Used to be that contempt for authority was a core American value, especially when that authority was an insufferable boss.
One is hard-pressed to find even a shadow of that cherished iconoclasm in today’s blogosphere, and I’m hard-pressed to understand why.
Take the case of Dianna Abdala, a 24 year old Boston-area attorney who has become famous recently for a series of emails between her and one William Korman, a potential employer.
In a huffery/puffery because Abdala declined his job offer (he reneged on his original salary offer, so she decided to open her own practice), Korman threatened – in writing – to discredit her among his fellow attorneys, which tells us that we are not exactly dealing with Chief Justice material here.
Putting his threat into action, Korman forwarded the exchange to a friend, it was leaked to law firms on two continents AND to the press, including Nightline, and the rest is history.
The actual email thread, which has been published on several website, leads this former HR professional to the conclusion that Attorney Korman is a blithering idiot, outgunned and outclassed by a kid 12 years his junior.
For example, in one message, Korman blusters about being out the cost of business cards and “stationary” (no doubt a fiscal crisis of major proportions for a supposedly successful Boston lawyer who can’t spell), and name-calls Attorney Abdala with the lame prejoratives “immature” and “unprofessional”. (Wow. To a young, aggressive lawyer, that must have really hurt.)
Abdala responds with the elegant riposte, “A real lawyer would have put the contract into writing and not exercised any such reliance until he did so.”
This all reminds me of an attitude I’ve encountered recently myself in certain businesses around these parts that a worker is no more than a bonded serf, apparently obliged to sign over soul as well as body, while “the company” remains free to fire, demote, humiliate, lie, cheat, suffocate and poison at will.
Sound like a regression to the old sweatshop and robber baron days?
What amazes me, though, is how many young people go along with this 1950-ish “the boss is always right” attitude.
In fact, Korman received a number of fawning letters, with resumes, from eager young things altogether willing to strap on kneepads for a buck.
That there are 24 year olds around like Dianna Abdala makes me very relieved that we haven’t lost an ENTIRE generation to the type of corporate mindwashing that hypnotizes people into leaving their self-respect in the parking lot on Monday mornings.
Meanwhile, Korman admitted to the Boston Globe that he sent a copy of the emails to a friend, giving his permission to “email this to whomever you want”.
Attorney Abdala responded by reporting Korman to the Board of Bar Overseers for ”unprofessional and unethical” conduct. According to the Globe, She also said she believes that Korman’s remark about Boston’s ”small legal community” was tantamount to ”threatening my legal career,” and that he circulated the e-mails as a ”cheap ploy to bring more business to his firm.”
In other words, Dianna Abdala is a young woman who believes that her proper position in the male-dominated world of legal egos is something other than prone.
That seems to have offended the vast majority of the great unwashed who contribute anonymously to the Globe’s message boards. In between sexist musings about Dianna Abdala’s appearance, jealous comments about her self-admitted status as a “trust fund baby”, and snide aspersions on the quality of her legal education (Suffolk Law), there are numerous self-righteous tut-tuttings about her “bratty” behavior as well as vindictive predictions that she’ll never find work in THIS town, snark, snark.
Various bloggers have made this yet another cautionary tale about (ho hum) the risks of exposing youthful indiscretions in e-mail, the medium that never dies, sort of the electronic paradigm of the girl who lost her reputation by going too far with the local football star on an ill-fated Saturday night.
I’m not sure how much public play this has received outside of the Boston area, but my conclusion from the local reaction is that Boston is caught in a time warp of white shirts, cube farms, scheduled lunch breaks and general up-tightness.
No wonder so many people are leaving.