Life as a member of the LGBTQ+ community is easy...said nobody ever.
History has shown that society has never been accepting of marginalized people, particularly in the gay community.
The coming out experience often includes people responding to the revelation with questions like "why would anyone would choose to live a life of constant ridicule?"
While being gay is–once and for all–not a choice, cynics got one part right with the notion that gay people are subject to harassment and bullying for being different.
Curious to hear of the struggles that come with being othered, Redditor shiraah asked:
"Gay people of reddit, whats the hardest part about being gay?"
Listen to their voices. They need to be heard.
We Are Strangers In A Strange Land
"It makes you feel like a foreigner in your own land. Society is set up for heteronormatity and being gay means that you never fully fit in."
"Sure western society has accepted us a bit more in the last decade, but we still aren't really, 'normal.'"
"Straight people will casually drop things about their boyfriend, or fiance in public without a second thought. But I have to read the room before talking about that."
"Most doctors act weird at first when you talk to them about sexual health. They all seem to assume I have undiagnosed HIV or something."
"Gay men seem to develop at a different rate, so in many ways, our only true, 'peers' are other gay men. But since we are only 3% of the population, it can be really hard to find a circle."
"On top of that, 30ish percent of the US population still hates us. You never know when you are in the presence of an unsafe person."
"Interacting with children is actually terrifying because at any point in time, the parents can accuse you of grooming. This is especially true with teenagers. I really wish the older gay community could mentor teenage gay boys. But there is simply no safe way to discuss sexuality with them. We have to just blanket exclude everyone under 18 for the safety of the community."
"I see boys on Reddit all the time, freaking out at the realization that they are gay. But I can't console them. Its not safe. I actually have several events scheduled in my calendar that say, 'x reddiitor is now 18, follow up and make sure he understands sexual health.'"
– thedrakeequator
I Just Want To Hold Their Hand
"always being on edge/on guard when ur out with ur partner in public. not sure if you can hold their hand or kiss them or show any kind of affection. it’s sucks, i just wanna hold their hand walking thru the park but it’s a 50/50 chance if it’s gonna be fine or if someone’s gonna do something to us"
– fvcking-hell
These Redditors shared their experiences involving friends who were supposed "allies."
The Late-To-The-Party-Ally
"I grew up in a smaller town. I’m bi, so a little of this, a little of that. I had some gay porn between my mattress and box spring. Some 'friends' and my ex gf found it while I was at work. That sh*t spread like f'king wildfire. My ex gf and her new bf had a blast outing me to anybody who would listen. This was all about 15 years ago and it haunts me to this day. When I texted her and begged her to stop, she responded with 'HAHAHAHAHAHA!' and we never spoke again."
"Now that it’s 'cool' and 'progressive' to support LGBTQ+ rights, she’s 'aN aLl' and 'sUpPoRtS lOvE' 2,000 miles away from our hometown.
"F'k you, Candace."
– A_Soft_Fart
"When I was in high school, still in the closet, I had a super close male friend. Never any romantic feelings there, we were both just awkward kids who got each other. One day he was over at my house and we were play wrestling, and I remember thinking 'if I come out, we are never going to be able to do this again.'”
"A few months later, I came out to a girl in our friend group. I specifically asked for her advice and emotional support coming out to him, because I knew he had conservative parents and it was going to be a difficult conversation. You know where this is going. She told him I had a crush on him, then started telling anybody who would listen. He never talked to me again, fell in with a weird crowd, and now he’s a MAGA republican."
"I came home from school that day and had to immediately come out to my Catholic parents, worried that they would hear it from someone else. That whole experience was terrible, I won’t bore you with the details."
"Then a few months ago I see this girl post about the importance of being an ally. I have never in my life wanted so badly to throw a massive social media tantrum."
– chicksonfox
The hard part is over after coming out. But then, new challenges arise.
Loneliness
"It’s lonely. Especially if you’re not an extrovert or ‘mainstream’ gay person."
