A [Not So True] Raul Roco Story

Over bottles of beer last Friday night, a very senior partner at a major law firm told us his Raul Roco story.  What follows is not what he actually said or what actually happened.  You can imagine  the beer and the conversation got in the way.  But I hope I got it right.  Otherwise, this guy is liable to grab me by my collar and say “What’s your problem, Disini?”

First we preface by saying this all takes place in a job interview between this very senior partner and a (I suppose) newly-minted lawyer, Raul Roco.  The interviewer has his own style.  He figures that if the applicant got as far as his office, he’s probably smart enough to work in the firm.  If not, then something must be terribly wrong with his hiring committee. 

So, this interview is anything but conventional.  

The senior partner lays out the rules:  First, he will ask the applicant to name a field (”any field”;  he says Dick Gordon chose movies). Next, the applicant will ask him a question in the field.  If the senior partner answers correctly, he then gets to ask a question. And on and on like an iterative, stump-the-senior partner ’till the beer runs out. 

Now that I think about it,  the game doesn’t really end, does it?  A friend years back told me his interview with this senior partner began over lunch and ended right before dinner, but that’s another story.

Back to Raul Roco.

The scene is a tastefully decorated senior partner’s office in Makati (not yet a City).  The senior partner is at his desk scribbling away at a document that some client or other needs “the day before yesterday.” A young lawyer enters fresh from a round of interviews with other partners in the firm.  The senior partner looks up, waves him in and points to the chair.  The applicant takes his  seat.

Senior Partner:  “Wait. I’m in the middle of something.”

[ten minutes later]

Senior Partner: “So, you’re  .  .  .  Raul Roco.  Hmmm.  San Beda Law . . . Good grades .  .  .

[He explains the rules]

SP:  “Name your field.”

Roco:  [pauses to think]  “English Literature”

SP:  [Unperturbed] “Okay.  Fire away.”

Roco:  “LET us go then, you and I,
          When the evening is spread out against the sky
          Like a patient etherised upon a table”

SP: [thinks for a second]  T.S. Eliot.  “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock“

Roco:  “Your turn.”

SP: “Wait a minute.  You said English literature.  T.S. Eliot, that is, Thomas Stearns Eliot was an American, wasn’t he?”

Roco:  “True. Born in St. Louis, Missouri.”

SP: “So it’s American literature.”

Roco: “No.  He immigrated to Great Britain in the ’20s and became a British citizen.”

SP:  “But he was an American when he wrote Prufrock.”

Roco: “And a British subject when he won the Nobel Prize.”

This is where Donald Trump enters the room and announces “YOU’RE HIRED!”