Come and get your money

It's summer, and the sweaty weather has brought with it financial crisis. I'm living off campus with my teammates in their $800/month apartment (which has been described as "reasonably" priced, to give you an idea of how out of control D.C. housing prices are). It's not cheap. Lucky for me, though, one of the people at CLLC found a job for me. The aim of this post is to give you a glimpse into the absurdity of the place where I work.

It's a good job. I get paid $12/hr for doing some pretty menial stuff, and they don't care that I have a summer class right smack in the middle of the day. I work at a patent law firm called Sughrue Mion, PLLC. I do bitch work, which so far has consisted of cross-checking their entire docketing system, which they just migrated from one system to another. Jay, one of the professional staff at work, got me the job because he used to work there as an undergrad and keeps in touch with the HR person. I am eternally thankful to him for getting me this job, else I would have had to have mooched off my parents even more this summer.

Good things about working here include 2-block proximity to where I'm living, ample lunch choices, and nice people (though not attractive). I also work with Ryan, a former CLLC colleague, so at least I can chat with him if all else fails (all else has failed on at least one occasion when the whole system went on the fritz). Also good to divide the work and bounce ideas around. Another perk is that every day is Casual Friday, especially Casual Friday. I never have to dress up penguin-style or anything. In fact I wear jeans and sneakers pretty much every day, and some sort of shirt. Yet another perk is that the soda machines vend sodas for $0.25, as well as bottled water for the same price.

This is not to say that working at Sughrue Mion has not had its share of shenanigans.

The first one occurred on my second day of work, when I was attempting to bring my canceled check down to Accounting so that I could get direct deposit. After determining via advance recon (i.e. going to the wrong floor) that Accounting was on the 6th floor, I decided that taking the elevator from the 8th to the 6th floor would be a rookie move. Thus, I found the door labeled "Stairs" and with a big stink-cloud of self-satisfaction hanging over me, I embarked down the stairs. I get to the sixth floor and walk straight into the door, thinking it would be, well, you know... open. But it wasn't. Neither was the seventh floor. Or the fifth. OR ANY OF THE FLOORS. Why would you label a stairwell "Stairs" if they don't lead anywhere? Even at the ground floor, the door was alarmed. So here I am in a smelly stairwell, with no way to get out. There are cameras all over the place, so if the security people were laughing at me going up and down trying every door... I curse your existence. My cell phone didn't work, so I couldn't call anyone and ask them to open the damn door for me. I eventually pounded on the door hard enough to get the attention of one of the yokel office staff, who, prior to opening the door for me, asked "Who's there?" THE PRINCE OF FUCKING WALES, YOU MUCKER! Jesus, what an inane question to ask. 15 minutes later I was released from the stair-prison, with knowledge to never try and eschew the elevators again.

Another incident occurred with the vending machine. The inner machinations of that contraption were crafted in the fires of Hell by Beelzebub himself, my friends. Week in and week out it eats people's money. This is evidenced by the numerous Post-it notes with dates, amounts, and phone extensions that clutter up the top of the snack-viewing window. It ate my money not once, but twice, and there are unconfirmed reports that someone else had a 3 Musketeers bar on my dollar. I demand vengeance! Anyhow, I dutifully posted the monetary injustice that was done to me via Post-it note and had completely forgotten about it when I got a mysterious phone call.

-Hello?
-Come and get your money.
-Ummm... excuse me?
-Come / and / get / your / money.

If you don't immediately think that this is someone nefarious calling the wrong number to try and close some shady deal, you haven't watched enough television programming or motion pictures. My mind immediately went into what-the-fuck mode, while the person on the other line hung up. It dawned on me after a couple of seconds what was going on here (reimbursement for misappropriated cupcake-related expenses vis-a-vis the vending machine) and so I set out to get my quarters back. Unfortunately, halfway down the hall I realized I had no idea where I was going, or who the nefarious voice was. I called my supervisor who sighed and said "Oh yes, that's our wonderful secretary Gloria," and added that down in the Docketing department, they affectionately call her the Dragon Lady. So I approached the Dragon Lady, who said "You'd think after losing your money the first time you wouldn't put more in." I was so completely taken aback by this, I made some funny comment and walked away. I stopped mid-stride in the hallway on my way back though, because the only explanation for what she just said was that she thought I put in a dollar after I lost my initial $0.85. I didn't bother mentioning to her that it took my money TWICE on TWO SEPARATE DAYS.

So she's the Dragon Lady, and the woman who works in the cube outside our office is the Radish Queen. Why? Because she is short, has a round head, and really short hair, which was spiked up in the back Alfalfa-style the first day I saw her. Thus, she looks like a radish, and thus, she is the Radish Queen because she is clearly able to reason more effectively than her namesake vegetable. Hey... coming up with semi-retarded nicknames is what I do to keep sane. They firewall the internet on our computer so the only thing we can look at is the US Patent Office website. Slacking off is damn near impossible. I'll let you know how I eventually beat the fun police but for now, I am just and underground slackjob.