I Used to Love Soap Operas

As a little girls, I called them "so boppers" and then learned they were really called "soap boppers." I never questioned the reasoning behind this term. Little kids are so open to learning, you could probably tell them all sorts of weird untrue shit and get away with it.

I'm older and wiser now, and love nothing more than asking questions. It's weird to work at a place where nobody likes the boss. Wait, it's not that people don't like him. They actively dislike him. Here's one of the gems that endeared him to the staff (before I got there):

When it's someone's birthday, he takes the firm out to lunch. The firm pays for it. When it was Turkey's birthday, he chose a super-expensive restaurant. Like, the kind of restaurant where you're being modest if you only get three courses. He got all five courses though. The bill came, and he refused to put down the company credit card, saying it was his birthday and he wasn't paying for it. Word in the sunken living room is people were kicking each other under the table freaking out that they each had to plunk down over $100, on a day when they thought they'd be getting a free lunch. People were beyond furious. And he claimed to not understand why.

On Friday, when the WASP and Office Manager were telling me these types of stories, I confessed that the one thing I didn't understand was Turkey's gay lovah. I mean, he's kind of hot, he's French, he dresses well, he's younger. He could do better. Why was his married to this Turkey?

So glad you asked! Gay lovah was a counter person at Bloomingdales for years, it seems. Years! Until he got fired for stealing. Then Turkey got him a job at an upscale furniture showroom through a client from the firm. How'd they meet, you ask? Lucky for you, I asked too! Well. Gay Lovah was married before Turkey. To a WOMAN. To which my jaw dropped, and I asked Office Manager, "Turkey TURNED Gay Lovah?!" She laughed. Apparently, they both went on some vacation for boy toys to meet sugar daddies, and that's how they wound up together. Gay Lovah has a sweet deal. I mean, aside from having to live with the Turkey, and you know, be his gay lovah. Not that I think gay love is gross, but that Turkey himself is quite gross, in both looks and personality.

Office Manager also shared that Gay Lovah contributes about $600 a month towards their household. They have a home worth over a million dollars. Turkey has this law firm. The two of them go on fancy trips two to four times a year. They eat out often, see shows often, go to the opera. Sweet deal. Except for the Turkey part. Now if Gay Lovah had hooked up with the Hot Gay Subtenant I'd be in awe of that, because Hot Gay Subtenant is outrageously hot and also totally helpful and pleasant to be around.

So that's the story of how the Turkey got his Gay Lovah husband. And how did you meet YOUR husband?

Changing Your Mindset

I wonder how long it takes to go from being food-stamp poor to being upper-middle class rich, in your head.

Tonight I rolled $26.50 worth of coins. It took about 20 minutes. I know a lot of people who say they don't have time to roll coins. I think what they truly mean is that they don't want to use their time to do that. So they are willing to spend money to have a machine sort and count their coins for them. I am not. I never have.

It's the principle of it. Who the fuck am I, a doctor? What am I so busy doing that I can't take the time to roll coins every few months? Granted, I grew up with a dad who worked full time, and took an active roll in parenting his two kids, and was a husband who I routinely saw sitting on the edge of his bed rolling coins some weekend mornings.

Recently my brother told me the grocery store near him will count your coins for you, and then give you a gift card to their store in that amount. It's a chain I use, and sounds like a great idea. Except it'd cost me $2 to get to that store. I'll have to look and see if the one near me does it. It's a little satellite store, so they don't have all the bells and whistles.

But I wonder how rich I'd have to be to let a machine count my coins even if it charged a fee, or a percentage. I wonder if I'll ever not get a rush when I see that a product I use is on sale. People say being poor builds character and shit like that. Sure, but it also changes your mindset. There's nothing noble or good about feeling insecure about having a roof over your head, enough money to eat. It doesn't build character to be sad at having to put on shoes that are wet because it's been pouring for three days in a row and your shoes haven't had a chance to dry before you have to wear them again.