– Triairius
Isolation From Within
"This and hating the whole hookups culture hurt the most. I read too many things about gay guys always hooking up and only looking for hookups, so I just kinda end up excluding myself from the gay community. Then being in heavily religious states causes me to feel excluded in the straight communities I’ve been in because either they talk about gays being 'sinful' or talk about girls and I just stand there and nod."
– ArtyomV2
Guessing Game
"Trying to gauge if someone is gay or not before asking them out."
– PadThai517
Fearing A Negative Response
"I've never asked out a guy because I have this fear that a straight guy will take offense and punch me. I know it's unlikely, but it sticks in the back of my mind."
"Edit- just want to say that I greatly appreciate the positive comments, I'm overwhelmed and hope I'm lucky enough to hit on some of you straight guys someday :)"
– SwiftCase
As a gay, cisgender male, I'm always coming out to people I meet for the first time, either through a mutual friend or at a family function.
I don't mind opening up to people about my self-identity.
However, it can be tedious, constantly feeling the need to explain who I am to certain individuals who grew up in a hetereonormative environment as a preface to getting acquainted.
Rather than demanding gay people conform to the concept of a "normal" society, the change should be coming from society to normalize acceptance and compassion toward LGBTQ+-identifying people.
There have been significant strides for progress, but the fact that we're still having a conversation about the hardships of being gay reveals we still have a ways to go.
People Break Down Which Tasks Are Not As Simple As People Think They Are
Life isn't as simple as one may think. It's not always easy to take a step back and look at the big picture, but when there's over seven billion people on the planet, there's no way things are as cut and dry as they seem.
Everyone's experiences are different going through life. We may not be able to see the complexities it if we haven't lived it ourselves.
So we went to Reddit because we wanted to see what's not as simple as people think it is.
Redditor Queasy_Researcher_27 asked:
"What's not as simple as people think?"
There's never a bad time to learn something new, so keep reading to get a different perspective on life.
Driving a bus.
"Driving a bus. It's very tiring focusing on the road for up to 10 hours a day and having to look in the mirror every 5 to 8 seconds while making sure all your passengers are safe and well on top of try to work out what other motorists are gonna do in front and behind you."
"Really, driving in general should be like this but most people ignore most of these aspects and that's why we get accidents involving inattentive drivers."
"Thank you for taking your job seriously, though. An inattentive bus driver would be phenomenally dangerous."
- NFLinPDX
"I drove school buses for 5 years. And man I put up with some bs. I couldn't image a city/transit bus with strangers every day. I loved my bus babies, but they had days where my buttons were fully pushed."
"Stay safe and sane."
"I did it for 10 years and just had to quit 6 months ago. It's a shame spending that many years committed to a job where I finish up quitting because of the abuse."
Generational poverty.
"Getting out of poverty. Especially if you're born into it."
"This. Very few people who haven't experienced poverty, understand how systemic it is in keeping people trapped in it."
"Even grocery shopping while broke is hard....more money you have the easier it is to take advantage of the offers and weekly/daily deals."
"Its not even as simple as being poor. I think finding comfort in poor is a huge part of it."
"I was raised middle class. And being able to go out to a nice restaurant without worry was one of many luxuries that are now nostalgic to me. And even when my family dropped all support and I had to work up from nothing again, I was never comfortable until I was back there again."
"On the flip side, I have no idea what it would be like to be rich rich. Like designer clothes, fancy cars, knowing-the-right-people parties. There's a 'lane' of upper-middle class-rich that Is foreign to me and I have absolutely no desire to push or work to get to that. I wouldn't know what to do with it if I did."
"I'm not saying that those that grow up poor are stuck that way or don't know how to get out of it or anything like that, but there's something so damn nice about what-you-know. I can imagine if all you know is being broke AF it would be so much harder."
Mental health matters.
"Getting out of depression."
"'Just be happy.' Yeah Mom, I like being sad all the time..."
- SRTX_999
"'You're depressed? Why don't you just go ask for help?' - one of my psychology classmates."
JustMobsReddit
"chubby cat."
- Pakushy
"How to get out of depression in one easy step."
"Therapists hate him."
Relationships.
