Reason #39

You walked over to my desk to bring me a letter you wanted sent.  I was just sitting down to my desk and had my hands full.  When you said you had the letter, ready to go, I said, "Okay, you can just put it down" and nodded to the ledge. 

You said, "Well this is our original so I want to put it in your hands..."

I replied, "Well, my hands are full."  You can clearly see this. 

So you say, "Can I have a paperclip then?" because even though my hands are too full to take the document from you directly, they must not be too full to hand you a paperclip.

Did we really just have this conversation? Do you really not trust that I am capable of sending a document that you leave on the ledge for me?  Have I ever not sent your letters out?  Have I ever lost your letters?  I've been a legal assistant for over 10 years, and have many years of administrative work prior to that. 

Stop treating me like a child and/or stop acting like a diva.

Reason #38

The other day, while entering the revisions on your timeslip, I noticed you had circled the word "demurrer" and wrote "SP?" indicating you weren't sure if that word was spelled correctly.

You like bragging about how you're an attorney who's been practicing for over 20 years...and you don't know how to spell demurrer?  Granted, you don't deal with litigation, you usually handle transactional work, but you went to law school.  At Harvard. 

I've been working in the legal industry half as long as you and have not gone to law school, let alone Harvard, and even I know how to spell demurrer.

Not to mention, our time entry system tells you when you've spelled a word incorrectly and it did not indicate in your entry that it was misspelled.  So, common sense should have prevailed right there when your Harvard Law education failed you.

Reason #37

X called for you and you weren't answering reception when they tried reaching you so X naturally asked to speak to me.  When I buzzed you, you told me to tell X you were on a conference call and that you'd try to call him in about five minutes.  So I relayed that to X and got his number, even though he said, "She has it."  (Because I find when I do not ask for numbers, people ask, "Why didn't you get his number?")

You replied, and the beginning of your email said: 

hope you were nice (sure you were!)

 

Are you kidding me?  If you're so "sure" I was nice, why do you need to clarify that you hope I was?  And if I wasn't nice, do you think I'd have this job? 

Reason #36

HER: I will have a letter I am now dictating before my noon lunch that I will email to you for formatting that I'd like after lunch so I can get it right out the door...I don't know when you go to lunch.  Please let me know when you do lunch usually and days that changes.  TX

 

ME: Ever since I started working with X, I have no "usual" lunch time. It always just depends on what our work load is on any given day.

 

HER: OK then each day I need you to please advise when you will be taking lunch when you know.  At worst, please tell me when you leave and come back.  TX

 

(Six minutes later...I'm not exaggerating)

 

HER: so when are you taking lunch?

 

You told me to notify you when I knew I was going to lunch...so if I haven't notified you in the last SIX MINUTES then I probably don't know yet when I'm going to lunch.  And now I have to tell you every day that I'm going to lunch and I have no idea why I need to do this.

 

You do not have such pressing work that you need to know my whereabouts at all times.  Even my litigation attorneys who do have pressing work such as court filings, don't make me tell them when I'm going to lunch.  If we're in the middle of a project I might say something like "I'm going to grab lunch while we're waiting on such and such."  But in general, they don't keep tabs on me because they don't need to.  So I'm not exactly sure why you need to.  But whatever.

 

Like HR said, I should pick my battles with you.  You just better hope that when I do pick a battle, I'm not armed with nuclear weapons.

Reason #35

You sent me an email, asking me to print some things, with these instructions:

I need on an expedited basis (before lunch, perhaps?) all the emails, including all the attachments in all the emails.  Please staple each individual email and each attachment within it.

Also, if there are any attachments you can't print, send me back the email by email and I will address.  (I don't know whether this will be the case or not.)

Because I was working on a project already and had a lunch date with 2 of the equity partners and one of their assistants, I asked Reception to handle this for you.  I copied you on the email I forwarded them (like I always do, so you know I’ve delegated the project), and this was your reply:

Make sure she understands exactly what to do...I don't have the energy to day to deal with it having to be redone.  TX

What exactly am I supposed to explain to Reception? I forwarded the email you sent me which included your instructions.  I have nothing to add other than what, “Follow the instructions?”

But the best part is when Reception was working on this project and she had something she needed to clarify with you, you apparently went all raging bitch on her because you were sick and didn’t have the “energy” to deal with it. A) If you’re that sick, stay the hell home.  B) If you can’t take the time to clarify a project, we’d be more than happy to do it wrong for you and then bitch about you behind your back when you complain about how it was done wrong because you didn’t have the energy to answer questions.

I came back from lunch to a scolding letter to you and I both from HR saying that, in the future, if you and I aren’t available for consultation during a project, the project would have to wait until I returned.  However, HR told me in confidence that the letter wasn’t actually directed at me, it was directed at you, but because you’re such a prima donna, HR had to address the letter to both of us so you wouldn’t throw a fit at being reprimanded for being a raging bitch.  And HR was also pissed that you were so mean and talked down to Reception, who was helping you on a project.

Seriously, stay home when you’re that sick.  In fact, stay home when you aren’t sick.  The office is a much nicer place to be when you’re not here.

Reason #32-34

Reason #32

You gave me a receipt for your expense report – a receipt for your lunch with John Doe, Bill Jones’ music attorney.  Now, I know that expense reports don’t have to be too detailed and if I write “Lunch with John Doe, Bill Jones’ music attorney” nobody is going to give a crap and Accounting is not going to write that entire thing on their books.  So I abbreviated it to “Lunch with Bill Jones’ music attorney.”

Not only did you correct it to include John Doe’s name, but you changed Jones’ to Jones’s.  Upon seeing this I diplomatically asked, “Oh, is that how you like to do it, apostrophe S?”  You informed me that that was the “right way” to do it so I informed you that both forms are actually correct.  But since I had to walk all the way back across the office to fix the report to include John Doe’s damn name (unnecessarily, because again, Accounting doesn’t give a damn), I was going to fix your little apostrophe S crap.

Reason #33

When you happened to be near my desk later, you jokingly said to me, in reference to the whole apostrophe catastrophe, “I’ll have to check Strunk & White about that one!”  Which is your way of saying, “I don’t believe you so I’m going to double check.”  Well listen up bitch – it’s right.  Strunk & White prefer to use Jones’s but Jones’ is grammatically correct as well.  If you didn’t believe me, you should have just checked, but to go out of your way to make a condescending remark to me in the guise of a joke is just fucking annoying.

Reason #34

Recently you said something to me like, “I don’t know why I bother to proof anything, you’re a much better proofer than I am.”

First, you suck at proofing so bad that I honestly think you don’t proof things and I’m worried about the crap you might be sending out without letting me proof it first.  Oh wait, I saw the retainer letter you sent wherein you didn’t even get the case name caption correct.  Secondly, if I’m a better proofer than you are (and I am, because let’s face it, I’ve seen your work), then stop second guessing me when I write things like Jones’.

Reason #31

You send me emails and ask me to print them.  All three pages or so.  Despite the fact that there is a printer in your office.  Right next to you.  And in the time it took you to forward that email, asking me to print it and walk it all the way across the entire office, you could have printed it yourself.  A dozen times over.