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Toddlers: 12 - 24 Months
I shall tell you a Short Tale if anyone is still awake?
Anyone interested in hearing about a close call with employment death when email was first introduced in the main stream?
God Bless our sweet baby James.
Our son, born 11/22/09.
Unplanned, Emergency C-section
"Wearing his BING CROSBY clothes and crooning...buuuh buuh buuuh"
"Wearing his BING CROSBY clothes and crooning...buuuh buuh buuuh"
This discussion has been closed.
Re: I shall tell you a Short Tale if anyone is still awake?
Ok, so when I first graduated high school, I joined the rat race and got a full time job as a Legal Secretary at a very high profile prestigious law firm in the center of the city.
I was 18 years old, fresh faced and full of ideals and dreams.
This job was verrrry stressful and often times we would find ourselves having to act and be very mature and grown up/sophisticated before our time.
We were dealing with multi million dollar corporate law suits and very reputable city partners and attorneys. We (the other top high school business student recruits and I) were trained for 3 months before even being placed with an attorney on the floor.
"Wearing his BING CROSBY clothes and crooning...buuuh buuh buuuh"
When we "graduated" from boot camp we were matched up with skills and personality with attorneys that needed assistants.
I was very fortunate to work with 2 lovely female attorneys (in their 20's) who were kind, fair and easy going.
My other friends were not so lucky.
Some were matched with very arrogant associates with harder than nails attitudes.
One of my friends, Lisa, was matched with an older associate, Ellen, who had a reputation for being difficult and ....hmm....surly.
"Wearing his BING CROSBY clothes and crooning...buuuh buuh buuuh"
The first year we worked there we were called "Freshmen" because we were the youngest gals on the ranking totem poll.....often the first to be blamed when anything went wrong and the last to be acknowledged when a suit won in court.
We did all the legwork.
Typing up the documents (often from scribble), dictation (keep in mind this was back in 1989-1994), editing, calling the court offices, doing the physical court liason work, contacting clients, research (it was cheaper to hire one of us then to get a paralegal).....
We were ambitious, young, and verrry eager to please.
Some of my friends got coffee for their bosses in the morning, wiped up from their bosses lunches and stayed late into the evening.
I worked my asss off for several years but was always grateful that my bosses were young moms and wanted to have a life outside of the office.
"Wearing his BING CROSBY clothes and crooning...buuuh buuh buuuh"
So when some of the freshmen (my sisterhood of about 6 other gals) would get together at lunch, they would exchange horror stories.
One would talk about how her boss would constantly click his pen nervously on the document she was typing up and she would have to go back and apply white out over it repeatedly.
The other would mention how her boss spoke broken english and she couldn't understand what she was saying
Someone else would complain that an odorous foul mouthed coffee breath stink of a boss would berate her in front of his clients when the document wasn't up to his specific and unrealistic demands (the staples weren't straight and looked crooked, for example).
And then there was Lisa who worked for Ellen. She was demanding, often moody and quite intolerable ....she wanted perfection 110% of the time and if Lisa didn't use her spell check 100 times a day, Ellen would call her on it.
The poor girl could never sit down for more than 5 minutes without Ellen demanding that she get up and walk into her office to do something.
"Wearing his BING CROSBY clothes and crooning...buuuh buuh buuuh"
Our "honeymoon" period was definitely over as we entered into our 3rd year working at this lawfirm. We were overworked and underpaid but it was a great way to be introduced to the real world.
We sweated blood and tears to make all the work of these attorneys look effortless.
It was the early 90's and the firm had just introduced a new way to communicate with each other: Email.
It was a phenomenal concept. We could send messages to each other over ....the computer!
Amazing.
"Wearing his BING CROSBY clothes and crooning...buuuh buuh buuuh"
"Wearing his BING CROSBY clothes and crooning...buuuh buuh buuuh"
Now with the introduction of new technology came a lot of "errors" in how to use it.
