Toy....or Oracle of Wisdom?

I rescued a dog today. Actually it was one of those little toy dogs with the bobbly head and cheap felt fur. He was buried under a pile of contracts and after a short discussion with the associate who owned him, we both agreed he would have a better life on my desk.
And he is a fine little thing. Deep blue glass eyes staring at me adoringly while I attempt to decipher my fee earner's handspewn amendments and make calls to print rooms whose staff are on a permanent cigarette break.
The best bit is the bobbly head. It only ever nods 'yes'. Thus he answers all my questions: 'Shall I have a beer after work?' 'Do I have better things to do?' and more importantly (and truthfully) 'Is my boss an idiot?'

Nod nod nod

Hypothetical question

What if....

What if you had a stroke and lost the use of your limbs? What if you lay in hospital unable to move for months, with only the worst of daytime television for company? What if you contracted gangrene from an unsterilised toothpick that you used to pick the gunk beneath your nails and as a result both your hands had to be amputated at the wrist? What if, after a long time, you began the slow, hard rehabilitation process towards regaining your movement and had to start learning everything all over again? What if you had to learn to write with your stumps, holding the pen unevenly and trying desperately to draw the letters of your name?

What if you managed it and it was more legible than the handwritten amendments I received from my fee earner this morning?

Not waving but floating

Two major (and only) hearings have concluded for the department I work in and for the last few weeks I have had no work to do. Thus the secretarial co-ordinator thought it essential to have a float in to cover while she and another secretary were away on holiday - just in case I couldn't handle the complete lack of work by myself.

The girl from the float team pretended to work for about 20 minutes and then (probably after looking over at my screen and seeing a large crossword) gave up and is now stalking people on Facebook.

I thought about sending her links to all the hundreds of websites I visit daily to alleviate her uselessness, I mean, her boredom, but I don't think she'd appreciate them as much as me.....I've yet to meet another secretary who's made an art form out of surfing the net.

Who I would like to meet is another secretary who has found a way to get around the webmail firewall and access her yahoo account.

Timing is everything

Especially when the timing relates to minimising face-to-face time with fee earners - I've just returned from 2 weeks' leave and only had to put up with 3 days of interfacing with my boss before he left for a 2 week holiday. Still, he managed to call me a stupid cow in the brief yet all-too-agonisingly-long period of us having to share office space.

I never mind when I'm insulted by lawyers. Because the very fact that I don't give a shit what they call me means I'm still winning. The day I actually become upset and think about filing a grievance with HR is the day that this job has beaten me into a mindless and subservient paper shuffler with no life beyond her all-too-tidy desk.

In other news, people actually read this blog. Well, when I say 'people' I mean lawyers...it's a loose term. I referred to the secretarial co-ordinator as an Orc in my last post. The comment I received ran thus:

'Describe Orc...'

For those unfamiliar with the social politics of the legal world, here are some tips as to how I knew the above comment generated from the fingertips of a lawyer:

1. Nowhere in the sentence is there a please, thank-you or any other kind of vague attempt at courtesy.

2. When I say 'sentence' I mean 'words slapped together' with the utmost disrespect for any kind of grammatical context. If lawyers treated their clients the way they treated English Grammar, they wouldn't have any clients.

3. A sociopathic lack of empathy accompanied by a direct order for more information. Always a giveaway.

Anyway, lawdemon, one day I will describe the Orc. But seeing as I'm not on your payroll or anyway near it, I'll do it in my own time. Not that being on the payroll here makes me do the work any faster but I like keeping you in suspense.

I'm at the dayjob today and it's been a productive morning. Not that any fee earners have generated work for me to do but I have trawled the net and happened across people who have a similar disre..er, regard for the industry in which I am submerged. Please look to your right for further amusement.

My boss is continuing his campaign of confusion and terror by not only conversing with me now but asking how I am in the morning. Hell, he's even saying 'hello' and 'goodbye'. I've only just stopped looking over my shoulder when he does this, thinking that there is a person of seniority behind me.