"Relationships! I thought it was simple. You love someone, they love you, that's all you need. Ohh how wrong I was haha."
"Welcome to the club. It's even worse when you have to give up before you even get a chance to truly love the person. You just have to go on with life knowing that you wanted to and were willing. So yeah, relationships, don't recommended those lol."
"Same. I could never understand why my friends would brake and then get back together with there a**hole ex's after what they made them go through until I was in my own relationship and had my own a**hole ex."
Moving on from relationships.
"Moving on, even when you want to."
"There are relationships I've moved past, but doubt I will ever truly 100% get over. Years of time, therapy, meditation, burying myself in my career, hitting the gym and getting in the best shape of my life and even now these people occupy more mental real estate and influence how I go about making decisions."
"Hey man that's natural, it's just what makes us human. As long as people can embrace that it is easier to understand and deal with."
"Relationships form the strongest memories, so it's natural for them to always be there and pop up when you least expect it."
Foreigners Explain Which Parts Of American Culture Seem Strange | George Takei’s Oh Myyy
"People are soo quick to say just 'move on' and 'leave them,' one of the thing I learned from a friendzone discussion several years ago is that its goddamm easy to keep someone invested in just enough so they still feel like they have a chance."
"There was a guy who was supposedly in 'relationship' with a girl for 4 years and only realized that he's got no chance when he stumbled up on her phone and he was marked as 'free desserts' in the contact list."
This effects the last two.
"Communication."
"None of us are ready to talk about this one bud."
"Learn English, it's super painful because it isn't consistent and [doesn't] make any sense most of the time (at least for a Spanish speaker)."
"It's worse for someone from a language like Russian, since you have to figure out what the hell an article is and how to use it (Slavic languages don't have them). My wife has been living in the US for 10 years and still routinely messes them up."
"There's also the inconsistency between when to add an S to a word. For nouns it's when they're plural. But for verbs it's when they're singular (third person)."
"And the TH sound can be very difficult for someone who is an adult to master, since vocal cords harden with age to your preferred language."
Entertainment creation.
"Making a movie, it takes hundreds of people to make a film and most of them actually put effort and care into the project."
"I went to a filmmaking summer camp for 2 weeks. While was SUPER fun, it took a lot of effort to put the movie together and I learned just how long it takes to really make a movie."
"Same goes for making games, hundreds of people sometimes who all care very much for the product they produce, however chewed up it gets by publishers."
- Caedis-6
Making friends as an adult.
"Making new friends as adults."
"Yeah this is me. When i was a kid I was just able to approach someone without thinking too much of it, I'd consider anyone I've talked to as a friend. Idk what age hit me when i realized that we're just acquaintances. Now I just can't go up to someone and make a conversation without an intention, and you also have to feel what that person is thinking. Maybe its just me overthinking this."
Living and surviving are not the same thing.
"That living is different from surviving."
"So which is more important, living or surviving?"
"I guess it's down to if you prefer quality or quantity."
"Well the whole argument is 'you need to survive to live, but you need to live to give that survival meaning.'"
"Then I guess we try to survive first and once we're good at that we start trying to live?"
"Kinda disagree. If life is so bleak that you're never 'living,' arguably merely surviving is only prolonging your suffering. Personally I also feel like my life isn't worth living since a long time ago, I just hadn't quit life because suicide is scary."
"I don't think life just becomes easy to live one day. We gotta try to make it easy. By finding little reasons or doing things that make it livable. It may never come to what we had expected from life, but it will be okay as long as we find reasons to live. I think trying to survive is also trying to live in some way."
"That gaining knowledge is not the same as being intelligent. You don't become intelligent when you gain knowledge, and you don't have to know a lot of things to be considered intelligent."
- Redditor
"What would you say makes a person intelligent?"
"I'd say their ability to solve problems. Either in understanding the problem or finding methods to solve it; or even understanding that they can't solve the problem and move on to something else."
"I'd call that absorbing information. Critical thinking and analysis is something else. And even then, I believe that there are people who are book smart and those who are street smart. Sometimes people have both but not always."
