Firms never miss a chance to illustrate your place in the greater hierarchical scheme. Any observant spectator can instantly discern the levels of rainmakers in a given department by the size of an office, monopolization of a secretary, number of alternate addresses listed in the firm directory (the major players have separate fax numbers for the house in Sag Harbor and Key West condo) etc. First and second year associates reside at the bottom of the food chain; the firm knows full well that a baby lawyer has a 65% chance of quitting before his or her fourth year, and as such the statistic becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I have yet to meet a single partner who achieved his or her status at the firm in which it all began. And apparently so do most Managing Partners, since firm hiring and practices are calculated to value junior associates little and respect them less. One nagging reminder that first and second years are simply accumulations of carbon matter with fancy graduate degrees and annual billable requirements is the existence of officemates. For their first few years out of law school, the fresh blood are assigned offices and shoved in with another junior associate selected entirely at random; envision your freshman college roommate, only you’re sharing a room in the fourth level of hell rather than the quad.

Some people (all flagrant liars) claim to like having an officemate - they prattle on about how it provides a support network and increases social interaction. Personally, I’m ready to claw my way out of my own epidermis after spending more than 2 hours in the continual presence of another human being (boyfriend excepted, for the most part), so sharing a 150 square foot space with another clueless junior lawyer for 12 hours a day is up there with rubbing my eyeballs with a cheese grater on the list of things I’d rather not do. The moment I was first introduced to my chosen perky, well-groomed office nemesis, the following ran through my head, “Like it or not, for many thousands of hours of my life, I will be eating, breathing, napping, screaming, crying, arguing with my parents on the phone, reading blogs, and above all working within a stressball’s throw of this person. Shit.” Initially I managed to get lucky - my summer officemate remains one of my best friends, we laughed at all the assholes around us and formed an inseparable bond in our shared hatred of the particular firm and all it encompassed. But for the most part, you’re stuck with your officemate as well as the absolute truth of one simple rule: as much as you detest him or her, the returned loathing is even stronger.

All officemates dislike each other; it’s the one constant in a world of chaos. You toss each other polite Good Mornings and Good Nights, you make obligatory smalltalk about firm gossip, weekend plans, significant others, but chances are the same thought is pummelling your collective consciousness: Christ I wish I could slam this person’s skull repeatedly in my top desk drawer. In my experience, several types of officemates exist, with occasional overlap. There’s the Total Indoctrinate, that hypercompetitive adversary who strides an hour early into first year orientation already plotting her path of carnage and billables to achieve partner. In her mind, she’ll connive, scheme, lie, undermine and denigrate her way to the firm’s zenith in seven years or less. Besides being a generally horrendous individual, she’s often too narcissistic and self-serving to realize that her attempts at undermining are completely transparent to both her peers and her superiors. She’ll perch in her chair every morning waiting for you to walk into the office, then before you can hang up your coat and boot your computer start babbling, “Oh my God I billed 22 hours yesterday, I am sooo tired, but Senior Associate X told me he just couldn’t handle things without me so I had to stay, and then I figured why go home this morning when I could just grab a change of clothes and be back to bill a few more before my lunch with Partner Mentor? And did you hear who got staffed on Y deal, Arnie and Erica are the only first years on it - wasn’t that the one you specifically asked to be put on?” She’ll keep an astonishing mental tab on every associate in your class, always shifting, manipulating and posturing to ensure her eventual place of honor at the Loathsome Ass Kisser’s Ball.

Then there’s the the Indolent Slacker, the passably attractive and somewhat charming twentysomething who saunters unshaven into work at 10:30 a.m., bragging about his 5 hour Murray Hill bar crawl the night before (note: setting foot in a bar in Murray Hill should itself be grounds for a severe beating). He lolls through the day, never missing a chance to express his lack of stress and respect for the job. Be not fooled - this droopyeyed former fratboy who still throws out the word “dude” in common parlance is often secretly a fierce hypercompetitor in disguise, using the slacker routine as a passive aggressive tactic to mask the scent of his subtle undermining and furious weekend billing sprees. Plus, chances are he knows how to play the Old Boys network like a Stradivarius, and will not hesitate to ditch you with 9 hours of document review while he takes a senior partner up on a Westchester golf invite.

And of course lets not forget our final category, the Nuptial Nightmare, reserved for that girl who plans her entire 400-guest wedding, complete with coral matted place cards featuring sea foam raised lettering, from her desk. If you are currently sharing an office with a member of this category, you may now consider any past misdeeds absolved through karmic payback, and console yourself in the knowledge that she’ll probably quit within 6 months after getting married anyway.