Rough Edges

So much for having a grace period. I got a talking to about my billables. I was not even there a full 3 weeks, and I don't even have a caseload - and I'm expected to make 10 billables? No one has anything small for me to do; everything is pretty huge and time-intensive (and in the middle of cases I know nothing about). No nice, small, discrete projects where I can benefit from the magic of attorney billing. So that means that I will likely end up needing to work 10 physical hours (plus bathroom breaks, lunch, etc.) until I can get a caseload. I was actually talked to twice. The first came from one of the associates. She likes me, knows I do good work. She told me that the saving grace was that the partner that I've been working with loves my work. Stick with him. Yeah, well, that was my plan. I just didn't realize that I wouldn't have the benefit of a little time to get caught up to speed. The bottom line is apparently far more important than me learning. This talk happened on Thursday. I left at 10:15 p.m. that night. I left around 7 on Friday but went in to work today and put in about 5 hours. Hopefully that will make up for whatever time was lost on Friday when they decided to move me into the new office (where my phone and network drop were not activated!!!) and I couldn't produce any written work. But I am certain now that they don't really care about that. I am not even there a month, and I am already starting to feel as cynical as someone that has been there for years. Wow. What a load of crap. But whatever... I just have to put my head down and scrounge up more of people's refuse. Par for the course in the life of a professional, eh? I am not afraid of hard work and I have been working hard - but this, I think, is unreasonable. Life isn't fair, and it's a lesson I needed to learn. Another thing I found out - the whole thing about training? Not true. While they have been having meetings every couple of Tuesday evenings to discuss relevant stuff, I heard from my newfound mentor that they didn't really have the kind of thing in place and that the partners told the more senior associates that they would have to train us newer ones. One even made a little joke about it, because I had specifically asked about training. Great... I was misled. Coming back now to my situation now - that isn't really happening. I haven't gotten to really shadow anyone in court to observe. I've been stuck in the office doing the same genre of tasks. And they expect to give me a caseload? It's going to be time for me to just grab sac (figuratively) and learn the hard way, since there is no real guidance going on here. It's just hard having to force my way into stuff when I don't know the culture and how well it may be received. Especially since The Ornery One sent out a nastygram last week about the billables, and saying that we shouldn't attempt to cut deals (about court appearances) and present them, that they want to put the best people in whatever position for whatever court appearance. Right. So why haven't I gotten more than 1 decent shadow opportunity in court yet? I got two words for that: Fucking Bullshit. I am still going to give this a fair shake, but if my happiness factor isn't significantly different in 2 years (max, maybe less) I will find a way to exit stage left, and The Ornery One can kiss my ass. All right, Sideways is on and I'm missing it by blogging about all my work troubles. Hasta la bye bye.