BOSTON. A year ago, Emily Nednick was a rising star at the law firm where she worked, churning out billable hours and working on sensitive assignments for established clients. Then, a casual comment caused it all to come crashing down around her.
“Why didn’t I stick to the weather . . . and sports?”
“We had a reception for a bank client who asked us to review their forms,” she says, her forehead lined with furrows that she fears have become permanent. “I said that it seemed absurd to pay us $10,000 to re-define their prime rate as ‘The rate we say is our Prime Rate’–like something out of Alice in Wonderland.”
The client agreed, and the following Monday a senior partner in the firm received a call from Robert McAveer, the bank’s general counsel, asking for a significant discount from the bill. “She was such a pleasant young lady,” McAveer says, “and she saved us a pile of dough.”
“Must . . . pretend . . . we care.”
Emily was fired the next day, a setback that she recovered from only recently after undergoing personality-removal surgery at a large teaching hospital here where the procedure first advanced beyond the experimental stage. “Many young people are naturally suited to succeed in the professions because they are born without personalities,” says Dr. Wilfred Marion. “For the rest of them, we do the best we can.”
“New accounting standards out soon? Cool!”
For Robert Falto, the surgery has allowed him to advance rapidly through the ranks at Curad, Toney & Parker, a mid-size regional accounting firm, after he was laid off by a larger national firm. “I was in an elevator with a partner and a client and I made the mistake of expressing a political opinion,” he notes ruefully. “I should have just stared at my shoes, like everybody else.”
“Statistics don’t lie–the more you talk, the less you make.”
Personality-removal surgery operates on the same principle as weight-loss surgery, but with a different organ under the knife. “We go into the medulla oblongata, not the stomach,” says Dr. Marion, referring to the portion of the brain that connects with the spinal cord. “We remove tissue containing matter other than the weather, sports, kids and ‘How was your weekend?’”
Some graduate students in professional schools are taking the precaution of having the surgery performed before all-important interviews in their final year, hoping to avoid an embarrassing miscue that could cost them a lucrative job offer. Are there any side-effects to the surgery, this reporter asks Gary Blardzewski, an accounting major. “Sure is a nice day,” he replies. “How ’bout those Patriots?”