Students with fuzzy career ambitions can take comfort in the story of Jim Sicilian, head of Hartford law firm DayPitney.
Sicilian had been a math major in college, aiming to work in the still-young computer industry. As he neared graduation, the few interviews he had with company recruiters turned him off to the idea.
“I was maybe a little young to deal with the concept of white shirts and ties every day. The one person I remember meeting didn’t seem like he was having that much fun,” he said.
Law school seemed like a more enjoyable way to prolong his school days, and it eventually paid off. But it’s perhaps understandable that Sicilian expected “fun” to combine with work. His longest-standing jobs up until college graduation had been at a golf course and his father’s liquor store.
Not that the jobs were one long joy ride. Sicilian’s father didn’t allow any alcohol-related monkey business at his shop in Milford, including any underage drinking. Sicilian took care of the grounds before he turned 18 and worked as a stockboy and cashier when he got older.
And while Sicilian got to play the occasional free round of golf with his buddies during his golf caddying days, he still had to spend his days lugging clubs down the fairway, sometimes for less-than-pleasant golfers.
He started the caddying job at age 12 and continued through high school. It’s where he got his first lessons in dealing with people and learning patience. Many people at the golf course were great, he said, but there’s the inevitable patron who makes unreasonable demands.
“You had to figure out a way to keep them all happy, or at least survive the experience,” he said.
Fun, In Moderation
As for his dad’s liquor store, Sicilian got to see his father in action. Their shop was a typical neighborhood store, with a slew of regular customers who the Sicilians got to know over time. Sicilian’s father didn’t just mechanically peddle alcohol — if he thought a customer was ordering too much alcohol, he would find a way to lower or diminish their supply.
As with most retail outlets, Sicilian got to see a number of different personality types walk in the door, and he learned the best way to interact with all of them. That job, as well as the caddying work, played the biggest role in determining how he learned to deal with people.
In college, Sicilian held a few other odd jobs: He worked a roadside truck stop in Milford, selling CB radios and cowboy boots to road-weary truckers who stopped over to sleep in a nearby motel or gas up their rigs.
Sicilian’s working life would have turned out very differently if he’d stuck with the computer industry, he said. It most likely would have been pretty lucrative, as it turns out. But a legal career seems to have been the right choice, even if the decision was based on less-weighty factors.
“I was convinced that staying in school for awhile was probably more fun,” he said.
