Miami (belated from September)

I'm still catching up since my Charleston trip in September.  Life has whizzed by and I haven't had a chance to post my Miami trip yet, and plans are already afoot for another Miami trip!  I spent a week in Miami right after I was in Charleston. I went there right after the wedding.  I had planned to spend two weeks in Charleston, because the bride had told me she wasn't going to go anywhere for a honeymoon (they had originally planned to visit Erica's uncle in Japan, but when the earthquake hit they decided to stay home.)  Then they were gifted a honeymoon cabin in the country, so I changed plans to spend the second week in Miami.

I arrived in Miami airport to be greeted by two spirited cousins working with clockwork precision. My cell phone rang just as I was wondering where the hell do I go NOW?  I had just taken 5 escalators, rolling walkways and a train (with no instructions as to how you get on the train, or if you even should get on it, as there were no signs informing where it goes until you actually get on it).  This confusing mess is due to endless construction at the Miami airport.  They were at my baggage claim, thank god, because I had no idea where my baggage claim was, and they guided me in.

Once we were in the car I was immediately briefed on who wanted to see me, and who was available when, including my Skype schedule with Viv. (It was amusing to watch Viv's mother chase her all over the house in a wheel chair with a broken foot).  They made me feel like I had just gotten off Air Force One, and my staff had anticipated all my needs, and all scheduling conflicts were worked out.  I was informed of which friends I couldn't see due to poor health.  Some more unconventional friends were unable to be visited, due to the fact that they were homeless on the road hundreds of miles away, in several enormous trailers, experiencing one misfortune after another, which I think if they uploaded to youtube as they lived it, it could become a big hit, and they could end up on talk shows or reality shows, making a lot of money.  I can see them on Dancing with the Stars already.

Upon arriving home I saw the refrigerator had been stocked with all my needs, such as those amazing 60 calorie ice cream sandwiches which are only available there.  I was given the best bed, already made up, and the playing cards were set up on the table with all our favorite accoutrements.  I was home.

More from Cousin P re palindromes:  12321 is a better palindrome than 12221 (I dunno, more "variety"?  I dunno).

Cousin S had all these things around the house that had belonged to her deceased mother, my Aunt Florrie (a basically awful woman that had gone unloved by her family), and asked me if I wanted any of them.  Most were unappealing tchotchkes until I found a great necklace.  It's the one and only thing I have from my Aunt Florrie, and is as good a way to honor her memory as I can think of.  I'm wearing it in this picture of us playing cards:

Patti wanted to drive me all over Jupiter, but I really wanted to do it when we had more time.  It would have involved 12 hours of driving in 2 days for her.  As much as I really want to see Jupiter, that's insane.  So, I made up a bed for her in the other guest/Viv's room, which really wowed her (I knew the feeling) and the next day we all just lit up and started playing cards, and she was hooked.  I think she commented something like she could "see the appeal." She left well-rested, with our hopes still high that one day she will get to show me Jupiter.

Here we are celebrating H's birthday:

The Document Center Incident

I had a lot of angst, for many years, regarding document centers, and this was the pinnacle. I always felt stuck, rather than having made a career choice. I'm over that now, and don't feel like venting about it.  But this is still a great story. Probably happened to everyone at some point in their lives.
~--~--~--~--~

“THE DOCUMENT CENTER INCIDENT”

The following took place 4 days, Monday through Thursday, in June 1995, when I worked in the Document Processing Center (“DPC”) at M and P. This is a letter I sent to a co-worker, Pete, who was away when these events happened. I've edited it as best I could to hopefully be understood by an average reader, and changed the real names.

Letter to Pete, July 4, 1995 

You actually missed me?? Aww. Hugh Kahn [an associate] emailed me “you really must miss Paula and Pete,” [my co-workers who were out] and I emailed him back, “Paula and Pete who?” He made a point of telling me in person how much that cracked him up. He has been added to my list of special people, ever since “The Incident.” Which I’ve been dying to tell you about.

