. But I felt contempt for quite a few. There were a lot of disproportionate egos on the faculty. I didn't see these people as especially bright, after studying physics, and I was aware that many of them had failed as lawyers or had not had the nerve to practice at all, and it disturbed me when they put on displays of arrogance. My physics and math professors were about a thousand times as smart as my law professors, and I only remember one who had an ego problem. The rest were too humble, if anything.

Apart from that, I offended a lot of them by writing a humor column for the school paper, in which I regularly lampooned what I saw as their hypocrisy and high-handedness. I was not their favorite person.

I realize now that a lot of people I know went to parties with professors—my sister even slept with one—and pretended to be dazzled by their charm and wit. I realize that they made the professors their friends, in order to get good use out of them.

I actually liked my math and physics professors, but it never occurred to me to try to be their pal, or to to back to school and peek into their offices and say “Boo!” or to put them on my nonexistent Christmas card list.

I once coined a term to describe phony camaraderie. I call it “barroom warmth.” You’ve seen it in action. You go to a bar with your friends, you get a load on, you start talking to the folks around you, and suddenly you realize they’re the finest people you ever met. You exchange numbers (what a mistake), you promise you’ll call, you sing classic rock until they throw you out of the bar, and then you wake up at noon and pray you never see them again.

There is something similar among lawyers. Lawyers do not distinguish business from love from friendship. They seem like charming, friendly people when you meet them, but a funny thing happens. A day comes when they realize someone else can do more for them than you can, and suddenly, you don’t hear from your charming lawyer friends quite so often. You meet them at social events, and you assume their interest in you is social, but then you find out that to most lawyers, there is no such thing as a purely social event. Every event is an opportunity to network; to find people who can move you forward in life. And business ALWAYS trumps social. Always.

I’m not accusing my friend of being this way. That’s not what I’m getting at. What I’m getting at is this: the people who are most comfortable going back to campus are phony gladhanders who can identify their old professors blindfolded just by sniffing their asses. I’m a real person. I never palled around with the profs. Therefore I feel very out of place on campus.

I go every time my friend needs me, sure, but I don’t look forward to it. “Hi, Professor Smith. Remember me? The guy you and all your buddies hated? Nice to see you.”

Do you think I’m being too hard on lawyers? I suppose all ambitious, acquisitive people network and gladhand. I suppose even decent people do it to some extent. But I’ve really been shocked to see how empty my fellow attorneys are. I could probably list ten classmates who used me shamefully, or tried to. And there are very few classmates I keep in touch with.

So far, the only professions that seem to me to compare with law, when it comes to superficiality and selfishness, are sales and politics. Most salespeople I’ve known have been realtors. Talk about ruthless. A typical realtor has the ethics of a concentration camp inmate trying to live out the month. And car salesmen…the slime of humanity. They should all be gassed.

So to sum up, I actually work, and I am even more disappointed in the character of lawyers than you are.

While I’m rambling, let me talk about the difference between a law school gathering and a trip to ManCamp. As most of you know, I met Val Prieto over a year ago, and I spend a lot of time with him and his friends, in Val’s backyard barbecue haven.

When I go to ManCamp, no one asks me for my card. Everyone there knows I can do absolutely nothing for them, and that they can do absolutely nothing for me. We eat, we drink, we play dominoes, we curse at the TV, but no one talks about business. You know, when you’re at ManCamp, that if you weren’t liked for what you were, you’d be out on your ass in about two seconds.

How different from a mixer full of lawyers and law clericals. At a mixer, the women want to know what kind of law you practice. What firm you work for. They look at your clothes and your watch. If it all adds up to the right sum, you can end up with a new girlfriend, even if you have the good looks and charm of Larry Flynt. The men aren’t much better, but at least they won’t pretend to find you attractive. Everyone looks at you like you’re big cheesecake, and they all want a slice.

If you’re not a lawyer, let me warn you. Be very reluctant to get involved romantically with one. Some are okay, but there are a lot of users in the mix. There are some types of people you should always evaluate very carefully before agreeing to date them. Musicians. Actors. Cops. Stewardesses. Salespeople. Addicts. Add “lawyers” to the list, if you haven’t already.

I hope my friend won’t be mad at me forever."