The Turkey handed me some crumpled up papers today, to throw out for him. He was standing right in front of the garbage pail. Literally, his shoe was touching it. He is exactly the type of person who I bet has never rolled his own coins.

Permanent

It's official. As of yesterday I am a permanent employee at Turkey, LLP. I am officially a real person* again.

I need to pay off my debts. According to the judgment from Small Claims, I owe 9am a chunk of change. Less, much less, than he sued me for, but still. I owe my parents money. Last time they were in town, my dad said as far as he's concerned, I should pay off the "official" debts and pay him back last.

There are wedding and baby presents to be bought. There are so, so very many people I want to take out to dinner for all their support. And by "out to dinner" I mean "to Hawaii for a two-week vacation."

One of my priorities is to move out of my apartment. Right now I am tentatively thinking about trying to make that happen after the summer is over.

I'm going to find out if I should be paying 9am through the courts. I want to pay him once and be done with it, and I may have to pay interest, so I'm going to deal with this debt first. Then I will pull my credit report and pay off debts based on that. My hope is this will all be done within a year.

In other news, Turkey found the check the client gave him. It was in one of his briefcases, and he found out standing like 15 feet from me. Also, today he called my cell phone after I'd left work at 5:30. Twice. Both times for things he should have been able to figure out himself. One time for something that could have waited until tomorrow.

*I don't mean that if you don't work you're not a real person. I mean that when I don't work, I have no money and can't participate in life like a regular person does.

Paranoia, Justified

The lawyer, who I want to refer to as Turkey for some reason, went to a court date last week, and met the client there. Well, not actually the real client. I'm not exactly clear on the details, but the Chinese mob is involved, not everyone involved speaks English, and some experts hired to help with the case who, in other instances would barely be involved, are very involved due to their translating services. Which, by the way, should be a paying gig, but in this instance is not. Anyway.

The point is, the Turkey went, and was given a $16,000 (that's sixteen thousand dollars) check right before the hearing. A lot of clients dispute their bills and in reading what they send to the arbitration board about Turkey, he has a tendency to do two things:

1. Work, work, work until it's time for the big court date, and then tell the client he can't continue (i.e. show up in court) unless they give him more money
2. Say you're in South Dakota, and need to get to Kansas. Any sane person would just plow through Nebraska and call it a day. The Turkey though, will drive to Utah, down to Texas, and then meander through Illinois before getting to Kansas. What should have taken a tank and a half of gas takes Turkey nine tanks.
   

So my point is, he creates environments where clients don't want to pay him. He must have been very excited, more excited than anyone else used to being given such big checks, and naturally he took the check from the client.

Turkey claimed he stuck the check in the file, which is comprised of three redwelds. The next morning, Turkey brought the three redwelds back into the office and dumped them on my desk. I neatened them up, because Turkey is a pig and made a big mess.

Later that day, the billing guy, who's now the billing guy and the guy who does random extra shit, fixed up the file and put it back on the shelf. The day after THAT, Turkey tells us he was given this huge check and he put it in the file. I look, don't find it. I ask the billing guy if he came across a check, he says no. When I give the Turkey this information, he says he must have left the check in his jacket pocket and will check at home that night.

The next day he says he can't find it, and I should check the file again. I do. Then the office manager checks what I'd just checked. Then we double-check with the billing guy. No check. On Wednesday Turkey, Office Manager and I have a meeting. Turkey tells her to call one of the experts and to explain we misplaced the check, would the client cut us a new one, and we'll pay the stop check fee to the bank? Today Office Manager shares that the guy who cut the check (who technically is not the client, just the guy paying on behalf of the client) died. This is not a fancy legal term that means something. Dude is dead. Dude's money is going to be tied up in probate for ages.

Office Manager tells me Turkey knows he always loses things and that she'd bet $16,000 he put the check in his inside jacket pocket. When she tells Turkey the check-giver is dead, he insists the check must be in the file, and tells me to look again. Office Manager offers that she found out it was in an envelope. I flip through Every. Single. Page of that damn file looking for an envelope. No envelope.