This is what happened: Boy Wonder [a fellow co-worker who still works there today] was working on one of Joe's [partner's] documents. One of Joe's requested revisions was: “no romans, goddamit,” and Boy Wonder jokingly said, “I’m highly offended.” I emailed Joe's & Boy Wonder's comments to Lenny [another partner], who forwarded it to Joe, as well as new associate Sherry Koch, joking that the firm could be sued for discrimination against Romans. Normally Lenny cc’s me when he forwards my mail, but for some reason he failed to this time. So it came as a complete surprise when Sherry Koch came giggling into DPC to apologize for offending anyone in DPC.

Unfortunately, Hippo [DPC co-ordinator] was in there taking it all very seriously, but Sherry and I were all giggles. Sherry kept looking at her, then back at me. I told Sherry nobody was offended, but then Sherry would look at Hippo and apologize again. Hippo asked how she even knew, and she mentioned email from Lenny and like an idiot I admitted sending it to Lenny.

You are probably wondering why I’m telling you all this. You are probably wondering what this has to do with anything. I’ll tell you, everyone involved is still wondering. But the above-described was “The Incident”, and all there was to it. Wait til you hear what happens next.

To backtrack for a moment, earlier that day I had emailed Lenny, “Bored to death. Send poems.” He emailed back that I should ask Hugh for poems because he likes to write them. So I emailed Lenny, “I like your poems.” Lenny responded by sending a file of silly email he had gotten at different times from Hugh, including poems about “don’t touch that door!” and something about a $25.39 suit. So I emailed Lenny, with a cc to Hugh asking what those were about?

So, back to the story, just as Sherry was leaving DPC, an email arrived from Hugh to Lenny with a cc to me, “Why does this make me nervous?”

I emailed Hugh back:  “You have reason to be nervous after the stunt he just pulled on me!” with cc to Lenny.

Hugh: “what did the scoundrel do now?”

I didn’t have a chance to answer Hugh at this point, because I received an email from Sherry at that moment: “Boy, Hippo didn’t crack a smile,” and it took several emails back and forth with her to explain that Hippo has no sense of humor and that Sherry unfortunately blew my cover by coming in to apologize, with Sherry responding back that she was sorry for blowing my cover, but it was nice to meet all these fun people who had senses of humor, and she hoped I was having a good day. I responded it was an ok day so far - Lenny sent me poems. She sent back, “I didn’t know he wrote poems,” to which I replied, actually this time he sent Hugh’s poems. She responded, “I didn’t know there was such a thing as a talented attorney,” which I forwarded to Lenny who replied with cc’s to me and Hugh, “There is no such thing as a talented attorney, just talented people who have made career mistakes.” At one point I was emailing Sherry, Hugh and Lenny all at once and copying all of them, and somewhere during all these exchanges I wrote on one of them, “P.S. Hugh, I’m getting to you,” to which Lenny responded to Hugh, with cc’s to me and Sherry, “she’s getting to you, too, huh?” Basically, we were having a lot of fun. And it was heartwarming to get mail from Sherry saying how glad she was to have made new friends.

But the next day Sherry told me that Hippo had asked to see copies of the email she had received from me. Sherry told her she already deleted it. (Didi [another co-worker]), who witnessed this, told me that Hippo went to the extent of explaining to her how to “undelete” email but Sherry told her it was already gone from her list. Didi also told me that Hippo pressed Sherry for details, which Sherry refused to give.) Now, of course, all Hippo knew was that I had mentioned to her that I was the one that told Lenny about the comment about Romans that he forwarded to Sherry, causing Sherry to appear in DPC to apologize. So it didn’t surprise me that Hippo approached Sherry for evidence, although it did disturb me. I really wanted to talk to Joe, as it was his document and comment about the Romans, but he was out of the office that week.

At any rate, it still came as a complete surprise when I was called in to speak with Jan [human resources] and Mary [my supervisor], in which I was asked to sign a memo that I was to receive a one-day suspension for “breaching confidentiality” and “abuse of email.” I figured Mary would be concerned and speak with me, or babble in her way, and that would be the end of it, if anything happened at all. I felt like I had been thrown into the twilight zone, sitting there in front of Jan having to “explain myself.”

