Free The Alpha and the Omega: An absurd philosophical tale about God, the end of the world, and what's on the other planets by H. M. Charley Ada Page A

just sort of happened. After that, business school was the next logical step. For a while, I was always trying to think of ways I could combine the two interests, like maybe starting a biotech firm or buying a zoo or something.”
    “A
zoo
? Haha. Zack’s Zoo! Zookeeper Zack! I like the sound of that.”
    “Yeah, I always thought I could come up with the next big business idea or strike it rich in the stock market and then retire and do something else. I was good at trading you know. It was fun for me, kind of like a game.”
    “A game?
Whoa!
Because of people like you, my clients lost their houses in the Great Recession.”
    “No that wasn’t me. I wasn’t into credit-default swaps. I did make a ton of money trading off of all the volatility though.”
    “Double yuck.”
    “Hey wait a minute. Didn’t you tell me last night that you started your career with a corporate firm?”
    “No, not exactly. It was a small defense firm. The Partners told me that I would be doing small criminal trials and tons of
pro bono
. They said I would be defending poor city kids that never had a chance and otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford a defense and would get stuck with the public defender. But when I got there, they put me in the white-collar defense division, and I spent all of my time defending the Bernie Madoffs of the world. They worked me like crazy, and I didn’t have time for sleep or family or anything. My physical and mental health went to shit. Then, when I complained to the Partner that I did most of my work for, he told me to just do it and that if I ever applied to work at another firm he would badmouth me to every lawyer in the City and destroy my reputation.”
    “That’s terrible.”
    “Yeah tell me about it – capitalism at its worst. The owner exploiting the worker, chained to her desk.”
    “Well what did you do?”
    “I started recording all of our conversations on my phone, and I got him talking about how our clients were suckers and we could get them to pay us whatever we wanted.”
    “Really? He said that? Was he stupid or just an asshole?”
    “A little of column A… a little of column B. Oh man,
he
was the sucker – in more ways than one. A big fat fuck, this guy. A bloated deer tick, swollen with his clients’ and associates’ blood.
    “But I got him! I played the tape for him and told him that if he didn’t give me the most glowing recommendation that my next employer had ever heard, I’d take the tape to his clients, the newspapers, the Bar, and anyone else who would listen.”
    “Whoa, you really are a tiger! Was what you did even legal? I mean, aren’t office conversations like that private? You can’t just go around secretly recording everyone.”
    “I didn’t care then and I don’t care now. It worked.”
    “Well, shouldn’t you have at least told the Bar anyway? I mean, if he was ripping off clients, and you knew, wouldn’t turning him in be the ethical thing to do?”
    “Haha, you wouldn’t last one day as a lawyer!”
    “But I thought I was a big-bad Wall Street suit, which is so much worse.”
    “That’s pretty bad too, but it still pales in comparison to some of the lawyers out there. And that’s coming from a lawyer!”
    “At last we agree!”
    They laughed.
    “Let me tell you Zack, the people that I worked with at this firm were some of the most calculating, selfish people that you could ever imagine. Every word they spoke, every nod, every facial expression, was carefully designed to manipulate you or promote their interests in one way or another. If one ofthem smiled and held the door open for you in the morning, it was because they wanted something from you. If they didn’t, it was because they wanted to intimidate you.”
    “That doesn’t sound good.”
    “It wasn’t. And most of them didn’t make it here.”
    “No surprise there.”
    “Oh! And there was this one lawyer I knew, Truehea– well… hmmm. I guess I shouldn’t take pleasure in