While I'm flipping, an idea floats across my brain. As a kid, I was a very, very sneaky little shit. They say that people who steal assume everyone steals. People who lie assume everyone is lying to them. If you exaggerate, you get the point. I'm not sneaky anymore, but I'm still wise to the sneaky ways. I climbed out of my sunken living room into the Office Manager's office, and floated my idea past her. "Maybe I'm paranoid, but what if Turkey finds the check at home and then puts it in the file and claims we just didn't find it when we looked?"

I feel stupid even saying this. Office Manager looked me straight in the eyes and nodded. "He's done that. Exactly that. Expect it."

Whoa. Just because you're paranoid it doesn't mean everyone's not out to get you.

Snapshots of an Employment Agreement

You will see many things that are wrong. None of them are errors on my part. I am typing exactly what was given to me. Because this is too jaw-droppingly shocking not to share with you guys, especially after all the encouragement you've given me.

Duties: ...You will be asked to make observations on what files can be put away, and periodically ask what other items can be put away. That is one hell of a clunky sentence, am I right? I had to clarify with the lawyer exactly what he meant by the second half. Turns out if I see a random box or a pile of papers, I'm to investigate and overall am in charge of keeping the sunken living room looking nice and orderly.

...We may assign you new or different duties from time to time. Additional duties may be stated in the job manual to employees (I do not have one of these) but to the extent that manual differs from this letter, this letter will control. Will be stated in the manual we will provide to you and a job description when you begin your employment with us. Um, okay? I had to go through this agreement with him today, and it took so much to hold back from saying, "Dude. What the fuck?"

Hours of Employment: 8 hours per day, with sometimes-flexible lunch scheduling between 8:30 am and 5:30 weekdays (with the proviso that you and our office manager f coordinate your lunch schedules so that there is full coverage). ... Asking you to stay any more than that will be something we always try to arrange the prior day. that. On y infrequent occasions you may be asked to work one weekend day.

Overtime: All overtime must be pre-authorized by a partner, so please see me in advance when you feel it is necessary to exceed 8 hours a day. First of all, there are no partners. This lawyer has his firm, and he has ONE part-time associate (the WASP). In order for someone to be a partner, there must be at least one other person to partner WITH, which he does not have. Second of all, he is the ONLY one who ever asks me to stay late. So what he should really say is something like, "Any self-directed overtime must be pre-authorized by me." Or something to that effect.

Sick Days: Paid sick days accrue at the rate of 8/12 day per month. Earned but not taken sick time may be able to be carried forward from one calendar year to the other. On the other hand, payment may be made, at our (who is our? he is ONE guy) discretion, for earned but unused sick days, at each year's end, and will be made at termination.

Vacation: You will have 12 paid vacation days per year, earned as one per month. Vacation days or more than two days must be arranged with the firm at least three weeks in advance, and two days arranged no later than 10 days in advance. Okay, what? Whoever can figure that one out gets a free vacation to Hawaii.

Evaluation: I will give you a performance evaluation at the end of three months and again at the end of six months. This six month period shall be a probationary period, during which either party may terminate with two weeks notice. After probationary period, termination by either party requires three weeks notice to the other party. Please note he switched from "our" and "we" now to "I". You know what has been drummed into me working at law firms for over a decade? Consistency! Even if you are making a mistake, at least make it consistently throughout the document! By the way, California is an at-will state. He can fire me at any time, without giving me any notice, and although it'd be a shitty thing to do, I can leave without giving the standard two weeks notice. Could he sue me in court, telling a judge, "She only gave me two weeks notice instead of the three she agreed to, so I want her to pay the cost of hiring a temp for a week"? Well, he could, except what are the odds of him winning that one?

At the end of the document there's a signature line where I'm supposed to sign. My name is typed underneath the line. As Green Yogurtt. Whoops.