At lunch when I showed the memo to Paula [aforementioned absent co-worker with whom I ate lunch every day] she pointed out that it was a suspension, meaning I wasn’t to show up Tuesday (I had read it as they were going to dock me for a day).  I went back to work after lunch in a state of shock. I emailed Hugh, Sherry and Lenny, “Am truly depressed. Send cheer.” When I didn’t get any response I felt like I didn’t have a friend in the world. I didn’t know that Hugh by this time had called Lenny up to ask him if he was aware I had lost a day’s pay (which is what I had told him before I went to lunch) and that everybody was scared to death of ever using email again. I just thought nobody cared about me. I was literally sitting at my terminal crying.

I emailed Jan and Mary that I had a headache (which I did. It’s about the third stress headache I’ve ever gotten in my entire life. I rarely get headaches) and was going home. Just then Hugh called me. When I answered he inquired as to how I was doing, and I was so relieved that somebody cared I just burst into tears. I told him, “you just made me cry again.” He was totally silent for a long time.  He just let me cry, ready to listen whenever I was ready to speak. The more I felt him just being there for me the more I cried. Finally I managed to say, “why do you ask?” which just cracked him up. Well, hearing him laughing I just started laughing, which made him laugh harder and I was laughing and crying at the same time. I thanked him for being there for me when I felt I didn’t have a friend in the world, and asked him if I could come to his office.

On the way I ran into Sherry, and invited her into his office with me. Sherry couldn’t believe this was happening (welcome to M and P), apologized over and over, repeating that the one thing she was glad about was she at least made a new friend, and gave me a big hug. The three of us discussed things for a while, after which I was greatly heartened.

I called Lenny and asked if I could see him, and that wimp actually said he was worried about anyone seeing me come to his office! I told him nobody would see me. (Note: Lynette [his secretary] later told me that actually somebody DID see me go into his office and asked her if “he and I were an item,” to which she responded in her own inimitable style, “an item of what?”) [note to reader: Lenny is gay and I was married.] I went up there and told him I was especially hurt by him not responding to my email, and thought he was suddenly cold and heartless and not my friend any more, but he said he still was and I gave him a big hug and cried all over his shirt. He just said that he had been advised by another partner (he wasn’t supposed to tell me who, but he admitted it was Rick Drimmer) that he should take it easy on email for a while. Lenny said he was going to talk to Jan and tell her he thought the whole thing was a stupid misunderstanding, but he never did.

Anyway, I was really traumatized. I never had anything on my personnel record in all my employment history. I was an emotional wreck for a week.

This occurred on Friday, so I had a miserable weekend forming a response to the memo, which I had to submit by Monday if I was to get the Tuesday suspension lifted. Lenny helped me write it, via phone Sunday night. He said that I should specifically mention the words “retaliation” on Mary’s part, and “stress”, because although Jan and Mary might be too stupid to think about lawsuits, those words would definitely trigger “lawsuit” to Fred [office manager]. He was apparently right, because for the first time in my history at M and P Fred requested a meeting with me.

When I heard Fred wanted to talk to me I called Mary and told her that I didn’t want to say anything to him that I hadn’t said to her face. I had a lot of questions. For one, I wanted to know why she didn’t come to me first? Her answer surprised me. Mary and I talked for a long time. She said she did want to talk to me first, but because of all the difficulty we had communicating in the past, she went to human resources for advice on how to talk to me. I thought this was consistent with her personality - she would feel inadequate to deal with this and would go to her superiors. What was particularly surprising, however, was she told me the suspension was Fred’s idea (and Jan had already told me that she was trying to get my “sentence” reduced to a warning but Fred didn’t agree). Mary was plain exhausted, and kept answering questions I hadn’t asked. I pieced the puzzle together from the pieces she gave me as she responded to what she thought I was asking. Through it all I gleaned that Mary really wasn’t after my butt, she just wasn’t going to go out of her way to save it. She “cares” about me in some kind of Christian way, not with any personal loyalty. But I didn’t see any maliciousness on her part. She genuinely wanted to get along, and was just too stupid to predict the effect of her actions. And I could see Jan trying her best, but being ineffective.

