MY NEWBIE IS SHOWING

Day 13: And it's Friday

In honor of Friday The 13th, tell us about a time when something went so horribly wrong that all you could do about it was laugh.





I have been with the same employer on and off since 1997. Back in the early days he had a secretary, for lack of a better word, who could barely show up on time, let alone use a computer. I have never seen my boss so angry as when she would show up late and take forever to put a document together. Trudy always had a different excuse for being late – my favorite was “the cat ate my alarm clock.”


On one particular date, we were up against the gun and had to get a document out. She was a savant with footnotes. So she managed to get the document together and the footnote entered correctly. Crashed the old computer systems 3 times getting that together, but she managed to figure it out somehow.


A couple days later, my boss is furious. One of us had sent a telephone bill with the correspondence. He informed us that opposing counsel would not pay our phone bill! I looked at him and said, I am married and my bills are sent out from my house or at the mailbox downstairs. Trudy said she did not do it either. So we were at an impasse, until 2 days later when opposing counsel mailed Trudy’s phone bill back to the office declining to pay her bill. I got to listen to my boss on a rant literally all day. There was no reprieve and no quiet that day.


Did they ever take us seriously after that? Are you kidding? We were the joke of other lawyer offices for a good long time. Can you regain your reputation after a stunt like that? Somehow he did. It took a couple years, but the boss managed to do it. He had to write a recommendation for a city attorney who wanted a Judge appointment, and that worked. Never hurts to have allies in high places.


My favorite Trudy story involved a cat again. I was working in the back room on billing and she just had to come back there and hang over my shoulder to see what I was doing. I was squirming around trying to get away from her ominous presence when I looked over and thought I saw her belly button. I looked again and there was a collar at her belly button. “Trudy, are you wearing your shirt upside down?”


“Yes, my cat spilled something on it, so I tried to dry it on newspaper, and it left marks so this is the only way I can wear it without the marks showing.”


I can’t make this stuff up. You have to laugh or go crazy….or both.