I read this a lot of years ago. It's subtitle is "The Secret Life of Sydney Biddle Barrows".
She is descended from someone who arrived in America on The Mayflower and she wanted to go into fashion and had fashion-related education. She became a low-level buyer at a department store or something and then I think her new boss was corrupt and taking kickbacks and buying stuff of inadequate quality.
When she confronted her boss and tried to insist on buying good quality products appropriate to the needs of their customers, she ended up fired. So while on unemployment and job hunting and struggling, a friend of hers said "Hey, I know how you can make good money under the table and all you have to do is ANSWER PHONES."
So this is how she ended up working for a call girl service answering phones and booking appointments for the sex workers employed there. And the boss was such a raging ASSHOLE, she was like "I could do a better job just doing the OPPOSITE of everything he does." like paying the girls what they were owed when a client stiffed them, as one example.
So she got fired from a legitimate job for having ethics and she quit an illegitimate job and opened a call girl service herself because she had ethics and felt that in both cases, having ethics was just good business. She ran such a classy business that some clients told her "I have stopped hiring hookers when I go to other cities because they never measure up to your girls."
Eventually, she was busted and charged with running a prostitution ring. So one of the first things she and her lawyer did was announced they would like to call all the LAWYERS who were clients of thiers as witnesses and ask them if they had hired prositutes from her escort service and paid for sex or if they had hired companionship by the hour as she claimed and which is perfectly legal.
The judge in the case quickly realized that if they called a long list of New York lawyers to testify and those lawyers lawyered up, this one case could freeze up the entire New York City legal system for months and have repercussions for years. So they slapped her with some kind of minimal fine and got her the HELL out of there without really trying her.
This was dubbed a "Kiss on the wrist" instead of a slap on the wrist in local articles. It's an obscure legal term you have probably not heard before.
She is descended from someone who arrived in America on The Mayflower and she wanted to go into fashion and had fashion-related education. She became a low-level buyer at a department store or something and then I think her new boss was corrupt and taking kickbacks and buying stuff of inadequate quality.
When she confronted her boss and tried to insist on buying good quality products appropriate to the needs of their customers, she ended up fired. So while on unemployment and job hunting and struggling, a friend of hers said "Hey, I know how you can make good money under the table and all you have to do is ANSWER PHONES."
So this is how she ended up working for a call girl service answering phones and booking appointments for the sex workers employed there. And the boss was such a raging ASSHOLE, she was like "I could do a better job just doing the OPPOSITE of everything he does." like paying the girls what they were owed when a client stiffed them, as one example.
So she got fired from a legitimate job for having ethics and she quit an illegitimate job and opened a call girl service herself because she had ethics and felt that in both cases, having ethics was just good business. She ran such a classy business that some clients told her "I have stopped hiring hookers when I go to other cities because they never measure up to your girls."
Eventually, she was busted and charged with running a prostitution ring. So one of the first things she and her lawyer did was announced they would like to call all the LAWYERS who were clients of thiers as witnesses and ask them if they had hired prositutes from her escort service and paid for sex or if they had hired companionship by the hour as she claimed and which is perfectly legal.
The judge in the case quickly realized that if they called a long list of New York lawyers to testify and those lawyers lawyered up, this one case could freeze up the entire New York City legal system for months and have repercussions for years. So they slapped her with some kind of minimal fine and got her the HELL out of there without really trying her.
This was dubbed a "Kiss on the wrist" instead of a slap on the wrist in local articles. It's an obscure legal term you have probably not heard before.