I mean, I could see what people meant, how fierce he could be. When he first started, he sent some of my reports back with a curt note to correct them. Immediately. They weren’t wrong, just…a bit sloppy, I guess. I should have been crushed I’d appeared on his radar, when most of the other staff told me to keep my head down if at all possible. I mean, I was crushed, of course.
But sometimes I heard him talking with excitement to a client on the phone, or approving of a clerk’s work that had been done really well, and I saw the sparkle of passion and satisfaction in his eye. I’d seen him work late on stuff someone else had messed up, until it was up to his standard and wouldn’t embarrass either his team or the firm. I’d heard him stand up to a fellow manager whom we all knew was useless but
