It's Beginning To Look a Lot Like Christmas (At the End of Chanukah)

Several months ago, I was asked to go temp at a law firm I'd been to previously. But they didn't have me working with the same two partners I'd worked with in the past. Instead, they had me working with another legal secretary who was covering half a dozen attorneys (this is a lot). It didn't go well. She had me and two other people helping her with a project - each of us worked on a different aspect of it, and she was the only one who had the full picture of what was going on.

The simple explanation is that some guy was supposed to create a list of contacts, then I was supposed to print out a slew of shit, and send it to each person on the list. This other secretary found that someone who was supposed to get a packet, didn't. She told the office manager, and they wound up essentially firing me. To say I was crushed doesn't even cover it. I was sure the temp agency that sent me there would never send me anywhere else again.

Luckily I was wrong. To me it seemed like a huge, huge deal. But Monday morning I got a frantic call from the same agency saying they'd been trying to reach me since Friday and wanted me to go to an immigration law firm. The guy said he had someone else there, but if I was available, he'd pull that person and send me because he felt I'd be a better fit.

I wish he'd been honest and just flat-out told me it's doing reception work. It's pretty easy to figure out within two seconds of being shown to your (reception) desk, but I'd just appreciate the honesty. It sure explains why it pays $10 an hour less than what I normally get. Ego is not an issue with me - if I were offered a permanent reception position I'd take it in a heartbeat. Sure, I can't make coffee and hate cleaning my own dishes let alone cleaning other people's dishes, but whatever - a job would be divine.

But whatever. The worst thing you can do as a receptionist is to drop phone calls, and make mistakes in transferring people to the wrong attorneys. It's harder than you'd think when five or more lines are ringing at once, someone's standing at your desk talking to you, and two people are having a loud conversation nearby making it hard to hear the person on the phone. So I'm pleased that two days in I haven't dropped any calls, though I do seem to spend a lot of time saying, "I'm sorry, would you mind repeating your name? And you were calling to speak with Carrie? Carly? Oh, you're not sure?"

All the people there are super friendly, which is nice. They thank me every day, as if I'm showing up to help out of the goodness of my heart rather than because they're paying me.

This afternoon they put up a fake Christmas tree right in front of my desk. It was an hour-long procedure, complete with someone tipping over a coffee table when they were standing on it to hang something. One of the attorneys even asked someone to get fake pine spray. Somebody already wears patchouli so I'll be loading up on Advil because holy shit.