I forgot to go to an arbitration today. Let me say this again, just to underline it: I FORGOT TO GO TO AN ARBITRATION TODAY. For all you non-lawyers, this is the equivalent of forgetting to go to work. Forgetting to go to a departmental meeting. Forgetting to.. DO YOUR JOB.
I'm so embarrassed. I have never ever ever in the (admittedly short-ish) history of my career forgotten to GO TO COURT. How do you even forget that? Granted, my ab-fab secretary is out on a two-week vacation last week and this week, and my calendar is being dealt with as "extra work" by a partner's secretary (who is not quite as stellar as my secretary, in my opinion), so my calendar has been like a dirty little orphan child begging for more porridge this week. However, the partner who had asked me to do it in the first place (because, OH YES, OF COURSE, it was someone else's cases, not one of my own where I could have hopefully swept it under the rug without too much fuss) actually asked me to my face on Friday if I would cover it. We chatted about it. For, like, ten minutes. He then sent an email to his secretary and my secretary and me about it. (Although both the former two were and have been out on vacation, so it wasn't so helpful). In addition to the computerized and paper diaries my secretary keeps for me, I keep my own pocket diary with all my appointments, appearances, etc. The damn arbitration made it in to NONE OF THESE.
So I wandered into work today, already deeply cranky from being up too late crying (Irksome and I are, apparently, breaking up. More on that bag o' fun later) and having nightmares (I accidentally read this stupid NYT article about "Horror in a Sleepy Connecticut Town" where a family was tragically murdered by burglars while they, basically, slept, and it followed me around all night), and plop down at my computer to find out if that J. Crew bikini I wanted is finally on sale, because now I have to look extra-cute since I don't have a boyfriend anymore (funny, though -- I didn't even know I had a boyfriend until he told me he might not want to be my boyfriend anymore. What a lovely way to break the news of that nomenclature.)
As I'm futzing around, said partner comes in, walks by my door without comment and does a double take -- "Uh, aren't you supposed to be in court for me?" he says. "Oh SHIT!" I say. Literally, of course. Because the best thing to do when you've screwed up is curse at your boss. I rushed around calling the court, he rushed around finding his spare suit (since he wasn't planning to be in court that day, since I was going to be in court that day. oops.) and since it was going to be such a problem, he ended up going to the arbitration himself so he could personally explain the problem and hopefully, use some of his professional cred to convince the arbitrators not to automatically suppress our answer.
Just please kill me. Honestly. If it's painless, I really wouldn't mind.
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