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.
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.
Labels: I'm Hurt, People watching, Temping, Work
posted by Green at 6/11/2011 05:19:00 PM
3 Comments:
Congratulations G! I am SO happy for you. I hate that you have to work for someone incompetent and dishonest though.
ColdEeze is good because it has zinc in it too. :)
Yah - an employment agreement (even if it still need work)
Chlorseptic spray helps me when my throat's sore
Even with the circumstances of his douchery and the employment agreement, I am so happy for you. I am also happy to hear that several others in the office recognize you are better than working for someone like him. It's a step.
On another note, I hit happy hour with my brother and his coworkers several years ago. One of the coworkers brought his wife, who'd just been laid off. I mentioned that we had an opening and she should send me her resume to give our HR department. When I got it, both the cover letter and resume contained absolutely atrocious spelling and grammar errors. I held onto them for two days while I debated what to do - submit it as is and risk it reflecting badly on me while not helping her at all, email a practical stranger back with suggestions for improvement, not submit it at all?
I ended up submitting it as it was, figuring she didn't ask me to proof it, so I had no business even looking. She probably wouldn't have been hired anyway as her qualifications did not match up to many other applicants. Plus, I found out a couple weeks later that she was hired somewhere else, but I still feel like a jerk.
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