UG....

I have dubbed the other paralegal girl Uptight Girl (UG) (although she HATES the term 'paralegal' and insists that she be called a 'law clerk', so it is particularly fun for me to now refer to her as a paralegal because I'm just passive aggressive that way).

Uptight Girl tells others in the office what their job is and what they should be doing at least ten or twenty times a day.

This morning, we were supposed to have a status meeting. This entails going through each case and making sure everyone knows what they are to do for their assigned cases. Basically there are two attorneys and two paralegals (ha!) and a collection of cases. The attorneys are assigned cases separately or together based on how they've decided to share costs and fees, and the paralegals (Ha, ha!) are assigned cases in turn so we each have an equal number of cases that we are handling at any given time.

So, I am inheriting some 19 cases. Uptight Girl has 18. She told me the other day that she would take the next case that came in in order to maintain parity. Okay, no problem.

After bitching for 10-15 minutes bitterly at how her time was being wasted and how ridiculous this all was, the attorney (the other one is on vacation) finished the phone call he was on and came to the meeting. Let me just say, I was distinctly uncomfortable siting there in the conference room, listening to such negativity for that length of time. It didn't even occur to me to be mad that I had to wait. I was getting paid to wait. What did it matter to me? It was a hell of a lot better than NOT getting paid to sit on my ass at home. (I'm just saying.)

Anyway, that episode made me kind of uncomfortable, but then, it got worse this afternoon. The attorney comes back from an appearance and came into my new office where I was talking about the calendar with the lady who's leaving. He starts telling her about a trial date that is coming up and saying he wants certain people subpoenaed with docs for trial. No problem. Calendaring is my job. Also, if the attorney tells me to do something, I do it, no matter what anyone else says.

But Uptight Girl did NOT like it. After he leaves my new office, she pokes her head in and says, "Well, since Mr. Attorney talked to you about that and that was my case, that's YOUR case now, since you apparently know all about it. You need to do everything on that case from now on."

Okay. Whatever. Ya FREAK! First of all, you AREN'T MY FUCKING BOSS, YOU ARE A PARALEGAL, (ha, ha, ha!) whether you think calling yourself a law clerk makes some kind of difference or not. Secondly, what's the BFD? The attorney just doesn't care who does stuff. He just wants the job done. Petty stuff just doesn't matter to him.

So, it kind of annoyed me, and it kind of just amused me at the same time. It annoyed me because her negative energy is taxing, and I just find myself feeling uncomfortable and stressed out when I'm around that kind of attitude. It amused me because I wasn't sure what she hoped to gain by dumping stuff on me. If she thinks I'm going to care, she's wrong, because I just like to be busy, and I want to learn what needs to be done, do a good job, and eventually be competent to run my own practice. She's not hurting me by being petulant about it.

I told my friend N about it, and she made some vague reference to dogs peeing around their territory. Yup, sounds about right to me, although I don't know much about dogs- we finally got one in October, and I never had one growing up, so the territory protection is completely foreign to me, especially when the dog is a paralegal (ha, ha, ha, ha!).