I just snapped (I mean, really, can't-laugh-it-off-a-joke SNAPPED) at one of the support staff (granted, it's the only person I really could live without here, mainly because she believes she's still the pretty, popular, obnoxious cheerleader she was in high school several decades ago, and also feels that her job description includes daily running commentary on my clothing in a really slyly rude way, but STILL), growled at a poor client who WOULD. NOT. STOP. TALKING., and am had to walk away in the middle of a conversation with a secretary before I bit her head off too. And the first person who says PMS is getting a swift kick in the balls with my very pointy-toed shoe. It's not. It's a function of life at a small-ish firm, I think, that at this moment is making me very very angry and (unfairly) taking it out on people who don't deserve -- I just found myself being so angry that it got away from me for a few minutes. For which I feel awful, and will have to apologize. But first, I have to carp it out of my system before there's another mini-eruption.
While there are many things I love about the firm (okay, pretty much everything), the last few days have been like a "best of" reel of all the worst points of working in LessThanBigLaw - specifically, the fact that there's often too much work for the number of attorneys we have -- and since we've got the typically top-heavy structure of most small-ish firms, and since there aren't enough associates to assign each one to a partner, essentially associates pick up all the partners' slack. To be fair, they don't leave that much (well, okay, one or two leave somewhat more than they could, but i suppose that's their prerogative), but there are waves of high slack time -- and since they don't all talk to each other about what I'm doing, and there's no central "assignments" person who can tell Partner A that if I have to cover his deposition in addition to going to Partner B's hearing, writing Partner C's appellate brief, and doing fifty-seven client meetings for Partner D, they're going to have to start cloning me. And since it's really not appropriate for me to say "I'm prioritizing Partner C's work over Partner D's, so I have to turn down your assignment" that often, at the moment, i'm in Dante's seventh circle of "running around like a crazy person" hell. I hate it. I hate hate hate it. Especially because this weekend, I managed to max out my credit card and spend apparently all the money in my bank account except an amount which equals ten dollars less than my rent check, which, OF COURSE, I mailed out last week so OF COURSE it's going to be presented this week and IT WILL BOUNCE. I could cry. I never ever ever bounce a rent check. I haven't bounced any check since around the time I stopped being a student.
These are the times when I think it would be really easy to leave and call back some of those recruiters who've been dangling BigLaw (and commensurately BigSalary) jobs -- why I am running myself ragged at a job that doesn't pay enough for the ajita? it's not like I'm saving lives or anything, either, so there's not even a recognizable morality bonus.
Comments