Useful Bits of Tid

Penelope Trunk says that bloggers should be useful to their readers each time they post. Well. She blogs to dispense useful and interesting information. I blog to purge my thoughts and feelings before I do and say destructive things. Some people are creative in the kitchen. I can't cook a baked potato, so I am creative when I write, and sometimes when I talk.

But maybe Penelope knows her stuff. Just in case, I will give you three bits of useful information.

Penelope does NOT rhyme with the word cantaloupe (no matter how many times I read it that way).

Court is very, very cold. Bring a sweater.

Read what the Slackmistress had to say about networking. Even if you're not in Hollywood, even if you're not in the entertainment business. Almost all her advice applies to every industry, and it's fabulous advice.

Making the Job Sweeter

On Monday I started temping at a new law firm. It's a real shock to go from a well-oiled machine, where there's a form for everything and a department that handles every issue that comes up, to one where you are introduced to someone and told he is both the IT guy and the paralegal, introduced to someone else only to find out she is both an associate and the billing coordinator.

When I asked which attorneys I work for, nobody could tell me. When I asked for a list of clients, people gave me blank looks. When I pointed out that there are no name plates outside of people's offices, people shrugged. Four people had to work on getting me a map of the office so I have a way of finding people. It's a very disorganized firm. I've been having a hard time this week. By today at lunch time I had saved three documents to the system and entered one person's time. Since starting there Monday morning. Um yeah - that should have taken me a half hour in a normal place.

Yesterday the HR guy pulled me aside and told me flat-out that the partnership will never pay the recruiter's fee (20% of my yearly salary) so they never hire anyone temp to perm, and he just wanted to let me know up front. But none of the other office staff know this, and they're all talking to me as if I'll be there forevermore. Meanwhile, I have a "I'm just filling in for now" attitude.

This morning I had a meeting with the HR guy and the one permanent secretary and at one point, the secretary got so upset she had to leave the room. It was a bit awkward. I can not get enough information to do any one task through to completion on my own. So I told the secretary maybe it'd work best if we proceed as if I'm her assistant, and she can just send me off to scan documents or research judge's standing orders or whatever.

That did not work for her - she wants me to act like I'm in this mess with her and instead of saying, "What can I do to help you?" she'd rather I say, "Let's figure out together how we can get this done." Okay. So even though I don't know what it IS that needs to be done, I tried to do that. Not just because she asked, but also because she was literally vibrating with frustration during our meeting, and that scared me a little bit.

By the afternoon we'd gotten some objectives laid out and I was able to electronically file one pleading and arrange a service to file another. The HR guy came by on his way home to check on our progress, and gave each of us a fancy chocolate bar for perseverence. I think he spent his own money to get them. I was really touched.

As an aside, you know how people always have little tricks for remembering things about people's names? Like Messy Meredith or Sweaty Scott? Well, one of the attorneys stood right near my desk and talked about his new baby to someone. Later I got told to ask him about a letter for a pro bono case but I wasn't sure of his name, and asked, "The new baby lawyer?" Well, now everyone is calling him New Baby.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: I am not even kidding you - was just handed ANOTHER chocolate bar from the same company! This time it comes from a vendor trying to get us to use their services, but who ever gets fancy chocolate twice in two days?

Culture Shock in a Law Firm

The very first law office I worked for, back when I was 21, was a sole practitioner's firm. It was me, her, and a law student who was Orthodox and lived in the Bronx. The great thing about working in a small firm is that you get to do everything. I answered phones, drafted letters, and sent out bills - all the regular secretarial things. I also got to do all the other things that needed doing too though - calling clients to bug them to pay their bills, fixing broken copier machines, buying office supplies, babysitting the toddler when my boss brought her in to work, helping her brother create his resume.

Several times I went to court - not to talk to judges of course, except for that one time accidentally - to drop off documents or look for them in the court file. Once I even walked a client out to her car because she was scared of her future ex-husband who was there for a meeting. Another day I went to my bosses' house to babysit for her daughter instead of working, because that was what was most helpful that day.

