Takeaways

-- By HelenMayer - 20 May 2009

The end of a school year is always a time for reflection. It is a time to decompress from the mad dash of finals, to make sense of what we have learned and to write the year’s concluding chapter – the only one that ever gets “re-read” when we think back on that time. It was amusing, though perhaps not surprising to me that the trigger for that process this year led me to question whether I had come away with any tangible legal knowledge, or whether I had merely checked off a box – one year more in the inexorable march of my education.

It happened while I was sitting at lunch with a best friend, Sandy, one recent afternoon after finals ended. She has been my closest friend since freshman year of high school, and last year we were overjoyed to discover that we would both be coming New York – she to attend culinary school while working as a line cook and I to attend Columbia.

“I have a legal question for you.” She broke out suddenly and followed with a customary dramatic pause for effect. After momentarily considering interjecting by reminding her that Law & Order was just a moderately sensationalized television show and not necessarily a true reflection of the law, a genuine sense of excitement came over me. So this is what it will be like, I thought. I will be the woman with the answers, the trusted confidante, the counselor in the best sense of the word. People will come to me with seemingly intractable problems and I will devise creative strategies based on the specialized and closely held knowledge I have acquired. I was about to start with Sandy, or so I thought. But the story she told and my inability to be of much help demonstrated quite clearly that either I have a long way to go, or I have been looking in the wrong places for this knowledge.

Each week Sandy would be scheduled to work 32 hours at a certain three star restaurant in Manhattan. She would clock into the automated system, work at least her full shift if not a little more, and clock out. And each week her paycheck would come in at precisely 31.00 hours. Every week she would rationalize a reason why this was so – miscalculation on her part, perhaps, or by the restaurant in recording the totals. But each week the same – 32 plus hours worked, 31 hours flat paid. It seems Sandy is not the only one either. After discreetly bringing the topic up with other employees in the kitchen, it became clear that her case was mild by comparison. One employee on the day shift works two extra hours without pay (let alone the mandated time-and-a-half for overtime) because he cannot do all that is required during his shift, but the restaurant refuses to hire more help. Was he not infuriated by this abuse? No, he said. This is standard practice in the industry.

Needless to say, I was shocked (I think the technical term is “shocked and dismayed”). First that this abuse was happening on a systematic basis and second that I knew very little about how to help my friend deal with it. Should I look up New York labor statutes? I had the idea that the law would be on her side, so to speak, but to what effect? Presumably the reason other employees submit to this “standard practice” is because they think they will lose their jobs if they complain. Feeling powerless, I fell back on my two-option strategy for dealing with questions I do not know the answer to: make a topical joke to change the subject or turn the conversation political. I chose the latter.

“I’m surprised New York chefs aren’t unionized.” I said after a pause.

“No,” she said, “their too afraid and move jobs too much.” Talk about Tharaud being able to tell the entire political and economic picture from one employment relationship, I thought to myself.

The conversation moved on, but the incident was a jarring discovery. Was it really possible that I could not help my best friend get paid for the correct number of hours she worked? Was it really true that I had no more to contribute than a statement I could have made in college, or even high school? Something like a slow panic, coupled with a determination to take and master labor law over the next two years set in.

But as I began to reflect on the year I had just completed, I was able to put my conversation with Sandy in context. Perhaps I do not yet know the attorney you call at two o’clock in the afternoon on a Saturday to help a cook being cheated out of $10 every week. But I do carry with me the values I have developed over my adult life that help me spot an injustice where one exists. And I have a feeling that those values are harder to retain in the practice of law than any labor statute.

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