"An intelligent person is someone who is aware of how little they know and how big their own flaws are. The lower your intellect, the more you tend to overestimate your actual intelligence."
- Ikajo
Though these things are not as simple as they seem, we are all going through life together. At some point or another, we may find that we need to walk a mile in someone else's shoes to really understand the difficulty of the situation.
Variety is the spice of life. Without the difficulties and challenges that come along the way, life would be pretty boring.
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Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay |
Life has really become too much. At least that is what it feels like doesn't it? Every day of the past year and a half has been a struggle for many.
Smiles are difficult to produce when all your face wants to do is shed tears and frown. And that frown ain't turning upside down anytime soon.
This is why it is imperative that we keep mental health and awareness a part of our daily conversations. Life is hard, and with each breath it seems like it's only getting harder.
So let's check in on each other here...
Redditor u/conversepapi wanted to chat about the things in life that turn us all upside down by asking:
Unburden yourself here, what is destroying you right now?
I battle with depression. I've been doing this dance so long that I wouldn't even know what a fully happy life looks like. But I'm going to try. It's the "try" I've been avoiding for quite some time. So if you empathize with me, know you're not alone.
Career Path
Job GIFGiphy"I really like my job but it doesn't pay well and I'm torn between enjoying my work and making more money."
Talk to someone...
"I think about death all the time, I can't stop. It affects every aspect of my life. I can't find the motivation to do anything or the meaning in anything. Fearful of the future. Afraid of death. Nothing can fix this."
"This is a common sign of depression. Not every depressed person gets suicidal ideation, some of us get a preoccupation with death. Talk to someone. It doesn't have to be like this."
Focus on You
"Never feeling like I'm going to live up to my family's expectations for me."
"You're chasing the end of the rainbow, my friend. Take it from someone who has been running longer than Forrest Gump did."
"I feel you man, I have a super loving family and it hurts so much more knowing that their expectations are really high and I don't have the energy to improve myself."
Bye Kitty
"My cat is dying and I lost my job today. I hope he holds on I'm doing everything I freaking can. I literally told my boss I wanted the job because I need to help my dying cat in the interview. It was a self owned pet store. When she let me go she didn't even blink when I begged her to please not do this my cat will die."
"Some people really suck. I considered paying a homeless person to sh*t on her doorstep since they can just wear a mask. But idk. I started applying to jobs as soon as I got home."
First Steps...
Breathe Out GIF by Carlotta NotaroGiphy"I'm starting to realize how much of an alcoholic I really am."
Nothing
Cry Reaction GIF by SpongeBob SquarePantsGiphy"I'm just lost. I feel like I have nothing to show for. I've been in the worst depression of my life and I just don't know what to do anymore."
The Bad Dream
"Been interviewing for so long. So many places. I'm waiting for this job I really want bad. I have interviewed 4 times and am waiting for the call. If I don't get it I am trying to tell myself it will be ok but I know I will be crushed."
- Mapbot11
"Didn't even want to code again, but slowly you tell yourself if this is really what you want, then go and get it. You'll be okay even if you don't get it, you'll be sad for a little while but you'll pick yourself up, learn from the errors you did (assuming you get a report of where you didn't perform well) and try again with good preparation. :) Best of luck."
Things That Are Normal Where You Live But Crazy Anywhere Else | George Takei’s Oh Myyy
"back in the day"
"I don't have any friends. I have a beautiful wife, a wonderful daughter, a home, a good job, great relationships with nearby family, I can afford stuff, my life is honestly better than it has ever been. But, between moving a few times, becoming a parent, and covid, I don't think I actually have any friends anymore, at least not in the city I live in. Like I find myself wanting to hang out with people, only to realize... who?"
"It's harder because my wife has this incredible close group of friends who have all know each other their entire lives, and I've made friends with some of them, but it's not the same as someone you have history with. I'm realizing I'll never again kick it with someone who knew me "back in the day" and that makes me think that maybe THOSE weren't really friendships either, or else people would have stuck around. Rambling, sorry."