So after talking to Mary I suddenly grocked on Fred. He wasn’t going to be sympathetic to anything I said in the memo (which was that Mary was retaliating against me and Lenny for having complained about her) - which I no longer believed anyway. I think I truly violated Mary’s sense of moral duty to the attorneys, but I don’t think it was vindictive on her part, just idiotic. I went into the meeting armed with the knowledge that Fred’s mind was already made up about the suspension, and meeting with me was all for “show.”

I didn’t want to listen to a whole bunch of bullshit first thing about how Mary and I have to learn to get along, so the first thing I said when I went into Fred’s office was that I had a long talk with Mary and cleared things up between us. If Fred was “scared” I would sue he did not let on. He explained that the reason for my suspension was because I breached confidentiality and that credibility was lost by DPC users due to my actions, because they could no longer trust DPC to keep information about their documents within DPC.

I told him I didn’t believe that, and that in my opinion the perception of management’s heartlessness toward me had far worse ramifications for the firm in loss of camaraderie and morale than any imagined loss of confidence in DPC by my actions. I told him there were attorneys afraid to email me, or even be seen with me.

Fred made a face that he either didn’t believe me or didn’t care.

And I told him that management was viewed as heartless by the firm, without mentioning names. So Jan (who was in the meeting with us) said without names, there’s no way to explain why they think that way and I told her she didn’t need any names because about 5 years ago the firm hired an outside “analyzer” who gave the same findings, which were published in a memo to the entire firm, and the result of which were mandatory sensitivity seminars that all employees had to attend. Jan’s jaw dropped and Fred dismissed that with, “every office thinks that about their management.”

I said, No they don’t! You don’t care that you are perceived as heartless?  Apparently, he didn't.  He simply asked, “Why’d you do it?”

I said because I’m not heartless and I like to make people smile, because people are really stressed out in this place and can use a break to smile, but if you are heartless, then you’ll never understand.

Jan once again brought up the fact to Fred that I had no way of knowing that Lenny would forward my email, to which I hoped I looked sincere when I looked downcast and admitted, “That’s true...”

I had brought with me the article in last Friday's memo listing points management should keep in mind, with choice parts highlighted, such as “talk to your people first before slamming them.” Fred read it (he obviously hadn’t seen it before, which shows how much interest he has in the Friday memo), and said he agreed with all those points, so I said then how come I wasn’t talked to first?

Jan said I have a point, and Fred said something about fairness. So I asked him if he thought I had been treated fairly? Jan looked perplexed and Fred said, “yes, I do.”

So I asked if there was anything more to talk about and he said only to decide on when the suspension should take place, and he asked me if I knew of any reason why it shouldn’t be tomorrow? and I said, “that’s fine with me,” knowing Hippo would also be out which would give Mary a big scheduling headache.

This whole thing drained the life blood out of me. I found out I work for a vampire. My new nickname for Fred Gold is “Fred Ghoul”.

So, I was off without pay on Wednesday, and on Thursday I walked around the office asking attorneys to write complimentary memos to my personnel file. I figured if Fred was going to insist that credibility had been lost in DPC due to my actions, I was going to fill my personnel file with memos proving him wrong. I didn’t care that it looked contrived. My point was that if what Fred said was true I wouldn’t be able to get the memos, would I?

By Friday, Joe was finally back in the office. (Remember, this was Joe's document and Joe's comments about Romans). He was sickened that Administration felt they needed to take such harsh action against me and spoke to Rob Black [another partner] about getting the whole thing removed from my personnel file. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to do that, the argument being that the Administration is the same entity as the partners, and one entity can’t go against itself. This makes sense legally, but not humanly, which Joe realized. I told him that my review is coming up, and I feared I wouldn’t get a raise. He said he was going to tell Fred that his personal feelings are that I did not violate the confidentiality of his document, nor in his opinion did I abuse email, but unfortunately, he can’t tell Fred what action to take. He said he would also write me a recommendation to give if I went job hunting, and would also write a generally complimentary memo to my file. At least Joe has the balls to tell Fred his opinion. Lenny the Wimp (Lynette was really angry at him. She went on and on about how Lenny should have come to my defense) just lamented the fact that the partners were powerless to go against Administration.

