Friday, September 9, 2011

It's My (Pity) Party

I can't remember if this is my Friday to blog or not, and it is so late at night that I can't really call or text anyone to ask, so I'm just going to write it.  My apologies to the other JD Moms if I've just hijacked the blog for the day: I promise to trade one of my days for this one.  Because I just have to let out some steam. 

It's 10:48 p.m. on Thursday night and I am still sitting at my desk.  I haven't been home.  I haven't seen my kids.  I haven't even left my office - including to use the bathroom - since I grabbed a salad at lunch time (which, by the way, I ate at my desk).  All of these things would be okay if I had a big trial or mediation coming up.  Or if I had an important brief due.  Or even if I had screwed around all day and now had to put in my eight hours at night.  But none of that happened.  I started out today with a court appearance on my schedule and needing to finish a pre-trial brief for a matter that starts on Monday.  No big deal.  I was in good shape. 

Until 3:45 when a partner stopped by my office and dropped off a stack of UCC liens and litigation that needed to be reviewed for his closing on Monday.  If you haven't done due diligence before you  haven't lived.  My job was to review all of the litigation the company is engaged in  (thankfully, someone else did the UCC liens) and summarize it - what's happened, what's going to happen, where it is now - and estimate the exposure so that the buyer or lender knows what it's getting into before it closes.  It's an important job, but very time intensive, and time was not on my side. 

I was an hour-and-a-half away from being gone for the weekend, and I got a much-longer-than-an-hour-and-a-half project dumped on me.  Not to mention, I still had to finish my brief and get ready to prep my client for a Monday deposition for which I received notice today (how does that even happen, by the way?).  And I hadn't planned to be in on Friday.  How was I going to do it all? 

Of course, I stayed late.  That's what I needed to do, so that's what I did.  But staying late didn't get me anywhere.  A mediation was going on in my office and around 9:17 it settled.  The partner handling the mediation popped by my office and asked me to draft up a "quick" settlement agreement for the parties to sign before they left for the night.  Riiigghhttt.  Because I was sitting here at 9:15 p.m. waiting for someone to stop by with a project.  There were two other partners roaming around the office talking strategy.  He could have asked either of them to pull it together.  But he didn't.  He asked me.  The person tethered to her computer and sweating out every minute.  Also, the only woman. 

To make matters worse, I figured out that my due diligence project will require me to come in tomorrow.  I have to physically pull some files from the courthouse and review them.  And no one can do it for me.  Not because it is hard or takes any special knowledge, but because the partner who dumped the project on me is taking the day off.  Because his day off is more important than mine. 

I won't lie - this situation makes me angry.  Not just because it means I'll have to break promises to my kids (again) or because we'll miss mom-tot hockey.  Not even because I bargained for this day off and should be able to take it.  I'm mad because the only reason this fire drill project even exists is because some partner was too lazy to do his due diligence more than two days before his closing.  Because he had no problem leaving me in the lurch to try to find a babysitter at 11 pm, and if I left him in that same lurch I'd be fired.  But no one is going to say anything to him. 

Life isn't fair, that's true.  And sometimes, we have to do things we don't want to do.  But I'm tired of feeling like no matter how hard I work it will never be enough.  I'm tired of letting down my kids.  I'm really just tired of all of it. 

Karen

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