I have been many things and this is one of them

I was just read­ing Cour Marly’s post about her hav­ing had the expe­ri­ence of work­ing for a non-profit orga­ni­za­tion, and how, despite it hav­ing been an ‘eye­opener’, she didn’t stray from the tried and true cor­po­rate path.

Not that I am on a tried and true cor­po­rate path lah. But lately, I’ve had to revisit those tracks I’ve beaten myself, thanks to some peo­ple who’ve for some mis­guided rea­son asked me for advice on work, career and life in gen­eral. I sel­dom know how to advise some­one con­struc­tively, and only know how to tell a story and hope it makes some sense or holds some mean­ing for the per­son I’m telling it to. If noth­ing else, it’s usu­ally a funny story, and they’ll laugh enough to for­get what they were after in the first place. This is one of those stories.

I once was a lowly clerk/student-at-law assist­ing a solic­i­tor assist­ing a bar­ris­ter at a com­mu­nity legal cen­tre (i.e. pro-bono legal work for poor peo­ple). Because of my scat­ter­brained ways, I was always primed to do some­thing dan­ger­ously stupid.

On my sec­ond day at work, I messed up my sched­ule and only realised I was sup­posed to be in court that after­noon. Rush­ing from lunch at McDonald’s to the Human Rights & Equal Oppor­tu­nity Com­mis­sion in the city, I only realised I wasn’t dressed appro­pri­ately just as I pushed open the court­room door. I was in t-shirt and jeans and I was late. Then came the shrink­ing real­i­sa­tion that while I knew I was assist­ing the plain­tiffs, I had no idea what they and their coun­sel looked like, as I had never met them before. I made a quick deci­sion to go to the right side of the court, sat down, smiled at the bar­ris­ter, who glared at me and my clothes. I thought he was just pissed because of my dress­ing, and thought I was going to be fired at day’s end because of that. Turned out worse than that.

The team at the other side of the court tried to get my atten­tion with a few fran­tic whis­pered psssssts from this guy (who turned out to be my solicitor-supervisor) who held up a sheet of paper with my name fol­lowed by a ques­tion mark.

Late, inap­pro­pri­ate attire, and sit­ting on the wrong side of the court. Pow­ers of invis­i­bil­ity would have come in handy.

I dragged my sorry arse to the bride’s side (as my solicitor-supervisor put it), think­ing it was the most igno­min­ious start to a legal career any­one could imag­ine. Though it felt like an eter­nity, only a minute had passed, and I com­posed myself enough to peer ahead at the bench. While the rest of the court were frown­ing and glar­ing, the judge (the Human Rights Com­mis­sioner) had not bat­ted an eye­lid through­out the episode. OK, I thought, he was not dis­crim­i­nat­ing against me because of my attire and/or stu­pid­ity and/or care­less­ness because this is the Human Rights & Equal Oppor­tu­nity Com­mis­sion after all.

Then I saw he was typ­ing into this funky chunky key­board thing, and mostly star­ing into space. Oh, what prov­i­dence. I wasn’t going to be fired. The judge was a blind man. Did not see me com­ing in late. Did not see my t-shirt and jeans. Did not see me do the cross court shuf­fle. How cool was that? I could even have put my feet on the table. But I didn’t of course.

My super­vi­sor thought it was the fun­ni­est thing involv­ing an intern, but the client wasn’t as chuffed, and must have lost a lot of con­fi­dence in his chances of win­ning his case. The facts of the case, inci­den­tally, turned out just as bizarre: The client had worked for more than a decade at a funeral home, car­ry­ing cas­kets and prepar­ing bod­ies for funer­als. He had been fired from his job when his boss dis­cov­ered he was an amputee, cit­ing incom­pe­tence as a rea­son for dis­missal. A clear-cut, sure-win case for the bride’s side.

But it didn’t mean the prepa­ra­tions for the case before the Com­mis­sion were easy. My team of interns (yes, I was retained) had to do quite a bit, includ­ing the following:

Bor­row a cof­fin from another funeral home, fill it up with sand­bags, weigh the whole thing so it approx­i­mated the weight of an aver­age occu­pied coffin;

Act as pall­bear­ers and stretcher bear­ers car­ry­ing the cof­fin from var­i­ous types of dwellings — bun­ga­lows, multi-storeyed flats etc.;

Com­pare the plaintiff’s exe­cu­tion of the above task with our own and with pro­fes­sional funeral home workers;

Video­tape and anno­tate all of the above.

The video­tapes were then pre­sented at the fol­low­ing week’s ses­sion before the Com­mis­sion to show that the plain­tiff had no prob­lems with car­ry­ing out his duties at his job. Only thing was, the Com­mis­sioner was a blind man, remem­ber? Our Key­stone Cops legal team could not believe none of us thought of that. Such non-discriminating peo­ple we were.

The prob­lem was later solved at the next ses­sion with a Coun­sel Assist­ing the Com­mis­sioner nar­rat­ing all the video­tapes much like a sports com­men­ta­tor. And they’re car­ry­ing the cof­fin down the stairs now… and there’s no dis­cernible wob­ble.… it is a clean pick up, carry and put down.… I give it a 9.5.

I grew to love my work at the cen­tre, so I extended it, and I still rate it as one of the most reward­ing jobs I’ve had. I’ve had the hon­our and priv­i­lege to work on cases [exem­pli gra­tia: the Joy Williams case which we ulti­mately lost] which I later realised (clue­less, lah) to be very high pro­file, and which, while work­ing on them, you just know it was the right thing to do. I was also lucky to work with a bunch of the most self­less lawyers I’ve ever met.

My super­vi­sor, for one, was a tire­less, unflap­pable char­ac­ter whose laconic man­ner belied his deter­mi­na­tion to always ‘set things right’. Apart from court­room attire, he’d always be in a crin­kled short sleeved shirt with some flo­ral pat­tern and jeans, and he’d walk around the office bare­foot, which is why I sup­pose he excused my slop­pi­ness. As for court­room appear­ances and their req­ui­site pro­pri­ety, he was once so addled with the wrong flu med­i­cine he for­got his own name, the client’s name, and the num­ber of chil­dren the client had dur­ing a Fam­ily Court hear­ing. He was com­posed enough to calmly turn to me to whis­per the answers — …say ‘Reg­is­trar, my name is John Smith and I rep­re­sent Janet Nguyen’…. I reckon we made a good team, and was sad to see him leave for the UK to take up another non-profit post.

Then things changed for good for­ever (yes, I shall remain this cryp­tic). I returned to Sin­ga­pore soon after and became a busi­ness devel­op­ment man­ager for a tal­ent agency. But, as I always say, that’s sev­eral other stories.