Interestingly, Paula told me that she ran into Grace Seeley [a former associate] in the plaza after she left M and P and Grace had told her that Administration treated them like second class citizens. Brad Mahler [another former associate] had voiced similar complaints to Paula. He told her that the attorneys were never consulted about what they wanted before any decisions were made. And Linda Mick [law librarian] told me her friend Luke worked at the firm where Fred came from before M and P and they all called him “the jerk” over there. So much for Fred.

P.S. Rick Barber and Mauricio [associates] (who are unaware of any of this), were delighted to write nice memos about me, and they did - both on the same day. Mary was delighted. She didn’t have a clue that I had asked for them (what else is new?) And I don’t think she would have cared if she did. Both memos mentioned how professionally the department was run, with specific mention of my name (and Rick even mentioned Hippo). Although I’m seething at Hippo (who told Mary and got me into this mess) I’ll be magnanimous enough to share the spotlight with her. I’m happy because if the department is so professional how can anyone say I ruined DPC’s reputation? Mary proudly displayed them on the bulletin board, bordered with positive evaluation slips. Those memos really made her day, and if it had not been for all my troubles, I would never have thought to ask for those memos. But, I intend to keep them coming. Every time I get a compliment I’m gonna ask for it in writing. Paula wants for us both to sue, and if it ever comes to that, I want my personnel file fat with good memos discrediting Fred’s accusation.

So everything’s changed. We don’t email like we used to. Work is super boring. After making up a slew of nicknames for Nate Wilke (which Nate totally got into the spirit of) Boy Wonder has taken to finding nicknames for all the attorneys. (I told him my nickname for him was Boy Wonder, and would you believe he loves it?! I can call him Boy Wonder to his face now. He says, “just call me Robin.”) However, Hippo nipped his little game in the bud. After Sam Jarrod made a big scene about putting slash marks in his document, Boy Wonder dubbed him “the Slasher” but Hippo intervened because it isn’t proper to give the attorneys nicknames, and it was not to be tolerated. So we have to do it in secret.

Whew. So that’s the whole gory story of my recent M and P misadventure...

Prologue August 16, 1995: The happy ending is that I got a great review and raise despite all this. I also found out that Lenny had emailed Fred to express his opinion that he didn’t think I breached confidentiality, to which Fred responded, “I think she did.” Even though he got nowhere with Fred, I was relieved to hear that Lenny had come to my defense after all!!

11/11/11

Monday: The official grand opening announcement of the new Document Services fooled nobody.  There's no convincing people that a Motel 6 is better than the 5 star hotel they are used to.  I became a magnet for heart wrenching stories.  My personal favorite is a secretary that whined to human resources, "How could you fire them just before the holidays?" and was told not to worry about others, just herself.  She whined back, "it IS me I'm worried about!"

Tuesday:  A rush TOA came in that I couldn’t get around to, and suggested sending it to the new Document Services. I peeked at it as it was being worked on, and it looked beautiful. I have been totally replaced in this world.

Wednesday:  When I got in, G had looked at that TOA that the new Document Services did, and said, yeah, it looked beautiful, but showed me a print-out of the errors throughout the document.  Ok, that made us feel better.  This was followed shortly with an email requesting: “Please do not send the document to the new doc center. Please do it in-house. Thank you.”  These poor people think they have a choice, and are going to have quite a rude awakening next week.  Some people told me they complained to management about the new document services already.

Thursday:  I had only done 3 or 4 jobs this week (I lost count, because I didn't bother to log them in), and today work stopped coming in.  I did jigsaw puzzles and games on line all day, which is pretty much what I had been doing all week.  I applied for unemployment on-line, but after filling out two screens of information they wouldn't accept a future date of unemployment.  I'll have to wait until tomorrow to file.