Pain Killers
"I got into a motorcycle wreck 6 months ago. I've been on Hydros for 6 months. I abuse them daily and take twenty 5/325 MG per day. And now I get 770 pills per month."
"bro taking that much tylenol will destroy your liver and cause immense future pain. if you're going to abuse the hydros lookup how to filter out tylenol."
Scarlett
"I miss my daughter, she died last year. March 30 2020. She was only five months old. I feel her absence with every breath. It actively feels like my heart is breaking everyday, all day. Chest pains won't go away. I wish I was on the moon with my sweet Scarlett June. RIP my darling girl, who was my whole world."
Dear Dad
Season 10 Hug GIF by FriendsGiphy"My dad is dying of pancreatic cancer. There's nothing more his doctors can do to help him. He doesn't have much time left."
Moral of the story? We have some serious self work to do. And the good news is that it's doable. We can overcome. Most of the time... we just have to want to. It's not always going to bright and that is ok. Stay stay calm and move forward.
If you or someone you know is struggling, you can contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
To find help outside the United States, the International Association for Suicide Prevention has resources available at https://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/
Image by SnapwireSnaps from Pixabay |
Nothing is as it seems. Well, sometimes somethings are just as they appear. But the first is a good mindset to have.
Never assume something, like a job is easy. There are so many layers and backdoor dramas to everyone's way to make a living.
Every job has details and responsibilities that outsiders will never know or understand and in some cases be able to accomplish.
People who do great work, make it look easy.
Redditor u/paikiachuwanted people to know about the careers that people take for granted by asking:
What job or profession seems easy but is actually very challenging?
On the outlook my jobs may seem simple, I'm an actor and a writer. So of course people assume, well that's a cakewalk; I promise you, it isn't. Learning lines and the life of a character is a trying task. Yes, there are far more difficult jobs in the world, but this one is mine. And it can be grueling. So be nice to me.
Puppies and Kittens...
"Just about any position at a Veterinary clinic. I get so tired of hearing how fun it must be to play with kittens and puppies all day.Yes, there are puppies and kittens but we don't play with them. We may sometimes sneak cuddles if time permits on a bad day. The reality is that most of the time we are dealing with clients who are rude and unreasonable. Or even worse sometimes, clients who would move mountains to save their pet but nothing can be done."
"And the smell gets bad sometimes, obv. Once you smell Parvo you never forget it. And expressing anal glands can be quite nasty as well. But the hardest part is euthanizing a geriatric or injured pet in one exam room, holding it together, and then entering the next exam room for a new puppy check. Be kind to your veterinary professionals."
Daytime Issues
"Daycare teacher. Draining, difficult, sometimes heartbreaking. Worst experience I ever heard was a kid (3y) that was explosively violent. Hitting, pinching, occasional biting, screaming till other classrooms complained, hair pulling to the point that she ripped out CHUNKS. They would pick up other kids by the hair, even ripping out some of mine. I LITERALLY started going bald because of this kid. My anxiety went through the roof, panic attacks galore."
"Cuz see, when they were doing all of this, I'm also conducting class, toilet training, serving lunch out snacks, keeping other kids safe. Soo of course I'm also having to explain to parents when their kid has another bruise, more hair pulled out, another bite mark. At the end of the day, it was the owners fault because they refused to kick the kid out. I've had great kids, great parents, great bosses even."
Tired Fingers
"Massaging humans is like never-ending arm and leg day at the gym. I don't think a lot of people know that second-handed. Just think when you're asking for a massage, how do you last before 'your fingers are tired'. Hint: if you're using your fingers you're doing it wrong anyway."
Crushed
Schitts Creek Comedy GIF by CBCGiphy"Veterinary Technician. Back breaking, brutal and emotional crushing work. You don't get to pet puppies and kittens all day. Also the pay is crappy."
I can relate to those on so many levels. I could never massage people who I'm not intimate with, I barely massage people who I AM intimate with. So bless those people. And it sounds like I should bring gifts to my vet's office.
Trauma
Season 10 Hug GIF by FriendsGiphy"Social work especially when working with traumatized people. The amount of emotional pressure you have to deal with is insane. If you don't have excellent coping strategies and are not 100% professional this job will break you."
