The Office... I'm over it

I recently began one of those "all important" internships that will skyrocket my legal career... if it does not I am going to file suit against career services for giving me false hope and unreasonable expectations... the scariest part... I could succeed. You've gotta love frivolous claims. Anyway I am now sitting in a cube in an office that doesn't have more than 30 people in it. But it's odd because there is only 1 row of cubes so I only have 2 walls. My chair lines up off center with the office door in front of me, which is occupied by a not unfriendly army veteran who has this gem outside his door. But that is beside the point. The point is that I saw a a lot of traffic going into and out of this office today by the same 2 people. Apparently these 3 were exchanging emails on a project with a 4th undisclosed party regarding an upcoming project. These '3 musketeers' seemed to think that the 4th was incompetent and an all around horrible person. I realize that I have only been working here for a few weeks and I only know 2 people's names but how often have you noticed this happen? Anywhere? People start complaining about someone else's job performance when things are not going smoothly.

I find it hard to believe that when someone is bitching that they know all the complexities and nuances of that person's job. I've done it. But I realized I don't know anything about those jobs that I complain about and I have been trying to not give people a hard time. Like when only 1 teller is working the counter at the bank and the line is huge and there are 5 others in close proximity behind the counter during peak hours. The same is often true for the post office. But unless you have worked in one of these positions in the last few years the chances are you have no idea what is going on. But back to the story at hand. This group of 3 people congregated in the office across from me every single time an email was sent by the 4th person. This happened every 1.5 minutes or so for 2 hours.

I wished I had a stop watch to verify my ballpark guestimate of the total amount of time they spent complaining today. My guess is they spent at least 45 minutes in their group therapy sessions today. Again, I don't know their names, their positions or the difficulty of this project or anything else about it, but it seems like that if they spent 45 minutes problem solving/compromising in a face to face conference with #4 present a meaningful solution could have been devised or at least hatched out. I mean, I mean if they had just properly addressed the issue when it came up it could have avoided later frustration and there might not have been 45 minutes wasted complaining. Just talk it out kids, don't make the office completely inefficient by wasting time and then leaving early. PS my boss has THE life. He is the only attorney i know who makes 6 figures, arrives at 10 am, leaves at 5, dresses extremely casual for an office (not one tie since i started), only reports to the lead in-house attorney, gets to shoot the shit with 3 interns all day and here's the kicker... HE JUST GRADUATED LAW SCHOOL LAST MAY. In his defense he is really smart. Plus I really am enjoying the work... learning how to play the IP game. Respect the game son.

As for my superbowl pick. Indeed, it always seems like we are waiting to see who will win this 5 month race to the finish (front of the bus). Some may say go Cardinals (apple) they've never won one, they're hot and larry fitzgerald is incredible. Others may say go Steelers (orange) because one superbowl isn't enough for Big Ben and the rest of his pennsyltucky ore harvesting crew. I say... Go Zebras (banana)! Because if the Packers aren't playing with favre gun slinging their way to victory... who the hell cares. They don't call it the Lombardi trophy for nothing. And for shame on Freducate. Going to see a concert on this the holiest day of the year. A wag of my finger to you sir. And today I tip my hat tooo... my evidence teacher for canceling class the Friday before spring break.