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Magnificats
Dec. 6th, 2011 08:36 pmTwo joyful moments amongst the hours of Deposition Hell du jour- both involving people I know named Mary.
One's a co-worker of sorts. I say "of sorts" because I really don't have any; I come into the office she works in every day, exchange incoming mail for outgoing, make needed copies, and occasionally ask Mary or one of a few other notaries in the place to stamp a document for me. Yet she's the only one in there I consider a friend, at least in Facebook terms, and I've always admired her work ethic and good attitude in the face of lots of flyin' turkeys, of both client and co-worker variety.
This week's been a heavy one for me in terms of commitments: four fairly full days of appointments and hearings, three of them out of town, all of them stressful. I got to thinking that I might be better off taking advantage of this office's a la carte offering of administrative/legal assistant service- not for actual work output, but for taking the calls when I'm tied up, managing my calendar with clients who call, and keeping me from forgetting things or screwing up their times (as I almost did this morning).
I asked Mary if she'd be interested. She was. I asked if it would result in any extra compensation to her. It wouldn't. So I told her, one, I would talk to the office manager about letting me set up this arrangement, but only if she was the one assigned to it; and two, that I would want to find a way to compensate her at least some amount for the extra effort, over and above putting in her time on the office's clock. (A weekly live or virtual meeting, lasting coincidentally as long as some agreed amount at an agreed hourly rate, to "go over things" on her own time seemed the fair way to do this.)
We called it a good start and I headed home- and, a couple hours later, saw this on her Facebook wall:
what started out and continued to be a pretty crappy day suddenly just got better - received one of the best compliments ever bout my work!...the attorneys I work for always let me know that I'm appreciated but when you get a compliment from someone you don't work for & its only because they hear how I handle clients on the phone and ask if I have time in the week to handle their phone calls while they're in court because they're that impressed with me, can I say WOW! (and they said that if its not me, they don't want anyone!)
Yeah. They think she's pretty damn talented and they'd be pleased to share some of the benefit of their own clients' business with her:)
----
Then there's Mary from the bank. I don't see her as often, but she's been at my regular branch for half a forever, and she always has a smile and an occasional story to share while we're passing our tiny scraps of greenery back and forth.
The branch in question is not open Saturdays, and during the week has only an ATM drive-up, but the bank makes them rotate through a nearby branch that is open Saturdays and does have a two-lane drive-up. I had some stuff to deposit this past Saturday, so I headed to that one, and there, sure enough, was Mary, working the lanes and clearly not getting far with them. I pulled out of the queue to fill out all my slips and sign the checks and such, and when I took a second pass, things hadn't moved, and from the brief look at her window, she wasn't much ahead of where she'd been. Finally, I decided to spare her my business and came inside; from there, I saw she was still being held up (okay, not at gunpoint, but almost as annoyingly) by one customer, even requiring a manager-type to come over and talk through the squawkbox to the impertinent driver.
One's a co-worker of sorts. I say "of sorts" because I really don't have any; I come into the office she works in every day, exchange incoming mail for outgoing, make needed copies, and occasionally ask Mary or one of a few other notaries in the place to stamp a document for me. Yet she's the only one in there I consider a friend, at least in Facebook terms, and I've always admired her work ethic and good attitude in the face of lots of flyin' turkeys, of both client and co-worker variety.
This week's been a heavy one for me in terms of commitments: four fairly full days of appointments and hearings, three of them out of town, all of them stressful. I got to thinking that I might be better off taking advantage of this office's a la carte offering of administrative/legal assistant service- not for actual work output, but for taking the calls when I'm tied up, managing my calendar with clients who call, and keeping me from forgetting things or screwing up their times (as I almost did this morning).
I asked Mary if she'd be interested. She was. I asked if it would result in any extra compensation to her. It wouldn't. So I told her, one, I would talk to the office manager about letting me set up this arrangement, but only if she was the one assigned to it; and two, that I would want to find a way to compensate her at least some amount for the extra effort, over and above putting in her time on the office's clock. (A weekly live or virtual meeting, lasting coincidentally as long as some agreed amount at an agreed hourly rate, to "go over things" on her own time seemed the fair way to do this.)
We called it a good start and I headed home- and, a couple hours later, saw this on her Facebook wall:
what started out and continued to be a pretty crappy day suddenly just got better - received one of the best compliments ever bout my work!...the attorneys I work for always let me know that I'm appreciated but when you get a compliment from someone you don't work for & its only because they hear how I handle clients on the phone and ask if I have time in the week to handle their phone calls while they're in court because they're that impressed with me, can I say WOW! (and they said that if its not me, they don't want anyone!)
Yeah. They think she's pretty damn talented and they'd be pleased to share some of the benefit of their own clients' business with her:)
----
Then there's Mary from the bank. I don't see her as often, but she's been at my regular branch for half a forever, and she always has a smile and an occasional story to share while we're passing our tiny scraps of greenery back and forth.
The branch in question is not open Saturdays, and during the week has only an ATM drive-up, but the bank makes them rotate through a nearby branch that is open Saturdays and does have a two-lane drive-up. I had some stuff to deposit this past Saturday, so I headed to that one, and there, sure enough, was Mary, working the lanes and clearly not getting far with them. I pulled out of the queue to fill out all my slips and sign the checks and such, and when I took a second pass, things hadn't moved, and from the brief look at her window, she wasn't much ahead of where she'd been. Finally, I decided to spare her my business and came inside; from there, I saw she was still being held up (okay, not at gunpoint, but almost as annoyingly) by one customer, even requiring a manager-type to come over and talk through the squawkbox to the impertinent driver.
In short, she looked like she could've used a stiff drink. So in my travels today, I got her one. We needed wine, and the liquor store has those little airline-style bottles of scotch and liqueurs at the register, for all of a buck or two. I picked a caramelly-looking one, with a Swiss-flag cross on the bottle, and brought it over with my deposit for today. I told her I'd seen her in distress (it was a dude with eight, countem, eight separate transactions- the posted limit is two- and who also refused to pass photo ID through the tubey wubey thingy) and how bad I'd felt for her. Next time, I said, keep this handy in case of emergency.
She really appreciated the gesture. It took a minute of purchasing and another one or two of explanation, but it let a good soul know that she's noticed.
And "they" like doing that from time to time, too:)