Putting down the sleep...
"I always thought being an anesthesiologist would be the easiest job in the OR. Cover the patients mouth with some sleepy gas and kick back with a magazine until the procedure is over. Turns out it's an additional 4-5 year residency with multiple gruelling exams and that's after completing your medical training."
Emotions High
"I thought nursing would be way easier than it turned out to be. I thought it would be technically difficult (actual physical skills) and emotionally difficult (in terms of trauma and seeing people suffering) but It's actually really draining; dramatic coworkers, demanding patients, bad bosses, angry families."
- lhuthien
Stand Up
"I don't if it really fits this post because it is already pretty obviously hard and dangerous, but, damn. Hardest job I ever had and I had some hard ones. 14 hours standing in place using both arms to grab trash flying by and throwing it into one of four various bins set up around you."
"Even though it's straightforward, it's mentally exhausting to think that quickly and constantly while having to execute physically. There's no rhyme or reason to what's coming down the chute so its not rhythmic like manufacturing or quality control. Truly difficult work."
- rvrdrppr
Bless the Chef
Henry Danger Wow GIF by NickelodeonGiphy"Cooking in my opinion, once considered it until I realized how pressuring it is... lol."
"Literally everyone I know who works kitchen staff is at least somewhat angry as a person lol, it seems like it must be very stressful."
So what have we learned? Be kind to your waiters first and foremost. Well be kind to everyone, but even more kind to any people in customer service. There is so much happening behind the scenes there. And don't assume about anyone's choice of job by degree of difficulty or lack.
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Lawyers are faced with upholding the law or challenging the law every working day of their lives.
Sometimes, the case challenges the lawyer's own moral code. Those challenges really define how those people practice law--and they possibly change it.
u/HEYNONGMAN0 asked:
Lawyers of Reddit, what is the most morally challenging case that you've worked on?
Here were some of those answers.
Family Law
Family law attorney here. I've done plenty of divorces and custody dispute cases, that most stuff doesn't get to me. It's only when the kids are put in a bad situations between one or both of the parents being some type of addicts that really gets to me.
One that was especially hard for me was a divorce where I represented dad. Mom was a raging alcoholic that would bring random guys home many nights from the bar while the dad was working. I saw video and heard phones calls from their little boy calling the dad at work at like 2AM because he was tired, but couldn't go to sleep because mom was playing loud music and had "friends" over still partying.
I was on the right side of that one, but seeing and hearing that stuff with the little boy really got to me.
Basic Necessities
During my days of insurance defense, I spent one lovely afternoon bickering with counsel for a co-defendant over who would be responsible for paying the $5000 that was keeping us from settling. We did this while on-site at the plaintiff's home for a deposition. Plaintiff was hit by a semi-truck (i.e., the truck hit his actual body) on the interstate, and while it managed not to kill him, it tore off an arm and a leg, and shattered most of everything else. He was almost entirely immobile, confined to a power chair that he could barely operate, and confided to us that if he had function in his remaining hand, he'd shoot himself.
Oh, the $5000? It was based on an estimate to renovate his bathroom so that he could actually use it. He'd been using a bedpan in the living room.
I felt like a complete jerk sitting in front of him and arguing about such an insignificant sum.
Betrayal
My friend's dad is an attorney. He started out in criminal defense, and lucked out on one of his first cases. A friend he'd known for years' wife was horribly murdered while he was away, dismembered with an axe. Her body had been found by a fluke, and there was a tiny bit of circumstantial evidence pointing to the husband. He was an upstanding citizen, the two had never fought, it was a silly case. The lawyer got the husband acquitted, and while they were having celebratory drinks, the husband admitted he'd actually done it.
My friend's dad walked out of the bar and switched to corporate law.
Repeat Offenders
Please don't ask for specifics.
Had a case where a guy shot and killed a security guard that slapped him across the face for selling drugs near a store.
I knew the guy had done it.