Friday 11/11/11:

Whoa!  Not the day I expected!  It started off with an exit interview.  I walked into the conference room expecting stiffness and formality.  As it turned out, the HR manager was on the phone with her sister, who was being taken to the hospital.  When she got off the phone she shared with me the details of her family drama that had been taking place the past month, and had to pull herself together to do the interview.  I was feeling a bit tender and raw this week myself, so it was easy for me to commiserate. It ended up being an unexpectedly lovely interview in which I signed a receipt for a copy of something inconsequential, was handed 3 checks, was told I could leave early, and given a hug.

I had hoped to run over to the convenient credit union across the street to deposit those checks, but never got the chance (dang!) and  I never got a chance to apply for unemployment, either.  I spent the day in email.  Emails came to my personal inbox, or they were forwarded by our manager to the doc center box.  There were last minute things I wanted to say to people that weren't here today (I didn't realize today was Veteran's Day until I got into the parking lot and saw so few cars).

After the exit interview I went to the mail room to make pre-addressed postage paid envelopes for me and G to return our signed severance agreements back in, where I ran into the HR manager doing the same thing.  As she hand-wrote the firm's lengthy address on the labels I couldn't help but point out that the doc center could have made those labels for her, and she weakly appreciated the irony.  Just as we got done with that, it was time for our goodbye lunch.

This is the first and only firm lunch I ever attended in my career, because whenever they had firm lunches doc center operators were always too busy to go to them.  I would run in and make a plate that I would eat at my desk.  But I just had no excuse today.  The party was in our honor.  None of us had to stay and "cover." It was great, I felt the love, even from some I didn't know before today.  One even told me that she knew we in the doc center didn't know her that well, but she was affected by the news of our closure and wanted to say good bye.

Also this morning 2 headhunters had left messages on my phone.  Seriously?  When I returned from lunch, they had both emailed me!  I wasn't going to deal with them today, but one called back again (not satisfied with his email and voicemail) and actually caught me live on the phone and I couldn't avoid him!  I haven't even decided if I want another job yet.  The thought of going back into all that stress freaks me out.  Doc centers are like ERs.  Somebody is always waiting nervously, wringing their hands, wondering if their document will live or die.  I don't know if I can do it any more.

So, today flew by.  There were two trips to my car with last minute stuff like my keyboard.  M and I walked around the other building to say goodbye and see his new office (he took another position at the firm).  All day he said goodbye and then made everyone welcome him back.  People came by to say goodbye (including two more who "just got the news").

And then I thought M and G and I would go downstairs for drinks, but I was not expecting our manager to join us, buy the drinks all around on the firm's dime, and open up to us for the first time in 10 years (although had only been our manager for the past couple of years).  At any rate, she explained that she had to keep her distance in management, and that she had a "stand-offish" personality anyway.  I think that's the word she used.  And I thought it was just me.  And G said that he thought it was just him.  So, I opened up to her too, and told her I always wanted to be friends with her, and now we are.  That was a really unexpected gift that I wasn't expecting today.  She told me I should go to South Africa, and she also thought I was in my 50s.  God bless her (she's 40 something).

And I drove home slightly drunk!  That was new for me.  

I used the equipment at the office one last time to make pictures of the following emails, and a card someone secretly stuck in my tote bag.  It's going to be a very different life for me, not having all this fancy software and equipment to play with any more.

 

Goodbye to my beloved little corner: 

Week following Oct 30, 2011

I realized why we can't live in the past.  Because you can't create in the past.  You can't create in the future, either.  Now is the only time in which you can create anything. The past can't help you squeeze every drop of joy from the present, and this moment will never come again.  I know that sounds deep, but I just wrote down the chilling truth as it presented itself to me in all its terrifying obviousness.

Q:  But aren't memories meant to be cherished?  (I asked, in my own conversation with god)  Aren't they important?

A:  Yes.  You create in the present from that which the past caused you to become.

Q:  Oh. Can that be stated more clearly?

A:  One is in continuous creation, and you have to have come from somewhere.  You came from where you just were (the past) to continually create.  You're creating even if you stop to sleep for a few decades, or you're "dead."  You still want things even if you're sleeping (or "dead"), and wanting it is pretty much creating it.

Wow.  I heard it first on my own blog.

