(This post contains another story about my life as an employee.  I thought the last one–Working For The Man–got a good response, so I want to make such stories more regular.  I like these stories because they illustrate something more personal about me.  I also enjoy writing them because, upon reading them, they should motivate us all to strive for something greater than the 9-to-5 grind.)   

Last September, my firm began interviewing candidates for summer positions in 2008.  My firm travels to law school campuses and interviews students.  It then narrows down the applicant pool and invites a select group to travel to our offices for followup interviews.  The candidates come in for a half day of interviews, including a lunch interview with usually two associates.   

I received telephone calls from our administrative department asking whether I, along with another associate, would be interested in taking a candidate out on a lunch interview. 

Naturally, I agreed.  Any time I can get my hands on a free lunch from an upscale restaurant, I usually take it.  I did several of these lunch interviews, but I remember the first one more than all the others combined. 

It wasn’t because of the candidate I interviewed.  He was, indeed, a very good candidate.  He had an impressive resume and transcript.  He was smart, humble, confident, eloquent, and very interested in working at my firm.  He asked insightful questions, exhibited a grounded view of his own talents, and was a pleasure to be around.  When I returned to my office after the lunch, I filled out the interview form, rated him “Excellent” or “Very Good” in all the categories, provided positive feedback, and recommended him for a summer job offer.  I sent the completed form back to the administrative department through interoffice mail. 

Although this individual was a great candidate, it wasn’t he who made me remember that day.  It was my boss who came to talk to me after I had lunch with the candidate and after I had sent the interview form back to the administrative department.

“So, how did it go?” he asked.

“It went very well,” I responded enthusiastically.  My boss had already seen the candidate’s resume, transcript, and recommendations, so I commented on my lunch with him and about the candidate’s humility, confidence, and insightful questions. 

My boss smiled and responded, “Does he satisfy the 3 a.m. rule?”

“The 3 a.m. rule?”  I was confused.

“Yeah, the 3 a.m. rule.  If he’s here working at 3 a.m., will he be a jerk and be angry?”

“Uh,” I paused.  “I think . . . I don’t know.”

My boss broke out into his trademark infantile giggling.  ”When we interviewed candidates looking for jobs at my old firm,” he explained, ”my old boss used to ask me whether the candidate satisfied the 3 a.m. rule.”  He giggled some more.  (He obviously thought it was a neat concept.)  “The 3 a.m. rule is whether you can still work with somebody late at night at 3 a.m.  No one likes to work that late, but the question is whether someone, in particular, really hates it.  If they hate it that much, they can’t work with other people and probably shouldn’t be here.” 

He giggled some more and walked away.

I pondered this exchange for a few minutes, and I thought about three specific things: 

1) I wondered if the people who reported on my attributes as a job candidate several years ago asked the same question.  Does he satisfy the 3 a.m. rule?  I concluded that they probably did not ask it because this rule seems to be my boss’s own unique concoction. 

2) My boss’s explanation seemed, at first, to humanize him a little bit.  When he said, “No one likes to work that late,” was he really saying that he didn’t like to work that late?  I guess I’d have to admit that he, like other people, wouldn’t opt for working until 3 a.m.  Yet I still couldn’t cross over the line.  I just couldn’t hop the fence and admit that I actually had something in common with my boss.  Why couldn’t I? 

3) I couldn’t admit to having something in common with him because his genuine dislike for working at 3 a.m. helped him develop an outlandish, arbitrary test for determining whether to hire someone.

Correct me if I’m wrong here, but don’t we evaluate candidates for jobs based on credentials and personality?  Since when, as the make-or-break factor, should we look at whether the individual under the microscope can survive psychologically during a physically-tolling all-night working marathon?  More often than not, people under that kind of pressure break.  And, yes, they may become very unpleasant to be around.  

An individual who maintains his or her composure might be the cream of the crop according to this 3 a.m. rule.  But should we celebrate such a find?  I think we should celebrate it only to the extent that we found yet another person who won’t mind–and might even love–subscribing to the grind of big company life. 

However, separating people into classes based on whether they satisfy the 3 a.m. rule only perpetuates one of the many problems with employee life, especially life as a white-collar employee.  The people who pass this ridiculous test are the ones who cast aside all other aspects of their lives in favor of work and, ultimately, attain authoritative positions.  Those who choose life over work–and by that I mean spending just a little time with the wife and kids–generally aren’t 3 a.m. rule material and don’t make it to these higher positions of authority.  Instead, they stay where they are and continue taking orders from the 3 a.m. graduates.  

Thus, what we continue having is a high level of authority that doesn’t understand reality and welcomes work to crush their lives and a working class that craves some work/life compromise.  When you have two groups operating on such distinct wavelengths, no one will ever understand each other.

After these thoughts, I asked myself the ultimate question.  The question this entire thought process was supposed to lead to:

“Does the candidate I interviewed today satisfy the 3 a.m. rule?”

After pondering that for a few seconds . . . .

“Who cares,” I said to myself. 

I refused to answer it.  In fact, I refused to apply it to anyone else.  I wasn’t going to succumb to that kind of mentality.  If, in the future, someone else above me determined that he didn’t satisfy the 3 a.m. rule, then so be it.  But it wasn’t going to be me. 

Character assessments should be based on simple, every-day factors, not extreme situational, egotistic determinations. 

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