So hey. If you ever wonder what I do all day, I look at documents like these (and I didn't even show you the spacing problems) and fix them before they're sent out to clients. He sends out the most unprofessional-looking shit all the time. Last Friday we sent out a document that was supposed to have about a dozen exhibits. Except since he didn't start working on the document until around 1pm, he ran out of time. So instead of the document saying things like, "In Paragraph 4, Sentence 6 of the attached Engagement Agreement (Exhibit C) Dr. Doodle initials his agreement to blah blah," it said things like, "In Paragraph 4 of the attached Engagement Agreement (see attached) ..."

That's not even the worst part though! The worst is that because the documents referenced weren't referred to as Exhibits, I couldn't use exhibit tabs. Instead, we just used colored pieces of paper to separate each "exhibit" from each other. But wait! We didn't have enough colored pieces of paper that were all the same color. So what we submitted looked like a legal valentine. Pink, red, and purple pages were all shoved in there. Oh, and the "exhibits" were not in the order they were referenced in the document. How unprofessional is that?

I Bought the More Expensive One

I've been temping for two solid months at the same place. The place where the lawyer is batshit crazy. On Friday, he sent me an email with a letter to me in the body of it, that was supposed to constitute an employment agreement. He sent that with the instruction that I should put it on letterhead and print it out. Neither professional nor classy, but okay. Except. Except that the employment agreement has typos all over it. Which hey, those can be ignored, right? It's a reflection on him, not me. It's just a reflection on my desperation that I'm open to working for someone so unprofessional. My name is misspelled on the signature line though.

There are some parts of the agreement that have run-on sentences, and fragments of sentences. There's a lot of redundancy. In a couple of spots, the writing was so bad I wasn't even sure what he was trying to say. The lawyer tried to get me to sign it right then, and I knew based on the quick skim I'd done, that shouldn't happen. So I refused. "As a lawyer, I'm sure you can understand my wanting to take this home to read when I'm not pressed for time, not interrupted by the phone twice a minute." Reluctantly he agreed, and now is expecting that I'll show up Monday with it signed.

I called Golden Boy and sent the agreement to him, then spread all four pages out on my bed, and we went through each paragraph. Golden Boy was disgusted by this Ivy League lawyer.* "He should be disbarred!" Well. You can't really disbar someone for creating subpar work product, but Golden Boy is not wrong despite that. This lawyer is so unethical that he should be disbarred. He does a slew of illegal things (coughdouble-billingclientscough).

From now on I will refer to this lawyer as Turkey. There's one other lawyer there, the WASPy one, who I cracked, and now don't think of as WASPy at all. Then there's the architect who's getting married later this month and leaving next month to go off to law school. There's also Turkey's personal assistant who's only in the office part-time; nobody likes her. Lastly, there's the part-time billing dude and the full-time office manager who's been there for ten years. She, the WASPy lawyer, and the engaged guy have all told me flat-out, "You don't want to work here." "You're going to keep looking for something else, right? You should."

Come on! I mean, that's a pretty bad sign, right? So I am going to keep looking. In the meantime though, as difficult as it is to work for the Turkey, it's great that I'm finally being offered a steady job with benefits. It's great that I'll have some blog fodder. You know what else is great?

Normally I am not one to count chickens before they're hatched. However. All last week, the engaged dude, the Turkey and his assistant were sick. On Friday the office manager managed to send the engaged guy home early. I Clorox wiped his desk, his phone, the arms of his chair, and Lysol'd the entire office. Looking back, I forgot to Clorox wipe the copier machine. But this morning, I woke up with a sore throat. After volunteering when I got home, I flopped on my bed and slept for almost three hours. When I awoke, my throat hurt even more, and I had fever.

I dragged myself to Walgreens to look for Halls Vitamin C Drops or something to soothe my throat. When I looked at the ingredients I saw there was Red #40 in them. Cold Eeze didn't have any artificial coloring in them, but they were like three dollars more expensive. Artificial coloring in some things negatively affects me so overall I try to stay away. However while I've been out of work I haven't bothered - the things that have that shit are generally less expensive, and so what if it makes my learning disabilities more pronounced if I'm not working?