~~*~~*~~*~~

In other news, I can't believe how much our customers loved their doc center.  I'm overwhelmed.  Due literally to popular demand (demands of which I was literally informed by the Human Resources Department, a conversation in which yes, names were mentioned), the firm is having a lunch for us on Friday, 11/11/11, for which all outsourcees will be working a day shift to attend, which is good because we were worried the evening shift guy wouldn't be there in time for us to all go to the bar downstairs together for drinks and closure.

Oh, and something funny happened.  While G was talking to me (we do a lot of that lately, as there is less and less work to do) he spontaneously bled from his nose.  It took him around 20 minutes to clean up his chair and floor of what he called the "evidence."  I told him I thought it was brilliant of him to literally leave his blood here.  We both LOLed.

Week following Oct 23, 2011

Monday, G made some amusing comment about us "singing as the Titanic goes down."

We received this email from one of our biggest fans:  "The news today comes as a surprise, and not a good one. Since you have been here for as long as, or longer than, I have been, from my perspective I am losing an institution."

This made me think about how so many things we had come to think of as "ordinary" have left our life.  We pay to check our baggage, and for headphones, meals and blankets on airplanes now.   Many items have left the shelves even if you're willing to pay the skyrocketing prices for them.  There's less choice now.  Everybody's "old life" is being taken away, not just mine.  Greece, or for that matter any country in Europe, will never be the same.

By Wednesday, we had had this same conversation several times:

User:  Who are we going to run to with these emergencies when you're gone?
Us:  You're going to have to contact Fargo, North Dakota.
All:  (Looking miserably at each other with nothing more to say).

I gave an attorney a 20 minute training session on how to number his document, after which he rapid-style lectured me (as is his wont) regarding the latest and greatest in music (going to each site on his computer as he talked), and something about his carefree innocence prompted me to ask, "Are you aware the doc center is closing?"  No, he hadn't read the email.  Guess what he asked me?  "You mean I won't be able to get help from you guys any more?"

By Thursday, I wondered where all the work was?  Oh yeah, it's going to Fargo, North Dakota.  The firm has several people already sending their work there to test it this month, which is why we got a month's notice.  Duh.  So, that's what "outsourced" means.  Somebody else is doing my work.  Oh.  Duh.  Oh.  Duh.  OH.  It keeps sinking in more and more.

So, what I want to know is how is Fargo, North Dakota handling TOAs?  Let me tell you about TOAs. I have a thing or two to say before leaving the saga of my career behind me forever.

To begin the saga about TOAs, I have to begin with RoAnn.  RoAnn was legendary.  Every office manager and every doc center in town knew RoAnn, first name only, like "Cher" or "Madonna."

I was an underwriter in training at an insurance company, where I had started out as a Sycor operator. (I just did an internet search for "Sycor" and nothing came up, so clearly that technology is so obsolete as to not even have any record in human history.  Boy, is my life a myth!!) Anyway, I had climbed my way up through rating on the second floor to underwriting on the third floor from the basement where I had started out as a Sycor operator.  Insurance was deathly boring and I wasn't making that much more money.  RoAnn is the one that told me "the secret."  I don't know how I ended up with her phone number, but God bless whoever sent that lunatic my way.  She told me to go to such-and-such temp agency and take their free Vydec course.  She said all the lawyers in town were using Vydecs and there weren't enough Vydec operators.  I learned the Vydec, and additionally RoAnn gave me a crash course showing me exactly the types of things I would be asked to do in a law firm and how to do them, including TOAs.  I took a 4 hour course, for a nominal fee, from some bimbo (imagine an "all business" Marilyn Monroe) that showed me the mechanics behind assembling the documents that were being created by people with law degrees.  The temp agency sent me to engineering corporations, while RoAnn found me my first job in my first legal document center.  It was exactly as RoAnn taught me, and I did well.  Most doc center operators had 2 or 3 jobs and we all hired each other round the clock for work on Vydec, IBM, Wang, NBI and eventually WordPerfect when pcs took over.

