Anonymous-Looking White Guys Put on Blue Shirts and Infiltrate Firm

I've long held a theory that if you are holding a clipboard and act like you know what you are doing, you can probably enter a lot of places from which you would otherwise be excluded. Shad has a similar theory involving carrying a computer monitor--it is applied in situations where you need to explain the need to park illegally. In fact I had such confidence in this theory in undergrad that I regularly parked in front of Murphy Hall on Church Street, an area that is not even close to being a legal parking spot (and that is conveniently located within a four-second walk to the front door of the J-school) with the intention of explaining that I was delivering a computer monitor if I was ever caught. Somehow I was never ticketed, which simply emboldened me. Now that I am old and wizened, I feel proud of Young Anna's audacity; I'm sure now that I wasn't ticketed because whoever was in charge--They--assumed no one would be stupid enough to park on the sidewalk in front of the building unless there was a damned good reason for it.

I digress. Here is the story: I work in a big firm, but I do recognize my coworkers. Yesterday I saw two men milling around my floor whom I did not recognize. But they were wearing blue button-down shirts, which gave me pause. They must be lawyers, right? This is the uniform of lawyer-dudes. (If my current workload lets up I am going to walk around the firm and conduct a survey of shirt colors. I'm guessing 60% blue; 30% white; 10% other.) But I was suspicious; I was not going to be tricked by the blue shirts. I conducted an investigation and eventually found seven contract lawyers locked in a room reviewing documents. (Four of the seven (57%) were wearing blue shirts.) So, they say they are contract lawyers, but I believe it is actually a cabal of blue-shirt vigilantes who are emptying all the paper trays and staplers when I'm not looking.