There were no Standards of Practice or Etiquette and, we, being excited young oppressed working bees were giddy with excitement that we could now send "secret" messages and "gossip"
"Wearing his BING CROSBY clothes and crooning...buuuh buuh buuuh"
sooooo we would send messages back and forth that would say something like
"heee, isn't this clever ....we can *** about this and that...."
"isn't so and so a flirth with Joe Attorney?"
"Do you think Jane Attorney would mind if told her to go scratch?"
things like that....we all knew NOTHING about the concept of BIG BROTHER
"Wearing his BING CROSBY clothes and crooning...buuuh buuh buuuh"
A few months after email was introduced to all of, Lisa and Ellen were still struggling to have an amicable working relationship.
This "marriage" of boss and secretary was a disaster and Lisa often lamented to us over lunch all of the mean little obnoxious things Ellen would purposely do to make Lisa's time in the office miserable.
This was also about the time that major announcements were being made in the firm.
It was about to split. The Lead Partner had decided he would start a new firm and take a bunch of attorneys and associates with him.
Why? What?
The story goes that Big Lead Partner Guy (a man in his mid 60's) wanted Ellen to be made Partner. Why? According to a long history of public knowledge, she was his lover. Both married to other spouses, Ellen and Big Lead Partner Guy had a looong history together and only certain inner circles knew about it.
We were freshmen. We did not know about it until the firm decided to split away.
Apparently Ellen was not all that great of an attorney and the board would not allow her to be made partner until she pulled her own weight. Big Lead Partner Guy said that since most of the success of the firm was from his talents, he would pull his talent out and take her and a few others with him.
"Wearing his BING CROSBY clothes and crooning...buuuh buuh buuuh"
wait...is anyone still awake or interested?
"Wearing his BING CROSBY clothes and crooning...buuuh buuh buuuh"
Heck yes please keep it coming! I need my night cap.
Most of the secretaries (the freshmen included) were miserable because the split in the firm would mean displacement from our positions. Basically if we couldn't find a suitable position within the firm within 30 days we would be let go.
The only jobs that were available at that time were for lawyers that were considered DOA or Dead On Arrival - meaning if you work for them you can consider your career over. They were "impossible" to work for. These were the lawyers that had temps working for them. They most likely were the kids that couldn't play nice at the playground or cried a lot when they didn't get their way.
So after several years of working at this high falootin firm, our jobs were in jeopardy and most of us blamed the incompetence and stupid paramour sex of Ellen.
"Wearing his BING CROSBY clothes and crooning...buuuh buuh buuuh"
And what the hell was the attraction of Ellen that Big Lead Partner Guy saw in her anyway?
She was in her late 40's/early 50's, very tall, lanky, plain and wore her yellow blond hair in the same bob with side split every.single.day. She wore blue suits 3 days out of 5. The other 2 days she wore gray. She didn't wear makeup except for when a client came to visit then she would add a dash of ruby lipstick that made her lips look like bludgeoned fish.
She hunched over all the time (she could have better posture if she tried but she was always looming over like a forboding tree shadowing over a little flower) She loved to watch her feet when she walked. I think she thought she had nice legs because her height was very long. Maybe Big Lead Partner Guy was a leg man...
Nevertheless, Ellen started working with my boss on a case and Lisa and I would coordinate different edits to a legal brief daily...
"Wearing his BING CROSBY clothes and crooning...buuuh buuh buuuh"
My boss would write the brief (nothing brief about it, the pleading was over 500 pages long) and send it to Ellen (who had seniority) and Ellen would edit everything in red pen and send it on back.
That is where I would come in and open the document and make all of Ellen's edits.
After weeks of working on this brief, the court filing for it fast approached and Lisa and I worked through our lunches to try to get it looking perfect.
My boss was sick of working on it at this point and wanted it done and over - she wanted to go home and spend time with her baby.
I wanted to go home and watch Cheers on tv.
Lisa wanted to go home and get the image of Ellen's teeth stained with salad out of her mind.
"Wearing his BING CROSBY clothes and crooning...buuuh buuh buuuh"
Finally the pleading was completed.