I went from that job to a big law firm, complete with mail guys and office services and a man named Lloyd whose entire job was to run around the office fixing anything that went wrong - from needing a new chair to not being able to reach a doctor (maybe that wasn't part of his job description, but one day my coworker was having massive diabetes-related pain and couldn't get through to a doctor, so he sat on the phone for hours trying to find one who could help her that day, it was very sweet), to making sure the walkway was clear of snow and ice for clients coming in.

There was a procedure for everything. There was a department for everything. I do best at these firms - the bigger ones that have support, like word processing departments and help desks.

For the last three weeks I was at one of those huge firms. The type that have a computer program for reserving a conference room. The type where there's someone whose job it is to put the used mugs into the dishwashers and make coffee each morning and order lunch for meetings.

As temp jobs often do, that job ended, and today I started a new one. Apparently they had a different temp last week, but they fired her because she wasn't working out. So today they got me. It's a small firm, with about a dozen attorneys who are firmly divided into two distinct camps: half are old, with old-people names like Boris and Bertha, and half are young and hot. There is ONE secretary. Plus me. Yeah.

Now some of you work at law firms and are thinking "Six lawyers per secretary? What's the problem?" But those of you thinking that work in high-stress environments. Ideally the spread is two to four attorneys per secretary, depending on the workload. Some partners are egomaniacs and refuse to share their secretary, and some associates are actually so busy that their secretary barely has time for another person.

Apparently the lead secretary left a week ago. They haven't replaced her yet. This firm is not just small, it's also not organized. They have no systems in place for anything. The other secretary asked me to proof a letter to a client before she sent it out and the formatting was all off. When I asked how they generally format their letters she said there was no template.

Once I temped at a firm where the IT guy was also an associate. When my computer wouldn't let me use a program another secretary went into his office and made him get off the phone with a client to tend to my computer. This firm is not quite that bad, but it's close.

There are some people who would love the position I'm in - they'd love to swoop in and get them all organized and running efficiently. I would love that too, except that the reality is that old people don't change. This firm doesn't even have a document management system. They compost and print double-sided and scan everything rather than making copies, yet when I asked for a client list people got flustered. When I couldn't get into the drive where completed documents are stored the IT guy told me to just close down and try again tomorrow morning.

Last Friday when I left the bigger firm I got three hugs goodbye, one Facebook friend request, one offer to take me out to lunch this week, and two heartfelt emailed goodbyes. The gay HR guy was trying to bring me on board permanently, but got stuck when he tried to get the green light. He came to say goodbye to me Friday afternoon and promised to keep trying. The other women I worked near assured me he doesn't make empty promises, that if he said he'd try, he will. My fingers are crossed.

Of course I will do the best I can at this firm, but I think long-term I'll do better at the bigger one.

Something Interesting Happened On My Lunch Hour Today

I ran into Cat Lady on the street! You remember her, don't you? Well, we met at the corner and smiled at each other. She'd dyed her hair a new color, and I said, "Wow, you dyed your hair!" and thank goodness that's all that came out of my mouth because my main thought was, "It looks SO MUCH better than that yellow pee color you used to dye it!"

Cat Lady's response? "I did it to match my cats." Ah. I see nothing much has changed in her life.

She tells me the Gay HR Guy isn't there anymore. I don't tell her that I'm Facebook friends with him and know that. Cat Lady says they moved her desk to the other side of the floor, and now she sits right in front of the new HR guy's office, and she hates it, and hates him. That I have no idea how terrible that is. I remind her about how close I used to sit to the Gay HR Guy (the HR guy at the firm I'm temping at now is also gay - is there something about HR that attracts gay guys?). "Didn't you hate it?" Cat Lady asks me.

I shrug as we stand outside Walgreens. It never bothered me, to be honest.

And that's the end of that. Cat Lady was going into Walgreens and I was continuing on down the block, so we parted ways.