Today, I spent that extra three dollars. It felt kind of nice to be able to do that.

*This employment agreement is so awful that over the next few blog posts, I will share parts of it with you. We can play, "what do YOU think that means?" It'll be fun. It'll be an example of what you should never do as an employer, and what you should never sign as an employee.

The Right Writing Style

I don't know anything formal about writing. I took nothing more than the requisite English classes in high school and college. I didn't score particularly high on the English section (or the math section, lest you get the wrong idea) of the SAT's. To be frank, I barely scored mediocrely (perhaps my use of that word is part of the reason why) on either section. My entire trick to writing decently involves attempting to write what I'd enjoy reading. Most of the time I almost succeed, but not quite.

However, for much better tips on how to write well, check out Wide Lawns. When I read her tips, a few of them were things I'd figured out on my own, a couple were things I realized I'd been taught in Composition 101 in college, and several just made total sense even though I'd never heard them before.

This is the type of post that you want to print out and put up on your bulletin board that hangs above your desk. Now all I need is a bulletin board. And a desk. Oh, and an apartment big enough for a desk. Until then, I'm going to make a more conscious effort to write in a more Wide Lawnserly way.

Everything is NOT About YOU

A few days ago, while my parents were in town, we went to see a movie. Two girls were sitting in the row in front of us, and they had their feet up on the seats in front of them, which pushed their seats back. Directly into my knees. The girl in front of me kept throwing her head back every few minutes, further jamming her seat into my knees. I couldn't find a way to sit that was not uncomfortable. Finally I ran out of patience. I leaned forward, and very quietly said, "Excuse me. Is there any way you could stop pushing yourself back in your seat? It's going directly against my knees every time and really hurting me." Her friend barely looked back at me as she responded, "Why don't you move?"

Why don't *I* move? Because I'm not the one doing something I shouldn't be doing which is then causing someone else difficulty! If you want to do something like put your feet up on the back of the chair in front of you that's none of my business ... until you make it my business. After they finished exchanging "She's such a bitch!" looks, and "Oh my god, can you BELIEVE her?" looks, they each got up and moved to the row ahead of the one they'd been sitting in. My knees and I were very relieved. The bruises should be gone by the end of the week.

Yesterday as I was walking home from work, there was a middle-aged plump woman with a bad perm walking in front of me. She was on her cell phone, and walking slower than the average pace. She was also weaving and each time I tried to move around her, she weaved in front of me. My only option besides continuing on behind her would be to step into oncoming traffic.

I chose to open my big mouth. "You keep weaving in front of me each time I try to pass you," I told her. She looked at me, pausing from her phone call. "Sorry ... bitch!" I was a little surprised to be honest. Probably because it was clear she'd surprised herself by calling me a bitch. She didn't have any way of knowing what I was listening to on my iPod, that I was all pumped up from it. That the song, combined with the physical exercise outside after sitting inside all day, plus her calling me a bitch, shot adrenaline through my system in an instant. I was a little amused by the predicament she'd just put herself into, and my lack of fear clearly made her feel she was in over her head. She scurried ahead and then ran across the street. For half a second I thought about staying on her heels just to rattle her, but did the mature thing and hung back, putting some space between our surprising confrontation.

It got me thinking, though. Twice people did obnoxious things that, while not illegal, a little ... dickish, and twice when these people were called out for their dickish behavior negatively affecting someone else, they got angry. As if the person they'd hurt/annoyed should have just taken it and stayed quiet. As if "me" is more important than "you." Why? And when did this happen? Didn't it used to be different? Didn't people used to trip all over themselves to help others?

When I talked to my friend about this, she suggested that nobody ever wants to be called out on their bad behavior. It's not as if someone littered and I tsk-tsked at them. Why are people caring so much about their lives, their comfort, that they don't care if their comfort infringes on someone else's comfort? How do we change things back, to the time when if we realized we hurt someone, we immediately apologized and felt badly about it?