Because I'm In Charge, That's Why!

Nobody showed up to work today except me. The WASP works part-time, and today was one of her off-days. The office manager was going to come in late, but between BART protests and her errands running long, she called to say she wasn't coming. The billing guy just shows up when he shows up - he has no schedule. Turkey is out of town. So it was just me, and the sub-tenants floating in and out.

At one point, one of the sub-tenants had shown up to meet with clients, and a random guy just showed up in our office. It is my job to greet all who enter the sunken living room, so I asked if I could help him. The guy said he was there to see Sub-Tenant, regarding a legal problem. I ascertained that the legal problem definitely required Sub-Tenant, and told him Sub-Tenant was with clients. I waived my hand towards the sliding glass doors where they were all sitting and talking. He asked if there was someone else. I explained there wasn't - that their main office is across the bridge, and they just rent space and come over only when they're meeting a client. He asked if I could interrupt.

Interrupt? Was this guy fucking kidding? No. No, we do not interrupt. You interrupt when a judge is calling, or when an attorney's pregnant wife calls because her water broke. You do not interrupt for a schlub off the street.

I explained to him at each question, that what he needed to do was call their main office and make an appointment. Or he could leave his name and number with me to pass on to the Sub-Tenant when he finished the meeting. He could wait, but I had no way of knowing if it would be 20 minutes or four hours.

Since everyone was gone today, I really wanted to take advantage of the day by catching up on tons of work, and this guy was really taking up way too much of my time. He kept asking me to make it happen, and I kept telling him the only way it would happen is if he made an appointment. Attorneys are not drive-through restaurants - you do not just show up. (Unless you are paying a bill. You are always welcome to drop off a check.)

In the afternoon, a guy called, telling me he'd just talked to Turkey and wanted to make an appointment. Sure, we can do that. Then he asks me to just send over an engagement letter. Um, no. I tell him I can't do that without an attorney reviewing and signing it. He asks why not? Well, it's a letter, and we don't send out un-signed letters, and I can not sign on behalf of an attorney without said attorney's permission. But can't you just send it to me anyway? No you fucktard, I just told you I can't.

We finally agreed that he'll come in next week, and I'll send him the engagement letter by Wednesday. After we hung up, I called the WASP to confirm with her that I was doing all I could. She said yes, I absolutely made the right call - even she wouldn't send out an engagement letter without Turkey's blessing. Plus, while an engagement letter is a form letter, there are variables. You might be shocked to know that some lawyers change their hourly rate depending on how deep the client's pockets are. The retainer amount changes with each client.

I was exhausted just from arguing all day. Why couldn't these people just listen to me? I know my shit - it's not like I was making it up as I went along here!

So what have we learned today? Call ahead to make appointments when you want to meet with professionals. If someone at the office tells you a professional needs to review a document before sending it to you, take their word for it.

Writing on the Wall

So a new woman started a little over a month ago. She's Indian, and moved here from the deep South. She didn't sell the house in the South, but rents it out. The deal is she works three days a week at our firm, and two days a week for a nearby city, as a city attorney. I'm not sure how, but she managed to get her son into one of the best public high schools here in the city. Before Turkey hired her, he went around asking if people thought her thick accent would be a problem. This was an improvement over what he first said, which involved the term language barrier. I assure you, there is zero language barrier.

Hey, did I ever tell you that I snagged a job working at a law firm in Oakland? It was a few years ago, through an agency. I quit after two weeks, because despite the fact that it wasn't a new position, they not only weren't ready for me, but couldn't get me set up. Nobody could show me where I was supposed to print to, not even the IT guys. The lawyer I worked for, couldn't figure out a system for giving me work. I'm pretty adaptable - you want to bring me the work, email it to me, that's fine. If you want me to come to your office for assignments, that's fine too. But this lawyer Michelle just couldn't pull it together for some reason (and it's not like I was her first secretary).

So I called the agency and told them I was quitting, because they weren't organized and they weren't setting me up to succeed at my job. People need to be given the tools to succeed in their lives.

At my current job, there is no IT department. Turkey hired an IT company and they charge us by the hour for phone assistance. Every so often they come to the office to fiddle with computer stuff. Their bills are opened by me, and they're funny. "20 minute phone call with Turkey's Personal Assistant explaining why she can not use laptop in bed."

There's something that's not quite kosher with the IT people. They're often very unhelpful. If one of their guys comes to the office, and someone asks them a question about how to use something computer-related, they always say they don't know. Even Turkey gets frustrated by them. But he won't fire them and hire someone else. The Office Manager told me the main IT guy has something he holds over Turkey, and that's why he won't fire them. Weird, right?

Anyway, so we hired the single mom lawyer to work part-time. It took like two or three weeks for her first day. We knew for well over a week when that first day was, and so did our IT people. When she arrived, did they promptly connect her to the network? No. Did they promptly connect her to be able to print? No. So what happens is if Turkey wants her to work on anything, someone needs to email her the document. Then she has to work on it, then email it back to someone for them to save the updated version back in the system. Every time she needs to print something, she emails it to me. Any time she is told to call or email someone, she has to ask me to look up their contact info in Outlook on my computer.

This is not a good system, as I am often busy and can't print what she needs right away. One day while I was on the phone with someone as we both looked at the same web page, she came over, stood right next to me, and tried to take the mouse away from under my hand to click to the screen she needed. I was beyond furious.

Later, when I'd calmed down, I talked to her about it. That I knew she was in a very difficult position by not having access to everything she needs. But just like she needs to be patient sometimes with me, whoever is waiting for her to bring them information also has to be patient with her. Meaning Turkey. I offered to explain to him that I couldn't always do what she needed immediately, but she told me it was okay, she'd do it.

It's so much worse than it sounds, as horrible as it sounds. You're working blind. Someone asks you to write a letter, and you can't even look in the computer to see if any past letters have been written to this person. Turkey loses files constantly, so looking in the physical file is not always an option.

The other difficult thing for this new attorney is that she shares an office. She has one skinny desk to work on that's about four feet wide. That's it! There's a part-time billing guy who uses the other desk in the office, and Personal Assistant stands at a filing cabinet in that office when she's there (which I think is rude, since she can set up camp elsewhere).

There's been a weather problem since she started. She likes her office to be hot. Last week she turned the heat up to 90. Ninety! (I bet she does hot yoga.) The billing guy started showing up to work at odd times, and Office Manager finally found out he can't stand being in that sweat lodge. One day she came in and said the thermostat was set to 55, and expressed outrage. That's no more outrageous than setting it to 90 though. So it's been a bumpy start.