A Career Transformation/Echoes with the Sounds of Salesmen

February was a busy month. Sorry there were no updates here. Let me summarize now: lots of doctor’s appointments, a trip to the hospital with a threatened miscarriage, a new car, vacation trip to Florida, a bad cold, C got a new job, and my work load was frenzied, as usual. This post will be devoted to a topic that’s been on my mind for weeks now. I hadn’t really analyzed everything completely, since I wasn’t even really sure how I felt about it. Now I’m fairly certain that I’ve come to terms with everything and writing it out will provide some more clarity, I think. This is going to be a rather long post. You might want to get a snack.

Here’s the background… As many of you know, my husband, C, is a lawyer. And a darn good one at that. Graduated 3rd in his class as RU Law with a 4.01 GPA; honors include Order of the Coif and Leo Kaplowitz Criminal Law Scholar, active member of Mensa and the Federalist Society. He became an Attorney at Law of the State of NJ in 1999 and was admitted as an Attorney and Counselor of the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in 2005.

C spent 7 years as a Deputy Attorney General for the State of NJ in the Criminal Justice Division as a state prosecutor. He managed to win cases his superiors thought were unwinnable. He persuaded the state supreme court to unanimously vote to correct a recurring problem in the Appellate Division, a rare victory for the state. He was a wonderful appellate brief writer and successfully litigated complex appeals involving a range of issues from the No Early Release Act to a defendant’s effective assistance of counsel to the reliability of eyewitness identifications. C was a hard charger, really enjoying his work and identifying with the civil service he provided. He did not go into private practice after law school; he did not take a corporate law job; he chose to practice an area of law that is unpleasant, sometimes sensational, and woefully underpaid. To say that I was proud of him is an understatement. Despite the perceived shortcomings of the job, I believed him to be full of noble purpose. I still hold that opinion.

After his cancer treatment in 2006, C became depressed. No one really told us that we should have been prepared for it, although thinking back on it now, I can’t believe that we didn’t anticipate it. It’s so perfectly normal for cancer patients (and survivors) to become depressed during or after treatments. I was unprepared and rough with him during that time. I could not understand how he wanted to stay under the covers all day and sleep. He burned through vacation time, then sick time, then unpaid leave. I begged him to go to work, to call HR, to talk to someone at the state and let them know what was happening. He would not or could not, or both.

My depression was so different: I worked and worked and worked to avoid my sorry life. The only thing that didn’t suffer was my job. I lost weight, stopped eating, stopped sleeping, but by Jove, I went to work every day. I kept trying to compare his depression to mine, which was a huge mistake. But it didn’t matter in the end. His department at the state was making some changes at the same time, he didn’t have a great relationship with his boss, and before we knew it, he was severed from a thing at which he excelled, a thing that brought him personal satisfaction and pride. C spent the next 20 months unemployed and still depressed. I remember being so worried about our future and finances, and then I became angry as time wore on. Finally, he saw a doctor about the depression and we began seeing a marriage counselor. Things improved, but slowly. The specifics of that period of our marriage are not the subject of this post, but as you can imagine, it was a difficult time.

A breakthrough came in June of 2008 when a small law firm hired C. We were so happy! He would start anew, learn new aspects of the law (business law, specifically), get more court time, earn a really awesome salary and meet new people. We bought him some new suits, shirts and ties. Things were looking up! C was very honest about his lack of business law experience with the partners and they claimed to understand that there would be a learning curve and that he could take some time to get up to speed.

In just 4 short months of employment at the new firm, I noticed that C was having difficulty sleeping, he became lethargic, detached, and more withdrawn. Despite medication, the depression symptoms were on again in full swing. He was working very long hours (to be expected, I understand), but getting more and more new case assignments with very little guidance. I could tell he didn’t like what he was doing, didn’t find that area of law the least bit interesting. He was placed in a new wing of the building, apart from all the other attorneys, and I get the sense that everyone was rather siloed at that office. It didn’t take too long before the managing partner was lecturing C about his low quota of billable hours. The other shoe eventually did drop, and once again C was unemployed.

C called some old friends at the state. He found out that a whole new set of folks were in charge. Returning to the state seemed like a possible option, but it was not to be. A hiring freeze was on, so no dice there. He sent out resumes to every county in the state, hoping for openings in the prosecutor’s office. No dice there, either. He went on a couple of interviews for federal positions with the Attorney General’s Office in Philadelphia and Newark. Still, no luck. He sent CV’s to local law schools, universities, and community colleges for adjunct positions to teach Criminal Justice, but his experience in the real world precluded him from actually having a shot in academia. He confessed that if he could not go back and practice criminal law, then he would not be a lawyer at all. I think that was the point in time where he gave up on being a lawyer.

And that brings me to the heart of this long ramble. My bright lawyer husband is now a car salesman. A happy, well-adjusted car salesman. He sings in the shower. He doesn’t lie in bed until noon. He’s always on the phone, making follow-up calls about specific cars he’s located for people. C always claimed that he’s anti-social, likes to be alone, and that working with the general public sucks. Ha! That couldn’t be further from his truth. He’s a very social animal. He’s actually happy.

We may be able to draw some corollaries between lawyers and car salesmen – well, the jokes are good (If a lawyer and a car salesman were drowning and you could only save one…) – but in all seriousness, they both have to be direct, truthful, convincing and be able to sell something to someone, whether it be a Jeep to your neighbor or a conviction to a jury. I get that.

But it was not so easy to get here. I was perplexed as to why someone with C’s credentials would take a job that anyone could do. I admit it’s terribly snobbish, classist even, to feel that way. I can’t really justify my position, but I offer that maybe because I am so proud of what he achieved as a lawyer, I am loathe to see that talent wither. And what about all that education? And the law school loans? We had some arguments about it. Not about the new job, per se, as I am happy that he’s working and pleased with his new found career. The arguments were about my reluctance to admit that he’s no longer a lawyer and now a car salesman. One of the GM’s at the dealership even remarked to me when I met him, “I guess you don’t tell too many people your husband is a car salesman now”. That statement was poignant, and hit me because it was as if he could read my mind. Defensively, I shot back, “He’s so much happier now than he was in private practice. One’s title isn’t everything”.

And I’ve been selling that line to myself and everyone else since that brief conversation. I think I believe it now. I want to believe it. It’s absolutely true, isn’t it? Doing something you love is so much more important than having a title or being stuck in a job/career that makes you miserable. I am holding onto a thread of hope that he will someday return to Criminal Justice. I’d like to think that if it is his true calling, then the planets and stars will align and he’ll get an opportunity to go back. But if not, or in the meantime, he’s going to be a darn good car salesman.