Karen Dillon posted this on LinkedIn recently. It’s about something I described, from the other side, in A Modest Book About How To Make An Adequate Speech:
Not long after that, back in England, I got my first job as a journalist.
On my very first day, I was shouted at on the phone by a dozen of the most senior people in the industry I was covering. Remembering my experience (not) selling Time magazine subscriptions, it wasn’t long before I was shaking, my knees literally knocking together.
Here’s what happened. I was given a desk and a list of the top 100 law firms in London, plus a list of all the partners in each one. My job was to phone the partners at every firm and ask how their financial year had gone. I had to find out their gross turnover; profit margin; how profit was shared, and between how many partners; what junior and senior partners earned; and how long it took partners to reach the top.
There was no reason why anybody should answer my questions. It was none of my business. And lawyers, in those days, didn’t talk to journalists.
My heart raced, but I picked up the phone and started making calls. Within hours, I had spoken to hundreds of very senior lawyers. Most slammed the phone down within seconds. A few listened for a while, perhaps amused by my cheek.
For two days, that was the extent of my success. I wondered if I would be fired.
On the third day, a man at a firm I’d not heard of – but which turned out to be one of the very biggest – gasped in disbelief: “Wait a minute!” he said. “You want me to tell you how much I earn? And my partners?”
I said: Yes, please. And because I expected him to hang up, as everybody else had done, I started scanning my lists for the next person to call.
But he didn’t hang up. He did something different. He gently placed the receiver down on his desk – I heard the soft tap of plastic on wood – then moved across the room towards a filing cabinet, which I heard him opening.
My heart was pounding.
He closed the drawer and came back. I heard a whump as he put down (I guessed) a heavy file. He picked up the receiver again. “What do you want to know…?”
He gave me everything. Afterwards, I sat back in my chair with immense satisfaction, and prepared to deliver this rather explosive material to my new colleagues. I felt like Churchill preparing to announce the end of the war.