Can you shut the door? Is there a door to shut? Do you try to make it to the safety of a bathroom cubicle first? Are you loud? Is it muffled, silent sobbing?
What do you do then?
Splash your face? Apply a new layer of make up? Clear your throat? And then re-emerge, back into work mode, as if nothing has happened?
A colleague says you look “tired”, asks maybe if you’re “okay?” You can deny or make up some excuse perhaps, but never, ever tell the truth. That you’re entirely miserable, depressed and anxious. That you would rather be anywhere else in the world. That some days you wish you were just knocked down? Or fell ill? That maybe then, oddly, life would be less miserable?
You say anything but the truth, because there is no room for mental health here.
You’re a #biglaw firm associate. You have tasks to complete, hours to deliver, and a role to perform. And if you’re not up to it, if you’re weak, unreliable, or inefficient, there are twenty others who would be only too delighted to take your place.
At the age of 24, I was offered a six figure salary and a permanent contract. Pretty incredible, eh? And largely unprecedented for the daughter of a small dairy farmer from Cork. I have my own office, I live in a one bedroom apartment, I can travel a few weekends a month. But I’m miserable.
I scanned recent newspaper headlines proposing the option of “Mental Health Days” for employees, with bemused interest, but deep scepticism. No matter how many “progressive” employers like Facebook or Google decide to adopt this policy, I know my employer and others like it, never will. Because law firms have a hard time acknowledging the physical person, not to mind to say the mental one.
Billable hour targets, 80 hour work weeks, filings, deal closings, deadlines, do not cater for physical exhaustion, everyday physical illness (the common cold no excuse for a day off, or an “easy” day). If you have to stay up all night reviewing drafts for a filing, the Firm doesn’t care that you are physically exhausted-in fact, that is entirely irrelevant, the work must be done-and certainly doesn’t care if you are anxious or depressed. Physical well-being is hardly in the equation, mental health or “mental health days” certainly aren’t.
This work environment is one where you have to argue your case for a two week holiday without bringing your laptop, or being responsive to emails. When weekends, public holidays and Christmas Day are fair game for work the rest of the year, it would seem like you have to prove that such a request is not entirely unreasonable, to prove the existence of what would seem like a basic right.
I have now spent 18 months in such an environment. Some days it takes a 12 hour day to do 7 hours work. Because strangely, struggling with anxiety and depression is not conducive to doing a good days work, is not conducive to being “efficient”. Imagine what that looks like in practice? A 12 hour day sitting alone in an office to put the hours of a “normal person”, with no “issues”, up on the clock. To keep up appearances, to avoid questions or “concerns”. Sometimes it takes working a whole weekend to do that.
I recently confided in another lawyer, and a close friend, about a particularly bad day I was having. His response was: “you’re obviously just not busy enough”. You see, I think #biglaw seeps into your DNA, there are no excuses, there are no “reasons”, for not getting your job done, for not performing. So as a junior lawyer, all your seniors and supervisors have already developed this attitude, it is part of who they are, and essential to surviving, or thriving, in this environment.
So what would you advise me do? Is the person I am currently, flaws, defects, “issues” and all, just entirely incompatible with this environment, with this firm, with this profession? How long will it be until I get “found out”? That I am not able, that I am not suitable to survive and work here? And when I get found out, can mental health even form part of my explanation? Because after all when there is no acknowledgment of the physical self, does the mental one even exist? There is no such thing as “Mental Health Days” here. And there is no space for mental health here.
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