As part of my constant effort to do better, a short list, in no particular order, of vindictive pricks I have knowingly, or unknowingly, infuriated in the past.

A pleasant looking young woman, who had graduated a top law school and clerked for a federal judge, then gone on to a white shoe law firm as a young, overworked attorney.  After several years she opted for academia, and having impeccable academic and professional credentials, soon found herself running a clinic at a state law school fighting for the the rights of those unconstitutionally victimized by arms and agents of the federal government.  I worked with her on a case to free several illegal aliens from what, after 9/11, would not be seen as either cruel or unusual detention in a privately owned facility that had a contract with the federal bureaucracy then known as INS.  They were subjected to some pretty nasty conditions during their long detentions and the clinic was their only advocate.

This driven woman, who’d graduate high in her class, garnered a federal clerkship, and worked as an associate in a top corporate law firm, evidently felt she had the right to treat the law students who worked for her in a high-handed and sometimes harsh manner.  In a word, she was a bitch.  Unbeknownst to me, then still an outspoken fellow with a biting sense of humor (thankfully both things of the past now) the conference room the five or six law students who worked for her sat and vented in after long days and even weekends of demanding work (she was very demanding), was equipped with a concealed intercom that allowed this associate professor to listen to our daily critiques of her in real time.  How my quips, and the laughter of my peers, must have galled her!

Which explains the overnight Fed Ex threatening me with a failing grade if I did not comply with her unreasonable demands to complete a “substantive portion” of my commitment to the clinic weeks after the end of the term.   Of course, not long after that I shut down her clinic by spreading the word among every law student in the school, but not before a clearly retaliatory and irrevocable 6 credit C- was entered on my transcript and could not be covered with a Pass because, to the Civil Libertarian deans of my law school, Academic Freedom extended to the right to enter a grade the student was able to demonstrate had not been based on the student’s actual work.

Live and learn, I say.  

(to be continued)