It was close to midnight, the crime scene had poor lighting and the shooter wore a hoodie. Only eye witness that showed up for the trial had told the police at the time of the crime that the suspect was black. The defendant wasn't caucasian but wasn't black either. That, IMO, was the argument that won the jury over. Defendant found not guilty.
He thanks me while in tears. His mother and grandmother bring me cake and a thank you note afterwards.
Less than a year later I'm watching the news and they're reporting a crime where a crew held up three families hostage while robbing their apartments. They beat up the janitor very bad. They tied the families up and locked them in one of the apartment's bathroom while threatening to thow a grenade inside if any of them decided to wisen up.
For a brief second one of the robbers looks right into an elevator camera before spray-painting it. Close-up on the guys face.
I think you can imagine whose face I was looking at.
In Spite Of
I represented a mom in a custody case. Both parents fighting for primary. Mom was admittedly a mess and suffering from some mental health issues. Dad took the kid and didn't bring them back for a few months in violation of the order. I got the kid back. Then met with mom and kid and realized kid was doing way better with dad and should be with him. Tried to reason with mom, she didn't listen. Ultimately the child protection office got involved and child was placed with dad. I last saw mom many years ago and she was still not in a super healthy place and child was still with dad. So best ending happened and not because of me.
Corporate Evils
Not my case, but at a previous firm, a partner sent out a firm-wide email congratulating his team on a great win. It detailed how their win meant that our client, Giant Fossil Fuel Company, wasn't liable for damage to the environment caused by leaks in their pipes. Instead, the tax payers would be covering the cost. The partner went on to say something to the effect of "this saves our client $x billion a year in environmental cleanup and pipe maintenance."
For some reason, even though it wasn't my case, that one has always stuck with me.
In Prison
Did a bail hearing back in my second year of practice as duty counsel, think public defender type role. The guy had trapped his girlfriend in the cab of his pickup. Twisted one arm up behind her back to her shoulder and broke it. Then did the other side.
I had to run the bail hearing for him. While she and her family were sitting in the front row of the court. She had both arms in casts and in slings. Thankfully, his surety (the person posting his bail) melted down on the stand and we had to adjourn. By the time he was up for bail again he'd retained private counsel. Who put the same surety up on the stand even after I warned him not to. In front of the same Justice.
Upside? He got detained.
Open And At Large
I don't typically do family law but I have a case where we suspected the mother had munchausen by proxy, which if you've seen the Hulu movie "Gypsy" you know how messed up it is. The child was always fine with the dad. But mom would take the child to the doctor every other day. When they didn't give the answer mom wanted, she'd get a second, third (etc) opinion. Mom was oddly close to the nurses and doctors. Child had some type of cancer where child needed a colostomy bag and mom didn't clean it. It was infected so bad that child can't wear it anymore and child is getting more sick and dying. Mom (allegedly) pushed her child in the shower and it messed up their head. It's possible mom is feeding her drugs too because child puked blood from time to time. Now the child has seizures once a week from the shower incident. Mom spent $400,000 on medical bills in one year. Mom made a fraudulent GoFundMe and only used ~$200 of the thousands received on medical bills. The page has since been removed, and the case is still open until we can find more experts to testify.
Get Out (Leave) Right Now
MLMs are considered pyramid schemes in my country and both are banned in order to protect consumers. It's a crime to establish an MLM. Public prosecution here got wind of an MLM operating and shut it down, closing up the premises and everything.
My firm was hired by the MLM to defend their case and establish to the public prosecution that they should be able to continue to operate. I had to prep all the defences while absolutely DESPISING MLMs and thinking that they're run and operated by predatory pieces of shit.
We had several high up employees from the MLM's head office in the US fly halfway across the world to us multiple times for status update meetings (lasting 15-30 minutes or so) that could have literally been done over email or conference call. Nope; they just had so much money to burn off the backs of vulnerable people who have 0 chance of succeeding in "their business" that a gang of them would fly over every so often to ask "so how's it going?"
I thanked my lucky stars every time the public prosecution rejected one of our arguments and eventually the MLM gave up and cleared out of the country. Never been so happy that my arguments were unsuccessful.