Alas and Alacrity

Get your Puffs. And your movie-watching shoes.

Guy called in to the office and said, “Hello, I need to be connected to [attorney] or one of his assistants.” Big, booming voice; painful, actually. I transferred him and remarked to another attorney who was rifling the contents of her yet-to-be-scanned mail, “Hello, I need to be connected to an audiologist.” Oye.

Poor Fourthborn. At a hair before 11:00am, I could stand the silence [re: Cuprit] no longer and fired off the first volley in this exchange, “Well?????”

“Nothing yet. I’ll let you know when it happens.”

“Aughhhh!!!!”

“I know, but there’s nothing I can do about it. ♥ xD”

Thankfully, I had enough work to keep me from going totally bonkers. [Only a little bonkers, not so much as you’d notice.]

I think I may have “authority issues” as great as those of the children’s father, if differing perhaps in venue and application. Why is it that when I get an email from the office manager informing me of a meeting, I automatically assume that I am in trouble? She has never been anything less than polite and professional. She is very good at her job. In general, her meetings run like a well-oiled machine, and she does not micro-manage me, for which I am immensely and eternally thankful.

I respect her, and I like almost everything about her. So why is it that when I opened the email saying that there was a meeting at 1:15, my immediate reaction was to think my favorite childbirth word, very loudly but not audibly? It’s not as if I had been earning myself a Nobel Peace Prize [oh, don’t get me started on that!] or finding the cure to anything; I was opening the mail.

And as it turned out, I had great joy in Mudville because of that meeting. Some of you know that I have been training, off and on, with the legal secretaries, with the hope that I would be ready to roll when the next one retires. One of my friends is retiring next year, but the business plan has changed [again], and all the secretaries will eventually be tending to an attorney and a half. So they need someone who can come in when my friend retires and handle 1.5 dockets, and we all agree that I’m not there yet. Not by a long shot.

B*U*T, one of the attorneys is going out on maternity leave, and her secretary will be out on medical leave for a couple of months and then on light duty for awhile after that. Which gives us an end run around the business plan. This secretary has two attorneys, the one soon to be home bonding with a wee one, and another. Attorney #2 is getting her docket split, and two secretaries will each pick up half. One of those secretaries has an attorney who is very self-sufficient and doesn’t really need her. So she is getting half of the new docket and keeping her other half of a docket and will spend the rest of her day ramping me up.

Starting next Monday, I have my very own attorney, and I like him and respect him, and I will no longer be backup at switchboard, nor will I have one-third of the mail run. This is temporary. No raise yet, and no promotion. I will be moving my desk, after they get a new one for that cubby and another workstation [good thing I’ve given none of you my direct number at work, huh?] so as to be next to my mentor and within shouting distance of my attorney.

When the secretary comes back, she will temporarily take over switchboard, and the receptionist will come back into the cubbies and take over stuff that I do now. I have prayed for her to get off switchboard, nearly as fervently as I have prayed on my own behalf.

The cool thing is that all the attorneys are on board with this. We [the support staff] are going to have to be so flexible that we make Cirque du Soleil look catatonic. But my friend who will be mentoring me has been saying for months-into-years that I can do this job. So she is deeply invested in helping me to succeed. And I have had a grin on my face since 1:20 yesterday afternoon that would dazzle the Cheshire Cat.

I picked up Trainman, and we rode home together. I was so busy babbling that I forgot to get in the HOV lane, but we had time enough to catch up on each other’s weekends. He has a dinner date tonight. And I am lunching out.

And who knows? Maybe this is the day that Cuprit shows up. I’m driving in, just in case.