I was very naïve when I left the military.
I’d spent years concentrating on “leadership,” daydreaming about how I would perform under threat of gunfire and IEDs, scanning the daily news from Iraq, reading Medal of Honor citations, devouring memoirs of young officers in World War I and Vietnam, wondering if, when my time came, enlisted men would see through me as a fake, a coward, someone not worthy of my title. Robert Graves. Ernst Jünger. James Webb. These were my friends and teachers. Their lessons were grand, but my wartime experience and those wartime heroes didn’t prepare me for life at home.
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When I started at the law firm, my first job after 10 years in the military, it seemed everyone knew something I didn’t. How to ask a partner for work. How to ask a client for money. I took a phone call once from a widow who told me she paid $100,000 for home improvements only for the contractor to abandon the project after he’d squeezed her for the money. He was supposed to be building a pool for her kids. I took the case and poured myself into it until, months later, a senior partner informed me the widow hadn’t paid her bills. You’re not much for business, the partner said. “Ask me next time … before you pull the trigger.”
In a combat unit, you don’t like everyone, but you trust them with your life. We wanted guys who were strong enough to carry another Marine’s weight, determined enough to go to their physical limits, to not pass out if someone was shot or lost his legs. In civilian life, though, the key is whether people like you, while trust hardly enters into their equation. Out here, everyone knows the stakes: Business is competitive, and so are relationships in your profession, your company, the market. “This isn’t personal, it’s just business,” people say. You want trust? See a priest, or a therapist, or go back to the military.
I used the GI bill to pay my way through law school, then packed up my house, moved back to my childhood neighborhood, and started working at that large corporate law firm. The firm kindly gave me the one office in the building that didn’t have a window. But I did get the “puppy pot.” The lawyers there had a tradition of enshrining the firm’s porcelain candy dish, shaped like a puppy, on the desk of a new lawyer, who for one year would have to fill it with M&Ms and Snickers bars for the partners. I was game because I thought it would help me get acquainted with my colleagues. But my colleagues were busy — billable hours never took a break. “I’m just here to get candy,” they would say. They might forget my name, but they were serious about the beagle-shaped war chest of treats. That same partner who told me I didn’t have a mind for business sent me emails complaining about the candy selection, the lack of chocolate, the dwindling amount in the pot. Another newish guy down the hall stopped by with some bombshell advice: “Pssst, take your candy duties more seriously … or else.”
But that was then.
Today, all those hard times have passed on like water under the bridge. After a few years and (several) job changes, I’ve taken my licks, shaken off old preoccupations with heroism and cowardice, and learned important lessons about succeeding in the real world, where the competition over candy and likes is coldblooded and deadly serious — a battle, if you will. Yes, I’m pleased to report that, for this particular veteran, the old war has finally and happily faded away … into a precious memory.
John J. Waters is the author of the postwar novel River City One (Simon and Schuster), and a former deputy assistant secretary of homeland security.
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