| Biglaw attorney here. I tried to ease apart my asscheeks and let out a silent one during a meeting with a really important client and my practice group leader. We were going over discovery responses. Didn't work, and it basically sounded like I sat on a whoopee cushion. Obviously nobody said anything, but I know they heard it, and it started to smell REALLY bad a few seconds after. I am mortified. What am I going to do? |
| You should have said "excuse me" at the time. I'm glad I wasn't there, because I would have laughed. This is why I am not an attorney. |
| I know I should have, but I figured I'd kind of ignore it. Then it started to smell bad, and that just made everything worse. Biglaw is so shallow, this could legitimately fuck with my career, or at least my prospects at this firm. |
| Why didn't you go to the bathroom? You deserve the embarrassment you faced. |
| I just read about this on above the law. I'd start returning those recruiter calls. |
Yes, another hindsight is 20/20 observation. I wish I would have just gone into the bathroom, but I usually can do silent ones. I have no idea what happened. Chair was too hard, maybe. Fuck me. I had Chipotle last night, lots of hot sauce on my burrito. You can imagine what the smell was like. |
| Well, now that you have ignored it so far, you are going to have to continue to ignore it. Until your retirement party when someone is clearly going to bring it up. |
| OP here. Retirement party? Biglaw? HAHAHHA thanks for the comic relief. I mean, I know I'd be pushed out eventually, but I think this incident has really put me in jeopardy in the short term. |
'' Seriously? silent ones are just as rude as the super loud ones. You were right to be outed for this rude behavior. Are you male or female? |
| Female |
Seriously? -non lawyer here. |
| Everyone farts |
| You need to start giving head to the managing partner, stat. And don't fart anywhere other than the bathroom even if you think it will be silent. Farts smell. If you have been silently farting in meetings as a practice, someone already figured this out!! |
| Just act normal like it never happened, and people will forget in a few weeks. |
Seriously, yes. To the first point, the number of people who start out in biglaw and retire from a biglaw firm must be in the low single digits. And law as I said above is very shallow, and honestly what we do isn't brain surgery by any means (especially litigators, and that is what I do). Therefore, law (like sales), is very shallow and image-based. A surgeon or nuclear scientist can get away with being socially awkward and, hell, probably shitting his/her pants in front of co-workers, because that person actually is valuable and has real skills. Lawyers are quite fungible. So you aren't a "personality fit" or you do something like insult a client (or bust ass in front of one), you can find yourself pushed out for that. |