Lisa and I had the go ahead to make 30 copies of the monster and coordinate the court filing (which back then was very involved, not much was done electronically the way it is now) We had to do backings, envelopes, letters, summaries, etc. etc.
We both stayed late a few nights and finally got it done. This also meant taking public transportation after hours and in the dark. We both did not live close by but we did what we had to do.
On the final day, we called our messenger to tell him to get ready to make the court delivery.
Lisa was able to breathe a sigh of relief that she wouldn't have Ellen breathing down her neck and calling her up to come in at odd hours.
We finally got it done and can take a break.
My boss exited her office that morning shaking her hands together in victory and cracking her neck (as if she ran a marathon).
"Wearing his BING CROSBY clothes and crooning...buuuh buuh buuuh"
It was 20 minutes before the messenger would come up to the 33rd floor to pick up our packets. The packets we have worked months on getting to perfection.
I received an email from Ellen.
Naturally, I thought she was going to congratulate all of us on a job well done.
I was idealistic back then.
Instead, she was informing me that there were several pages in the document that did not look right. They were crooked from the copier and why didn't we check every page of these documents when they came back from the copy room?
They could not be sent to court clients and opposing parties looking that way. We would have to reprint the askew pages and tear apart the large document and replace those pages and WHAT THE FLECK>!>!>!>!>!
"Wearing his BING CROSBY clothes and crooning...buuuh buuh buuuh"
Lisa was crying on the phone. She couldn't really talk.
She was early in her 1st pregnancy and the stress was too much for her to handle.
My boss rolled her eyes and pounded her head against her desk.
I was pissed and frustrated.
Really? The people reading said pleading couldn't *** their eyes and head to a slight 8 degree angle to read the paragraph and pages that were tilted?
It was the 25th hour and these babies needed to be at the court clerk's office yesterday and now we are picking apart stupid crap like this?
PIIIIIIIIISSED, I emailed Lisa a message of reassurance, humor and hate
Lisa,
Do not let "BIG BIRD" get to you. She is obviously frustrated (probably sexually) and is taking it out on you. That stupid "celery stalk" is clueless on how good of a secretary she has in you. Do NOT let her assanine ways upset you like this. She is not worth it. She's a raging stupid idiot!!!
Just Peachy
"Wearing his BING CROSBY clothes and crooning...buuuh buuh buuuh"
I started to take apart the pleadings one by one and rushed and fumbled with the extreme undertaking that was at hand. It had to be done and done quickly.
After 10 minutes, I checked my email and found it odd that Lisa did not respond to my encouraging little message. That was not like her.
She is probably laughing her asss off, I thought.
I called her to see what she thought.
"What email?" she asks
"The one that I....."
I hit reply instead of creating a new message. I hit reply to Ellen because that was the subject matter....and so ...
WHAT THE FLUCK DID I DO?!?!?!?!?!??!
"Wearing his BING CROSBY clothes and crooning...buuuh buuh buuuh"
A small warm stream of urine trickled into my panties.
My heart raced down the hallway and into the bathroom and threw up.
I stayed at my desk in utter paralyzed shock.
The concept of what I just did started to slowly dawn on me.......and with that, I resembled this.
"Wearing his BING CROSBY clothes and crooning...buuuh buuh buuuh"
"Wearing his BING CROSBY clothes and crooning...buuuh buuh buuuh"
Ok, sorry about that....Jimmy has been waking up in the middle of the night lately and crying for "Mommy!". I will have to make that a separate post...."Why is my 20 month old waking up in the middle of the night?"
Ok, back to the story.
I just sent the Big Lead Partner's Misstress Attorney (the one that holds the cards on many things in this lawfirm) a scathing email about her.
Start thinking of excuses....
"tell her the creepy mailroom guy hacked into my computer"
"tell her that it was actually referring to the other attorney Lisa worked for, even though that was man"
"tell her you had a seizure and that I blanked out somehow writing something that made no sense..."
"tell her you are an ass and beg for mercy not to be fired"
A million and one images raced through my head....
I was brought before an enormous jury and put on trial for slander and was told by a stern judge that I would never be able to find employment in the city of Philadelphia ever again.