I'm unsettled. And worried. What, with no schizophrenic markups to do, no impossible tasks to be set, I'm losing material. If I can't bitch about the departmental partner, what is there left for me to do?

Oh but hey I forgot! It's appraisal time! And I'm about to battle it out with the Orc (aka the secretarial co-ordinator in charge of the holiday schedule).

Unchartered waters

Something is rotten in the state of London....

Today when I went in to my boss's office to get a letter signed, he sat back in his chair and had a a5 minute conversation with me about cooking and fashion. This, from a man who can barely bring himself to say hello to me in the morning. I'm a little concerned that he's:

a) found my blog
b) about to have a breakdown
c) found out something about my health

To be fair, the conversation was 3 minutes on the topic of cooking (ie. what a great cook he is and how he does all the cooking at home, followed by a mumbled concession that 'ok, my wife cooks sometimes as well') and 2 minutes of asking why 'all you young people wear trousers that drag along the ground, I mean, is that the fashion now, why do you do it, you pick up half the street and walk around with it, and what about those people who just cut the ends off their jeans, it boggles me'

I thanked him for calling me young and told him that I liked the length of my trousers and especially liked how various parts of the street accompany me on my journeying by way of clinging to the hems of each leg.

He was still bewildered and in his befuddlement even told me I could pp the letter I'd brought in. This NEVER happens. The bewilderment was as much my answer as the fact that we'd both conversed on a non-work topic in a civilised manner.

I'm still a little confused myself. I think I need a lie down.

Who ties your shoelaces in the morning?

I have not infrequently wondered about the shelf life of my unchosen career - what with computer-savvy new generation lawyers not needing my basic computer skills to fix elementary mistakes, or their extreme dislike of dictaphones - preferring instead to type their own letters - how long will it be until the secretarial pool is decimated from lack of demand?

And then come days like yesterday when I realise that legal secretaries will never become obsolete no matter how much technology tries to force us into obscurity.

First off, I spent about half an hour this morning booking a rest room for lunch for one of the junior solicitors. She was feeling unwell, see, and rather than ring the room bookings service extension which is on a phone list in front of her on the desk, she emails me asking to 'research it' and to book for midday.

I am then accosted by another junior solicitor, this time asking that I collate and file 3 copies of witness statements and exhibits into lever arch files. Oh, and could I also number by hand each page as I do so. Sure. No, don't worry that you didn't think to number the pages before the files were copied twice and so instead of hand numbering the contents of just one folder, I have to then hand number the other two copies.

My wrist aches at your searing lack of foresight.

And to the partner, who sits in an office OPPOSITE MY DESK - even though I am not your regular secretary, who is off sick, you don't need to email another lawyer on secondment to ask her to ask me to print off an email that you have in your inbox - but if you do, then don't put on a 'what a surprise what on earth are you doing in my office' act when I walk into your office to hand you the printout.

Ta-da here I am. No, I wasn't canned in the most recent round of redundancies, more's the pity. I am lucky enough to still be employed in a job that discourages initiative, tortures and kills off my brain cells one by one and forces upon me the disturbing visual image of my boss in skintight lycra bike shorts far too early in the morning for my liking.

My boss went on a business trip to New York this week. He likes to manage his own diary (not trusting me with Microsoft Outlook or anything that requires me to do more than turn on my computer) and had blocked out Mon-Thurs as overseas meetings. He also emailed me last week saying he'd be flying back Thursday evening and in the office on Friday morning. Which means of course he was back in the office this morning (Thursday), making me look like a bad secretary to all the clients who had called in his absence and who I told to call back Friday.

Possibly to make up for it, he did bring me back something from the Big Apple: a handful of crumpled up hotel and dinner receipts and some scribbles on the back of someone else's business card which were meant to denote taxi expenses.

Thanks.