Here's Some Syrup, Now Get Out

The partner is back from his two-week vacation to Montreal. He bought a six-pack of little plastic bottles of syrup and gave one to me, telling me three times, "It's real syrup." Well thank you! I was touched that he thought of the temp while on vacation.

This is probably my last week here. I was told to put the employee contract Office Manager sent out in Partner's pile of mail. Of course I looked through it quickly to see how much they're paying her. A salary that would have been just fine with me. She is going to try to give only one week's notice at her current job (where is it? can I have it?) and start here on Monday. I am trying not to be crushed. Or drink my syrup straight from the bottle, circa 1982 (yes Mom, I confess now).

Wow, how much do you think that would freak these people out? If I just sat here at the reception desk, swigging from the syrup bottle.

Shut. Up.

For the last four weeks I've been temping in a penthouse office in Union Square. This sounds fancier than it is - there are no good views. Also, despite doing legal secretary work, I sit at a reception desk and also do reception work. It's been many years since I've fetched people coffee. This is awkward, because I don't actually know how to make coffee. Anyway, picture a square. You walk up the stairs to the penthouse at the top left, and my desk is at the top center, and offices are all around me. The lawyer I work for has sub-tenants who rent office space. One is cool (not just because he's gay and has a lisp), and the others are all weird. Oh, and all the offices surrounding my reception desk? They're above me, by two steps. That's right; I sit in a sunken living room.



The lawyer was either so busy or so overwhelmed (not sure which yet) that he had a personal assistant for about half a year. I asked her one day if anyone ever fell down the stairs. Not only am I paranoid about falling myself, but I keep watch any time anyone is on the move, in case they fall. I want to be ready to laugh. Sadly, she said nobody has bit it, but she's tripped over the door frames several times. So now I'm paranoid about that too.



The lawyer has an office manager/paralegal who is a very nice black lady. She gets lots of personal calls - to the point that I've started recognizing some of her callers, and earlier in the week something big was going on - I think she may have broken up with her boyfriend - and a lot of people who seemed deaf were calling. It was fun (for me).



Them: Yeah, Shaniqua Watkins there?
Me: Is this Gwen?
Them: What?

Me: May I tell her who's calling?
Them: IT'S GWEN!

Me: Just a moment please.



There's also an associate who works here. She's tall and thin and WASPy, but with brown hair instead of blond. She was so distant with me, and quiet with perfect posture, that I told Golden Boy I was determined to find a work-appropriate way to hug her, just to make her squirm. If you're just now deciding I'm cruel, to that I say, "Haven't you been paying attention? Keep up!"


The ironic thing is there are people who think I'm very stiff and formal. So you know if I'm thinking someone else is that way they must be totally frozen! I decided to make it my life mission to warm this associate up. I looked up her bio on the firm website. Turns out she worked at the same firm I did, a few years before I got there. This was my IN.

The day before yesterday when I'd come back from lunch her husband and children were leaving. I asked her kids if they had fun seeing where their mom worked and they nodded politely. Associate told me her husband was a fireman so his workplace was much more exciting. So I said something about how we needed to get a playground on our rooftop in order to compete with the firehouse.

Yesterday I told Associate she was the second female attorney I'd met whose husband is a firefighter. How the first one was a partner at a law firm in New York and worked as a judge in night court. I didn't tell her they wound up divorced. We wound up having a nice talk, and I worked in the fact that I'd worked at the same law firm she had.

Now, I'm kind of trying to get a job here, so I didn't want to talk smack about that old law firm. But there is a lot of smack to be talked, because that law firm sucked ass. I ran into the receptionist from there on the street about a year ago, and she told me the firm had fallen apart during our current economic crisis.

By the way, this receptionist gave me very good advice when I first moved to San Francisco: when walking in a city, always make eye contact with drivers before stepping into their paths. It helps drivers be more aware of pedestrians.

Anyway, so now Associate and I are chatting about the founding partners of this sucky firm. One of them was total hell to work for, and now Associate was telling me he wasn't just cruel to secretaries, but associates as well. She mentioned working there when he was going through his divorce.

Me: To Eileen? She died.
Associate: Shut. Up.
Me: Mmm hmm. She died.
Associate: Shut! Up!

I grinned a tiny bit. I found a way to give a work-appropriate hug, albeit a verbal one. The ice had cracked, and now we had bonded. She told me how that partner had had a drinking issue, how she barely lasted a year there, how after she left she had PTSD at her new job, always doubting her writing abilities. We totally bonded and gossiped and had a grand old time chatting about all sorts of random shit for the better part of an hour.

So yeah. Watch out. I'm not afraid to hug you.