One day RoAnn was contracted at a firm, needed an evening coordinator, and thought of me.  Well, it was a step up, why not?  Well, for one thing because she and this firm were crazy (this was the firm where the "Document Center Incident" took place that I have yet to write about).  But I didn't know that at the time I accepted her offer, and brought my best friends with me so they could get raises working for a crazy firm, too.  This sounds idyllic, but once I was in charge my best friends would stop chatting when I came in the room, stuff like that, and it was horrible.  I had to fire my best friend when she had a bipolar episode and wigged out (instead of doing the work, she copied the requests, and returned them as completed).  Meanwhile, I was learning that RoAnn was nuts.  I think her contract had been to set up a document center and convert to NBI from System 6.  Remember those 8" floppy disks?  Well, we had to print out all those disks before they could get rid of that monstrosity, and Ro kept taking those disks home and not bringing them back.  Never explained why.  She eventually was fired, and never got the $5000 bonus for completing her contract.  I demoted myself, got all my friends back, and avoided RoAnn for the rest of my life.  Last I heard she was going to law school.

Ok, so, as I mentioned, everything I ever learned about TOAs, I learned from RoAnn as part of a 4 hour course.  TOAs are "Tables of Authorities."  What they are is an index of every legal cite found in the document, listed under separate categories of cases, rules, statutes, etc. separated into state and federal. This means you have to actually know what a legal cite is, and know how it's being used in the document, because just existing in the document doesn't necessarily mean it goes into the table.  Assuming you have found a correct cite for inclusion, you have to code it.  It's the most complex coding you can do in a document. There are endless ways you can have picked up every cite and still generate a faulty table just because you missed something in the coding.  The coding takes hours to do, and the TOAs are always a crashing rush because you can only do them on a final document, and attorneys work on their documents right up to the filing deadlines.  If those TOAs don't get done and the deadline gets missed it is always the operator's fault, never the attorney's.

To be fair to my current firm, which I have referred to as "Firm Fairyland" in previous posts, it is the first and only firm I had ever worked for that supported the doc center when there were mistakes in TOAs, and the attorneys were held responsible for the final tables.  This has been reason enough for me to feel I worked in fairyland.  Our new national document center manager had encouraged sending TOAs out of state when we needed help.  This got the job "off the books," but it would inevitably be returned to us to do it again correctly, so they were really something we could never get help with. 

Here's the thing:  The only people with the knowledge to recognize a correct cite is a lawyer.  Legal secretaries and paralegals are supposed to, but they mostly don't.  The rare ones that do just "never have time" to do the coding. Over the decades I've seen various software come and go, macros created at various firms, all sorts of tricks and programs to generate TOAs, but they all missed too many cites to be relied upon.  I have seen, even been part of, all sorts of training sessions to teach people how to code for TOAs, but they never do it after they learn it.  It's just too hard for them.  So, document centers have been the default experts on TOAs since forever.  I have never done one with confidence, and I can't tell you how happy I would be to never have to do another one.

Maybe now you understand why I'm wondering how Fargo, North Dakota is handling TOAs.

In other news, I have been in a senior meetup group that has mostly turned out to be a little old ladies club.  We had a meetup yesterday that was the best one so far.  Four other women I had not met before came, and were just the people I needed to meet.  One was a petsitter (always good to know one of those), another gets medical insurance for people like me that want an alternative to COBRA.  When I expressed concern about my housing situation, another timidly confessed that she hadn't wanted to reveal that she lives in senior housing.  She thought we would look down on her.  But once she said that we all were interested in how she did that, and what she said changed my life.  She said once you turn 62 you can sign up at any rental office of any apt. building for senior housing.  It's a HUD thing.  She signed up with all the rental offices in the marina.  She had to wait 2 years, but she has a 2 bedroom apt with an ocean view, and she pays a third of what Ted and I are paying for our apartment, and we both turned 62 this year.  Another lady in the group also found this information valuable, and was even more distraught than me and I hugged her and that turned out to be just what she needed, just a hug.  I feel really lucky to have met all of them.  I feel like I made 4 new friends, and learned so much stuff about being a senior.  It's still sinking in that I'm a "senior" too.