I was sent home with a note to my parents as to why I had been fired
I was asked to leave right then and there and had to carry all my belongings in my hands down 33 floors out to the street, into the subway el and onto a city bus
I was captioned in the city newspaper "Angry Attorney sues employee over scathing email
I couldn't tell you how many "worst scenarios" wandered through my vivid imagination in a matter of seconds....
Meanwhile, the email was sent to the wrong person and there it sits....I had to do something quickly.
"Wearing his BING CROSBY clothes and crooning...buuuh buuh buuuh"
You know in the old Road Runner cartoons when he is running away from wiley coyote? There is that circle of dust that swirls from under his feet as he runs emphatically away? Here is a visual of what I looked like as I ran up a flight of steps in an effort to stop that email from being read.
I reached the top of the stairs....out of breath, and panicked. The receptionist would later describe the fact that she saw a blur of a person in a long dress, arms flailing, and mutters of "Oh my Gawd, Oh my Gawd!!!!! I'm screwed!!!" echoing past her desk.
I ran right to Lisa's desk. Her face was pale when I explained to her what happened in a matter of nano seconds. I think I saw her tonsils as she screamed "OH SHIIIIT!".
We both slithered past Ellen's office in a nonchalant kind of way. Well, not really but we had to get to that desk, that computer, and find a way to get rid of that email.
"Wearing his BING CROSBY clothes and crooning...buuuh buuh buuuh"
As if the Patron Saint of "I'm Fvcked" smiled down on me, we were lucky enough to discover that Ellen was not in her office. But we could hear her voice in the hallway somewhere....She was somewhere close by and would be back in the office in a matter of minutes.
Lisa rushed to Ellen's computer. She was not logged on. That means that Lisa had to hack into Ellen's computer (back then that took a while to log on) get her password and open up the Inbox.
In a matter of 10 minutes that felt like 10 hours, Lisa managed to get into the computer, put in the username and password (luckily she knew what it was), and found my email. There it was. Only 2 unread messages were in Ellen's inbox, one from another attorney and one from me. They sat there BOLDED, untouched, and ready to be read. Ready to take down my legal secretary career in a single click of the mouse.
I heard that little computer ding that echoes when you delete a message and I could feel my blood pressure suddenly drop.
"Lisa!!!! Don't forget to delete it from the "Trash" file!" "Oh sheit! Right!" she exclaimed. There was that heavenly noise again "badaboop" Deleted.
I could hear heavy footsteps outside of the office door. It was the sound of Big Bird and her heavy navy blue heels stomping down the hall.
"Wearing his BING CROSBY clothes and crooning...buuuh buuh buuuh"
10 minutes later, a phone call.
"It's all good" said Lisa laughing hysterically on the phone. "She knows nothing."
"I love you." I said through tears of relief.
My fingers were still trembling throughout the day and I felt like I had a buzz. I always had a hard time keeping adrenaline in check.
Crisis averted.
My stupidity and idiocy almost cost me a very good job and reputation.
Within a matter of 6 months, Ellen left her role as a P.I.T.A. associate and chief head mistress and started a new law firm. Lisa was temporarily placed with a new 1st year law associate till she went out on maternity leave. She never returned.
I managed to work another year at the firm and then one of my associates was recruited to go practice at the new law firm that was created and gaining popularity. I was displaced and voluntarily left my position to work more locally near my home.
The sheer madness of that innocent and stupid mistake that happened 20 years ago has now made me the super overly cautious communicator I am today. I OCD my emails constantly and check that they are being delivered to the right person.
You never know what is going to happen in the click of a button. You never know who is going to read them.
And so, my close call with email death had a happy ending (sorta) in the end.
Be careful what you send!
Thanks for taking the time to read my little tale. Sure do appreciate it.
Have a lovely weekend!
xo
"Wearing his BING CROSBY clothes and crooning...buuuh buuh buuuh"
Another great story peachy! I search the board just for them.
Did you post about Disneymoon? I know it was postponed before.
Thanks again!