A COUPLE OF years ago, after too many years too casually spent as a casual academic, I went to work at a law firm. It was in need of a writer, and, for a steady wage, I was willing to pretend to be one. For a time, the change felt daunting, and I eased that feeling by making a mental note of its differences with my old workplace. At the firm, everyone was smartly dressed and spit-polished; at my university, there were professors who padded the corridors with rumpled hair and bare feet. At the firm, everything was urgent; at university, nothing ever was. The firm’s tearoom was stocked with gleaming coffee machines, bowls of fresh fruit and individually packaged Tim Tams; the only things stocked in the faculty tearoom at my uni were cockroach baits and dead cockroaches. 

Money was the most visible difference. At the uni there was none – certainly not for casual tutors – but at the firm it was everywhere. The man who recruited me had prefaced our discussion about salary by saying the firm had money to burn, and once I’d started, I saw fires wherever I turned. On my first day, the woman showing me around said that the firm could take care of my dry-cleaning, if I needed; that it would reimburse my gym fees, if I wanted; that I should order Uber Eats on the firm’s tab, if I was working late; that I should charge an Uber to the firm, to get me home after dark. On my first Friday, I was startled to hear balloons bursting nearby. A stampede of passing solicitors soon corrected me. ‘It’s Bolli time,’ said one, grinning. ‘Bollinger,’ clarified another, en route to the popping corks.